T is for Tente - Tank Transporter and Tail-ends

So, the last of the Tente stuff in the car-booty found by Peter Evans back in the Summer, and it's 'most of the rest', of what seems to have been a ten-kit set, although I've got bits of naval vessels in the same 'army' green, still not a colour offered, in any quantity, by Lego, so the full range may have gone to 12 or 15 boxes?

 

The tractor unit is vaguely based on the Kynos Aljaba 8×8, but that was an 8x8 (obviously) not a 6x6, so it's a very loose resemblance, some Soviet tractors look similar, but usually with a closed cab, as do/are the Faun SLT's of the Bundeswehr.

 

With the trailer, which is even more generic!

Always hard to photograph tank transporters (or large ship models), simply because of the horizontal dimensions! But these give you some idea. The previously seen Tanque, and the Ambulance, before I had found its loose bits and reattached them!

 

It came with its own (2nd model) tank, the bulk of which was missing from the car boot find, and which is closer to the ex-US Patton or Pershing M46/47 & M48/M60's that were common in the Spanish inventory for the bulk of the post-war/Cold War era. But most of the turret was in the bag, and with the barrel off the other, I could produce that, for a photograph!

 

Alternate suggestions mostly involve slight tweaks to the configuration, but the half-tracked transporter is spacey! While the tank becomes a chunky-monkey personnel carrier or wheeled tank.

 

The ephemera awaiting scanning, includes a half-track which was also missing, however, I think bits of it might have been in the less-than-colour-matched ambulance truck, we saw at the start of this sequence.

 

 Reverse of its instructions include a vague weapons-platform, and a cargo-truck.

 

Missing numbers are the Missile Helicopter, a quadruple SPAAG, based, clearly, on the Soviet-era ZSU-32-4, while, not illustrated anywhere here, was a large 8x8, wheeled APC, coded #0751, which was probably the weakest model in the range - body too big for the wheels, giving it a very open and top-heavy look.

 

All the important bits of the helicopter (cockpit, rotor, tail, skids) were also in the bag, with a handful of bricks which may have been helicopter, but may have been half-track, if you were to follow the instructions! Another bag of bits and a pair of the shorter tracks, and I will be able to complete both!

So, many thanks to Peter for spotting these, and saving them for the Blog, something a bit different!

T is for Tanque!

No messing-about with autoblinder-carro-panzer'whatsits, if the Brit's are calling them Tanks, we'll call them that too, but with our spelling - Tanque! We arrive at what is probably the penultimate Tente military post; I could squeeze two more out, but one would be pretty weak!

Not really resembling anything in service, but quite a mean looker, with a nice long tank-hunting barrel, although the turret is a bit boxy. The tracks and hull might be a bit Sheridan? This was one of two tanks in the series, the other came with a tank transporter, while this was boxed separately, as #0750.

 

Alternate suggestions on the back of the instruction sheet include a very chunky APC of the tank-hulled 'Kangaroo' type, and a front-engined SPG, which is closer to the British Abbot, than the American M109, but with the gun set back too far, and too high, practically-speaking?

C is for Cañón Autopropulsado

The next piece of semi-fictional military hardware in what the Spanish know as the Scorpion line, but without cultural knowledge of the little icon, the rest of us just tend to call the Tente military 'stuff'! Based loosely on an M109 US Self-propelled gun.

 

Another two suggestions, one a rather chunky-monkey in the vague shape of a Russian/Soviet SU-something-or-other, and the other an asymmetric, side-mounted SPG, looking like a mean space-tank hunter!

It took about 20 shots to get one with as little reflection as on this shot, so once I've got the scanner plugged in again, I'll get all this stuff scanned, although there's plenty online for these models.

A is for Ambulancia de Campaña

Continuing to mosey through the Tente car-boot sale find of Peter's, and we're with the 'Field Ambulance', Ref. 0755. One thing I have noticed with all this sample, is the variation in shade of brick colours, but that's probably down to the same-shaped bricks being swapped between kits, but it does, still point to poor quality control, that different kits/batches would be different colours?

 

The vehicle is in the style of a Steyr-Daimler-Puch Pinzgauer, a light utility/GS vehicle with off-road capacity but no war-fighting or front-line role, and I don't know (and can't find) a similar Spanish make of vehicles, nor is Spain listed as Pinzgauer users, but all the vehicles in the set are pretty fictional really!

 

Rather like the 'war', or undeclared fight between VHS and BetaMax (where Beta' was netter, but VHS 'won'), Tente is the superior system, with more flexibility in construction, brought about by the fact you can either hug the studs (like Kiddycraft's pirate, Lego), or lock on to the central holes in each stud.

 

Another couple of alternate builds on the back of the instructions, each model seems to get two suggestions, with two-step build photo's you have to work through. I seem to recall, at one point, Lego used to put similar illustrations on the outside of the box?

