Having inadvertently used TJF and Master Sprecher ('they started it') to push the blog over the five-million hits, back in August, or whenever, I thought it would be fun to use this series of five corrective posts to get us over the third-best-year finish-line!
There's this guy, we'll call him the Man with Three Names, for it is he, who keeps posting the same stuff on a Faceplant group, over and over again, I mean seven times since lockdown, for most of it!
One of the things he keeps posting, and he's just posted it again, is his 'rare' colours of Marksman ACW, courtesy of the late John 'Marx Man' Stengel. Making statements such as;
"Some of these colors were test shots and were never publicly released"
"When he was deciding which colors to run the molds in..."
". . . in about 7 different colors, including 3 or 4 test shot colors, that were never produced."
"Some of these are "test shot" colors, that John was considering producing."
"They were a reject for mass marketing."
But it's all bollocks! I don't know whether he's trying to impress all the other members of the group, or just all the North American members of the group, but it's all bollocks!
Let me explain . . . I now have 12 colours, these have all come in, in mixed lots, off of that intermahweb-thingy, where other colours remain to be found, by me, other people have already found them! Marksmen, back in the day were a small two-man outfit, Peter Coles (now of Replicants) who designed and mastered the figures, and got the moulds produced and Mike Ellis, the office-end, who dealt with Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) in Hong Kong (Marx reissues), Mr Stengel and other clients around the world, and ran the stand at toy soldier shows.
Each run of the tools, was what the 'garage firm' could afford, and while some colours were more official than others, they were all available at the shows, I remember them piled-up on Mike's table for years afterward, and they regularly appear on feeBay, from whence I got mine in two lots a year or two ago.
While the idea Peter would let his moulds go to the US, and trust them to come back, is rather risible!
Now, one shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but there is a possibility the late Mr. Stengel Senior (whom our reprobate keeps spelling with an 'a', suggesting he didn't know him as well as he claims to have) might have embellished his own position in, or contribution to, the Marksmen story.
But this endless re-poster, of the tale at hand, also has a history of not paying for his advertising, trying to get people kicked-off Facebook Groups with such convoluted lies, he eventually manages to destroy his case, trying to prove the truth, by inadvertently showing the lie (a story for another day, maybe), and, was only today, admitting to pirating Helmet, which may or may not have had a role in one of their demises, so I tend to think he's probably bullshitting for effect? And he keeps referring to a 'Peter Ellis' in his posts on the subject, suggesting he knows the subject no better than he knew Mr. Stengel, with an 'e'!
It's the same in the small-scale, where there were 'officially' four colours, but actually six or seven are kicking around, due to each batch often being a different shade, even if it wasn't an officially 'new' colour.
And - as far as I know - Action Casting, the firm currently owned by John Stengel Junior, don't have and never has had, the Marksmen ACW moulds?
And that's it, finishing with five posts in a row, correcting some of the crap out there - it's the third-best year, ever, for posts, here at Small Scale World. Which, given some of the shit which has come my way in recent months, is a major achievement! Anything which posts between now and Monday night is a bonus, we won't get close to the other two year's totals!
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