K is for Kit Bashing

Funny, I got back last weekend from the show to find someone had 'found' an internet image previously seen here, and posted it without context, but with the usual 'What do you think readers?', and fair enough, this stuff is out there, but if we're going to change the rules to cover stuff like that, I'd just point out I can now repost about a third of everything he's posted in the last nineteen years, while he will struggle to reproduce about 1% of my Blog?

 

Probably not something he wants to establish, but thought and action need to be coordinated first, and they're clearly not being - what to you think readers?! Anyway, as that image appeared on a kit-post, here's the kit stuff I picked-up last weekend, while Bushy was following me, again!

 

I think these are mostly from the Gowland & Gowland 'Highway Pioneers' line of old fashioned car kits, later taken-over by Revell (UK), before going worldwide, through the parent company. Useful to get them without the large (1:43rd) vehicle kits, and most will be easy to ID, the red stuff might prove problematical though!

 

There is a variation between them, with the green chap bottom-right, having the post parts, at a six-count, while the dark green racers (?) are single mouldings, and you have everything in-between, with two, three, four and five-part figures.

 

Some (the really early [1951] ones?) having a cartoonish caricature look about them, while others are more realistic or anatomically correct. And there seem to be colour variations of one or two.

 

Funnily enough, given the premise of the post, I have a ton of these Aurora 'Snap-a-roos' in the archive (some used by Bushy, most not seen over there yet!), but they can wait a few more years, becasue I picked this up on Saturday, and it's arguably the best of the bunch, being space themed, while some of the others are more assorted 'transport' collections, taken from R&L.

 

And while I'm sure these have been credited to R&L elsewhere, there's no evidence of the Rosenhain & Lipmann mark on the frames, and, as we we've seen with both Rubenstein and De Gruyter, it's never that simple, plus, there were several Italian makers of these micro-kits, too. So I'm wont to 'call' on these, although the fact they called them Snap-a-roos, gives them an otherwise inexplicable Australian link!

 

Modern, and most of the contents are cheap cardboard tat, but a re-boxing of an old 1:24th Jeep kit, and it was half the going rate I've seen on evilBay! Commemorating a date in 2019, the instructions dated 2021, it apparently didn't hit the shops until 2022, so current really! Presumably, the production schedule got hit by Covid19?

 

The chrome-coated runner is for the civilian 'Surrey' version, although it you drive an open vehicle toward a monster Kaiju or two, you deserve everything coming to you! The card stuff will go with all the other paper/card stuff, when I get round to making-up the Jeep.

 

Right let's see how many feeBay space images I've 'saved', that I can post in the next 28 days . . . oh, hold-on, I've got so much original copy and imagery, I don't need to copy him, or hoover-up his Internet scrapings!

T is for Tiger

So, to the second of two posts on the new Airfix 1:35th (nominally) Quickbuild kits, and we have the mighty - and flawed ('IRL') - German Tiger. Like the Firefly we looked at a few days ago, this definitely looks the part, and while having some problems, is not as poor as the Sherman. Possibly less blurb as most of the points carry-over.

 

As the Firefly was a game-changer, so the problems associated with the production of these slow, heavy behemoths could be argued to have contributed to a shorter war, and the fact that combat-wombats all over Europe are digging them up to restore, shows how difficult they were to deal with once the engine stopped, and even after the war, people had a tendency to dig a hole next to them and push them in rather than recover them!

 

Big bag o'bits, for a big bugger!

 

The same Lego style instruction sheet and simple sticker card, the most obvious flaw with this model, is two pairs of little 'nipples' either side of the turret, with an additional mould-line running through them, which render the placing of the relatively stiff vinyl turret-numbers almost impossible, so I placed mine on the rear of the superstructure - I believe there is evidence of this having happened, in real life, especially where turrets were changed-out in the field.

 

Small parts, note the identical (with the Sherman kit) accessory runner in the centre of the shot. Track-links are, again, a softer, harder-wearing polymer, like a hybrid ethylene, a nylon or polypropylene?

 

The rest of the gubbins, again, not much compatibility with Lego, or other leading bricks (Cobi have a large 1:12th Tiger out with over 8,000 pieces!), although you get the same direction changing block, which may have a more general application with other bricks/projects, and if the axles are the same diameter as Lego technic, you may have a whole bunch of wheels to use on other things?

 

You can clearly see the crap on the turret side which results in a lifted sticker and air-pocket, if you apply the turret number as instructed, and to do it justice, you'd have to remove both (all four) nipples and the lines connecting them, and then professionally polish the scraped/sanded plastic to take the cheap sticker. And, if you were minded/qualified to do all that, you'd have bought the Dragon, Nichimo or Tamiya (et al) kit, in the first place!