L is for Lanzamisiles

To be specific, the Tente military set - 0753 Camion Lanzamisiles, and I know, I try not to do army/death stuff in December, but the queue says otherwise, this year! And this is exactly the sort of stuff you might have found under the Christmas tree in the late 70's, or 80's, especially if old Aunt Maud didn't understand about the vagaries of Lego-compatibility!

 

When we fire brightly decorated missiles at each other! Such marking goes back to the German V-Programme (Vegeltung - retaliation, retribution, revenge, or reprisal - like Trump, the philosophy that it's always someone's else's fault, if it's not going the way it was supposed to, when you started it!), and painting the test rockets in such a fashion, was to be able to tell (from the video [film] footage) how they performed, where or why they spun, and/or exactly where or how they failed first. Target drones are similarly decorated for visibility.

 

Lanzamisiles is simply 'Launcher of Missiles', or missile-launcher, and the toy, once completed, does not fire the missile which is locked to the launch-bar with a row of the more-complicated-than-Kiddycraft studs! I think the truck may be a loose Pegaso 3000 series?

 

When these came out, Lego were still producing pretty box-like, civilian vehicles with few specialist or 'cool' parts, and even when the space sets first came out, we only got a few new parts, dishes and hand-tools mostly. Indeed, when the ariels were added to the Lego space sets, they were far simpler and more toy-like than the one Tente had been using for some time.

 

Spain remains non-nuclear, so this would have been a tactical, battlefield artillery missile, to deliver a high-explosive, heavy-punch, with - hopefully - more accuracy, or devastation than fire-and-forget artillery rounds or heavy mortars!

 

Some ideas for alternate models which could be made from the contents of the box, the whole point of construction sets for kids, something lost on the Kidults, who can spend $1000 on a Millennium Falcon, which takes ten days to build and never gets touched again, except in house moves, or when the partner attacks it with a broom-handle upon exiting the relationship!

 

"I took the sofa apart, but never found the second air-tank in the smugglers' alcove, it's just not the same now!"

M is for More Lead!

Twice in two days! Just a box-ticker, I found these shots of one of the Panits Lazlo sets from Hungary, which I think we looked at, not that long ago, so just to add them to the archive as it were, here they are!

 

As last time, they are a mix of factory painted piracies of Airfix and Esci sculpts, probably from home-cast rubber-moulds, and presented in a small carded blister, I think the text on the card-front literally translates as 'metal figures carton', so a kind of pocket-money kiosk cheapie, like the Polish plastics we've also seen here.

P is for Panits Laszlo, or is it Laszlo Panits?

There are four things I can say about these, and with little else to say, I might as well get stuck in without a long opener!

 

The first thing is that I could have sworn we had these on the Blog about 15-years ago, but I'm damned if I can find them now, they are not in the Tag List, yet the above image was taken before I ever had a Blog, and had gone to the dongles as 'done', so they must have been posted somewhere, maybe they were on my long-defunct Imageshack account, which I had for about 18-months, about 16-years ago! In which case they may have been posted to a long-gone HäT Forum article or something?
 

I think the upper ones are copies of Preiser, the lower set a mix of Esci-Ertl and Airfix sculpts.

 

The second thing is that I genuinely don't know if the firm/shop/chap is called Panits Laszlo, or Laszlo Panits? In trying to research the company (Google has got shit in the last ten years), I discovered quite a few of both, but without the comma we'd use in English - Hugh Walter or Walter, Hugh - it's imposible to work out which is commonly the surname or the forename, how they are typically presented, or if, indeed, in Hungarian, there's no difference, but the fact that there are quite a few, suggests it's the equivalent of a John Smith, or Andy Brown.

 

And neither point is meant to upset any Hungarians reading, I'd love input from them, to explain the points? But it's Panits Laszlo on the back of the card, so that's what we are going with.

The third point is the obvious stuff, they are factory-painted, HO/OO sized (1:76th scale), whitemetal piracies of Airfix, mostly RAF Personnel, or Esci NATO Ground Crew, here, I suspect, painted up as Warsaw Pact Hungarians, with the other sets painted-up as WWII USAAF-USAF, and with at least one figure taken from Airfix's set of that American title.

 

Set contents also vary from card to card, so you could - presumably - choose a card that would most closely allow you to set up your diorama, with whichever kit you were making? And I think the message stamped on the front just says "Model Figure Card" (blister/pack).

 

And I've forgotten what the fourth point was going to be, but it's worth mentioning that Panits Laszlo were probably responsible for the other Esci copies seen here in the past - which I also can't find, Doh!!

 

So, we'll have it 'again'? Also copies of Esci, also factory painted whitemetal, not seen on these cards, and here not divisible by six, there may be some damaged ones in the bag taking the sample to 24? But they otherwise seem to be the same idea/concept as the air force figures above?