 

There are spare track sections with this kit too, and to be fair, the main difference between this and the Sherman, is that while the connecting nubs are the same design, once you've got the tracks on, they do stay on and together, under slow, measured progress, but rough play on an uneven surface, would still shed both in seconds!

Also, is it me, or should the tracks be wider? Maybe that extending beyond the wheels was on the later variants only, this being the early one, with the higher cupola . . . it's been a long time since I read-up on such things!? All in all, a marginally better effort than the Firefly, with slightly better track-action! Full 8 out of 10!

F is for Firefly

An unprepossessing name for a vicious little critter which did a lot to help win the war, and yes, lots of things make that claim, SOE, SAS, Bletchley/Ultra, Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Trinity, Boeing, Hobart and his Funnies, Rolls Royce and their wizard, and to be fair, they all played their part, but this was one of the balance-tippers!

 

Back during a more combative phase of the Blog's past, a lot was made of, and opined, about the announcement by Airfix of new 1:35th stuff, which in fact took forever to get to market, were finally released a couple of years ago, weren't model kits, nor full ready-mades', but rather clip-together, and only appeared - locally - earlier this year, in Hobby Craft, where I shelfied them.. But I thought I ought to actually get them, which I recently did, and this is the first of two posts on the subject.

 

The Airfix 'QuickBuild' Sherman Firefly, a clip-together model which uses the Lego (Hestair-Kiddycraft) mechanism, for that constructive element, even to being compatible with 'other leading bricks', but an addition to your Lego tub it ain't.

 

Everything comes in one bag, with separate instructions and a small, basic sticker sheet, the grey block to the far left is the only piece which might be useful to a Lego fan, being a large, five-way, stud direction changer.

 

My first criticism, and it's far truer for the Sherman than the Tiger, is that the track-links are a bit wank. They go together OK, until you try putting them on the vehicle, at which point they reveal weaknesses which totally destroy the 'playability' of the 'toy', as the slightest carpet-move produces breaks in the tracks?

 

The most Lego-likey element is the instruction sheet, which has full colour stages, each of which involves only three or four parts, highlighted by not being greyed-out, and tracks aside, there aren't many parts, (around twenty-five/twenty-six?), and most of them are chunky bits!

 

Second - obvious - criticism; I had a large spigot of [failed release-pin?] plastic on one of my hull sides, which prevented the construction, until removed, although it resulted in a useful piece of 'styrene rod for the spares box, so "Every cloud . . . "!

 

Turret components, result in a reasonably robust turret, with revolving action utilising the twin-lug system from Tamiya, rather than Airfix's traditional central spigot, for a firmer attachment. Frankly though it's a simplified and toy-like rendition, but that's a criticism for the whole model, and it is meant to be a toy first, and a Sherman second!

 

A small accessory runner in a different colour, this is identical for the Tiger Tank, and contans the turret-interior retaining-piece for the gun-barrel, a jerry can, two ammo-boxes and a pointed entrenching shovel.

 

Running gear; quite simple and straightforward, it took me a minute or so to work-out how the two halves of the drive-sprocket went together, but that might have been more about the need for proper glasses than any failure of my mental faculties, or errors in the instructions!

 

In the end, three useful looking pieces of waste plastic joined the greeble stash! There were a couple more on the track runners, but the tracks are definitely a different polymer, probably polypropylene, which is as much of a nightmare to glue as polyethylene, so they both went to recycling!

 

It definitely looks the part, and, in real life, must have come as quite a surprise to the big cats of Nazi Germany, but it's not terribly accurate, nor that detailed, and certainly not as detailed as it could have been, in this scale. It states 1:35, but seems closer to 1:32nd, but that might just be me, and I'm notoriously bad at judging scale.

 

Although, conversely, the underside has quite a bit of detail, compared to other Sherman models over the years! Also, you can see in this shot, how the drive sprockets don't actually engage the tracks and have been made ridiculously wide as a result, just to keep their teeth away from the track rod ends!

 

The two 'spare' track links don't clip in, and keep falling off, but there are actually quite a few spare links, so you can field 'appliqué' your tank with extra frontal armour!

 

 

 

All-in-all though, a disappointing effort, with track issues that render it unplayable once built, the simple construction is a plus, not including the tracks (and my sprockets!) it can be assembled in about eight-minutes, no more than twenty with track-faff, but simple detailing and stickers, leave it as a toy you can't push anywhere, for fear the tracks will part like the red-sea. I think 7-out-of-10 is a generous score?

R is for Roveing Reporter's Rack-toy Round-up #2

The second set of images from Brian Berke were all taken in a New Your branch of a Japanese firm called Daiso, and are mostly beyond the parameters of the Blog, but it's a movable feast, and water-pistols/ray guns have crept in over the years!

 

With Dinosaur!

 

Although not the same, this double-decker looking firearm, reminds me of Deckard's piece from the original Blade Runner movie, I'd call it 'seminal movie', but there are about five versions, and the better ones have been watched by the least numbers of viewers!

 

 

Clip-together, or basic constructional infant toys, it's a "yes" from me for the motorcycle, which seems to be a finer model, still on the runner, the other two are more grandchild fodder, but I hope Brian won't mind me pointing out, he does look at this stuff with a grandfather's eye now!

 

Both marked Series B, I must assume another B was the Roaches, with other critters in the Series A, whenever that was current? Ants, Spiders and ? Maybe?

 

Daiso had also sourced some stuff more locally, and these last three are from Jaru, a US jobber/importer of some standing, in both years and ranges, squishy stretch-monsters are cool! Thanking Mr Berke, and there's more to come!

M is for Medieval Metal Men

So to the other half of 'antiquity', the newer half, although where you place the line is anybody's guess, hidden as it is, in the murk of the Dark Ages . . . is it Arthur and the end of Empire, the rise of the Carolingians, or the fall of the Carolingians, or likewise the Byzantines, or the fall of state fortresses, and rise of private castles?

 

War gamers place it later, with the coming of gunpowder, as a series of major rule changes!. . . If I asked you, you'd all have a different answer! But in toy-soldier land, it tends to mean fully tinned-men, or men in tights!

 

Oh, look out! We've got a new upload screen! It's got a colour graphic and a dotted boarder, that was worth the geeks' wages, wasn't it! How many changes since 2008? The original was fine, all the images went in a temporary folder as thumbnails you could return to, and import in ones or multiples. Every change since as either been pointless tinkering, or actually a negative experience/detrimental . . . Sigh.. And while they used to be hosted on Googles servers, they're now all 'in the cloud' to be lost in an instant, if the Internet breaks!

 

Anyway, onwards and upwards, these Cherilea 60mm's were, I think, given to me by someone, possibly Isaac, as 'unsellable', and while they don't have a huge fan-base, all box-tickers should be after a set, and while even I didn't have many of the Crusaders, I've always liked the standard ones, of which the chap on the right is one, and he has the shield with the late Sharna Ware shield motif which matches my lancer! 

 

Marx 'Men in Tights' (was it called 'Men in Pantyhose' across The Pond?), a bit scruffy, but a good clean will spruce-up the priest, while Robin (or, would it have been Robyn?) needs a dab of glue. Not sure if they are Marx originals or tatty Rado rissues?

 

A couple of nice Markus Hinton marked 25mm knights, painted to a nineteen-seventies standard, and a pair of nice box-tickers.

 

As are these two, indeed, almost every recent show lot or Chris parcel, has produced a variation of this shot, with both a Hong Kong copy (left, new colour?) and an MPC original on the right, of the 40mm medievals.

 

Another pair, and more Titan/Strawberry Group handled Supreme knights, I should have all the poses by now, but they are in various different places, and I don't know how many I have in silver, how many in black? And I've always rather liked the all plastic, yet Deetail vibe of them. While there was a gold issue, but possibly not in the UK?

 

On the right, a useful addition to the stash of Cherilea 1st version we saw here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/10/d-is-for-dustbin-lids.html

 

And a lump of chewed polymer from Shotts in Scotland, which will head straight to recycling, but I photographed everything for completion!

 

I've said before you can never have everything, but you can have a damn-good try, and this Dulcop man-at-arms, seems to be one I didn't have (or don't recognise), although, of course, now I definitely do! And two of my favourite 'toy' knights, the Lido pod-feet chaps, also in need of a good clean!

 

The 'orphan' photo! One belongs in the sci-fi/fantasy post, and two belong in the previous post, but for two ten-counts the executive decision was that it go here!

 

A nice Cherilea smallie, in the less common green, a small Italeri, the game piece mentioned a couple of times, here at Small Scale World, recently, and the two figures from the Revell/Miniature Masterpiece decorative chariot kit - I seem to remember the Gowland & Gowland  instructions suggesting it be used with a table-lamp stand, or bookends! In this insipid white 'styrene, however, probably the Glencoe reissue?

 

I'm never too sure about these, but I think it's three (slightly darker) PVC-rubber ones from Marx, behind, and two polyethylene ones from Tudor Rose, in front, but they could all be Marx, and have been reissued several times, including the multicoloured rack toy knock-offs a few years ago - and yes, I know we're into RTM, but one thing at a time, it's too damn hot . . . and now, humid!

 

Closing shot is all small scale, and unlike yesterday’s ancient clones, these are all Giant Originals, mostly the late versions, but one, in green, of the trio of strange dancing loons I question-marked in my original One Inch Warrior article.
 

And, again, thanks to Adrian Little, Brian Carrick, Colin Penn, Isaac, Matt Murphy, Martin Fahie, Michael Mordant-Smith, Paul, Peter Evans and Trevor Rudkin for their input at the show.