And that's it, that's them, box ticked, I don't know a lot, I suspect it/he (Panits Laszlo) was also a model shop in Budapest, and if anyone can add anything, their input will be welcome.

J is for John Piper

A strange one this, for a short while in the late 1970's and early 1980's, this firm - John Piper - seemed to flourish, with smart, well illustrated adverts across the modelling press, railway, naval and military, I don't know if the aircraft modellers were similarly enticed?

Yet, the paucity of stuff they seem to have actually left behind, the lack of familiarity people have with their products compared with, say, Scale Link or [Françoise] Verlinden, suggests they didn't actually ship much product for the cost of all that glossy advertising?

And one has to assume there was a major investment by someone, a backer or the eponymous Mr. Piper himself? The trouble is, even the model railroad hobby, much bigger than vintage toy soldier collecting, can only support so many small, 'garage' businesses, with those that start to struggle in the regular downturns, selling to one of the slightly bigger concerns, so that they might ride-it-out with an increased inventory, while the small guy escapes, hopefully with a small profit, or breaking-even, or at least still with his shirt?

Courtesy of Jon Attwood

(I love the Lettraset font!)

I may have a few of the figures in the unsorted/unknown section of the whitemetal tub in storage, but don't recognise any of the above, off-hand, while I lusted after the AFV's, as they would have gone with the Roco and Roscopf stuff, Dad's instructors had given me in Neuhausen! The 'Grey Goose' apparently turns-up occasionally, usually for a lot of money! The choices of odd scales can't have helped with the military sales?

 

I have a feeling John Piper over-extended with the launch and marketing, found the markets weren't that big and folded with the sort of debts that require the assets being weighed-in for scrap? Does anybody have any solid info' on what happened to them, or their tools, how much business they did, or what their history was? Is there anything in G2 or On Parade in the back-catalogue of Military Modelling? For now at least, box ticked.

T is for Two - Euro-Armour

To go with their largish '54mm' Airfix resembling 54mm combat infantry, technically US troops, but aimed at a NATO , or Bundeswher recogniseing fan-base, Jean Hoefler produced a Leopard Tank, and to utilise the chassis tool, a nice conversion to this beast . . .

. . . the Flugabwehrkanonenpanzer Gepard (Cheetah), an all-weather-capable day-and-night, self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) currently doing sterling-service in Ukraine, bringing down Russian tactical missiles and their 'indestructible' hypersonic bollocks, as well as drones, large and small!

Seen-elsewhere shot, you can see it goes well with pretty-much any large-scale toy soldiers you throw at it with Crescent, Cherilea and a couple of Reisler, used here as scale/size compatibility guides.

 

While this is - I'm pretty sure - a Bonux premium from France, next-door, but it's unmarked, the ex-Manurba-Tallon stuff they carried is marked with the soap-powder's name, but it seems the more unique items weren't. Fictional but fun!

T is for Two - Current Rack Toys

Another quickie, one of the things I like about RTM is that I clear 20/30-odd folders from the ever-growing pile in Picasa and this one's one of them! I think these have both come from Peter Evans, although I seem to have two examples of the boat one, so probably found one myself, it seems the same stores which carry the Red Deer rack-toys, often also carry the BJ Toys stuff as well, and we have one here in Fleet, but it doesn't always have the same stock as whichever store Peter finds his in.

We've been looking at these, both vehicles and figures in various packaging (Poundland, 99p Stores, Funrise &etc) pretty-much since the blog started, and always 'current', so this is just another iteration of product bought-in from multiple sources and packaged by a middle-man shipper, printed-up/configured for each contract/order - the VAB-type is new I think, and quite useful?

This is the one I have two of; better on the figures, not so hot on the accessories, but under the naff paint is something which could be painted-up better, and would/could serve a purpose in someone's wargaming army, I'm sure!

Close-up of the figures, better quality versions of the common 'new sculpts' (first seen from Ja-Ru or Ackerman in the 1990's?) and old Matchbox US Infantry sculpts, that's it, and thanks as always to Peter for spotting and sending the stuff to the Blog.

J is for Jean Höfler . . . Hoefler . . . Hhffluur . . . Hhoouffluer . . . Just 'Jean', J is for Jean!

Me being 'racist' again? It's humour isn't it, especially if you've watched Steve Martin's 'The Man With Two Brains' but being reminded of TJF (the man with half a brain), did you see how he followed my rocket launcher posts with a troop carrier? That crazy guy, he just loves sitting in my shadow, plotting my downfall! Seriously though, he actually had several vehicles and could have done a half-decent post, but then he doesn't do 'plastic smalls' he was just advertising his feebleBay sales, 'cos he's a dealer not a collector!

So I'll start with the troop carrier too! But compare it ('J' above) with the Noreda one ('N' above) from France. Some sources think Noreda copied Jean, but I think they just share the 'dime-store' styling, and a coincidental rendering in soft polyethylene plastic. Although both have polystyrene wheels in a more rigid polymer, and altogether have all the tropes of Airfix 'readymade' Attack Force vehicles.

Another reason for believing in parallel evolution, rather than influence either way is because - frankly - (ehh? Franks . . . oh, nevermind!) the French models (flash excepted; look at the driver's window!) are undeniably better made; if anyone 'copied' - it was the German firm!

Early Jean's have white wheels for some reason, but a lot of the cheapies did back then, and were decorated with 'Allied' stars, these being the same cheap, self-adhesive, paper ones you can still get from stationers, applied in a slap-dash fashion with no attempt to level them!

A standard cab-unit has the slots, brackets, holes and hooks for all the other variations/loads to be attached, and one large sample I acquired had most of them fitted with the missile-retaining T-bar, even if it was fouling the other attachments?

There is a canvas-tilted 'GS/Cargo' variant, but it has a strange hinge which leaves the tilt upside-down on the ground but still attached to the truck! While a carded set on eBay right now (download the image before it disappears!) has the cab-unit and chassis only, possibly as a tower for the long-barreled gun (see below), the other half of the barrel has slipped under the truck.

Fully traversing and elevating; the twin AA-gun was a real leftover of the earlier dime-store types, where pretty-much every set had one; Lone Star, Pyro/Kleeware, Beeju, Tudor Rose et al!

From little guns to big guns, again harking back, this time to the heavy siege and 'battlefield tactical' weapons of the 'world wars', and providing a nice basis for a war gaming conversion to rail-gun - old school; not realistic!

I think it's always meant to have the plug-in extension, giving it a 155/175mm look, but I've now found two without, which are still usable as 203/240mm howitzers, so a pair of both sit side-by-side in the tub.

The towing-bogie is the same as the guns, but the trailer=body is different, both seen recently here, but better angles on them I think, and the plug-in 'bolts' are obvious, and as I said last time; I'm not sure the 'plane was actually issued in this configuration, but the mechanism is the same . . . the aircraft probably came with a coloured launcher as a novelty?

The launcher being hard polystyrene, it's probably an earlier stand-alone novelty toy . . . there's no evidence of other loads for the trailer so the one was designed to take the other and with the plane it makes a great drone-launcher!

Space Tanks! Seen here years ago, and I think I have Bill (or Paul?) at Moonbase to thank for the trackless ones? They weren't sold trackless of course, and while I've tried fitting the turreted one with old truck wheels to make a wheeled APC, the length of the axles between the hubs is greater, so they just float about!

Noreda used a similar system on their bulldozer (upper shot; probably taken from the/a civilian range), without a middle wheel-set and with narrower, finer moulded tracks, another pointer to the originality of Noreda over Jean. Both went with polyethylene for the tracks, which makes them bow-out unrealistically, in a way stretched-rubber wouldn't have.

While the lower shot compares the Jean GS truck with a contemporary Manurba wagon (sold as Tallon in the UK), the Manurba is a reasonable approximation of a Magirus-Deutz 'Jupiter' truck (with a bit of US 'Duce-and-a-half' DNA), rather than the purely fictional Hoefler effort (with vague Mercedes L-series/911 lines?). It's because we saw the Manurba stuff here, years ago, that I thought I'd also covered the Jean!

Tractor! Artillery tractor!! Jean stole a few from their civilian range as well as Noreda, with the same simple expedient of running them in 'army' khaki polymer! Here the farm tractor gets to pull other loads, a civi' one is seen at the back; bottom left.

The civilian fuel-tanker also gets a military call-up.

Below that are two armoured cars, one recognisable as the WWII vintage M8 M20 (Greyhound in British service), the other a more generic thing with features of early cold-war stuff from France, Austria, Switzerland or Germany.

This pair is the exception that proves the rule; in having soft polyethylene wheels to the hard polystyrene of the other vehicles. Also I haven't seen them with white wheels in either plastic, so they may have been later additions to the line?

 

Both are now known to be Injectaplastic, not Jean, hence them feeling less comfortable here!

Typical packaging (as per the link above, but from the collection), the three blisters are large enough for anything except the articulated tanker-truck, which may have come on its own card, in a larger set, or as a counter-display/stock-box purchase? Or even cab and trailer separated in two of the blisters and a second vehicle as the third item?

Mine has a rocket-carrier, tracked APC and gun-truck. You can see a cement-mixer version of the 'standard' lorry in the photo-artwork, whether they also did a khaki version I don't know,  nor have I seen military iterations of the road-roller, front-loader or dumper-truck, but they may be out there; there is - apparently - an army-green dustbin lorry/refuse truck . . . not!

Look at the wheels man! Really; a crazy guy!