T is for Thunderbirds Are Gone!

In fact they went just over a year after they started, I'm referring to Thunderbirds Are Go, a magazine which became, quite quickly, a subscription 'partwork', but which failed at the first hurdle - lasting a year!

Blogged by Moonbase at the time, so I held-off on my own purchases, but I'd got in at the start and predicted in a comment over there that it would peter-out after a while, with lower-value gifts and/or Thunderbirds-stickered (or printed) generic novelties, which is pretty much what happened, with a secret-code message booklet, Parker's 'cockney phrase book' "Shall I do the Berkeley, Mairy Pop'uns?!" or a tuppence-worth of vac-form mask, of the Hood's face!

 

But the early issues ran through the vessels in a '1:no constant scale' size model, I think there was a larger T4, but I missed it, and it'll turn-up loose at some point, if there was, I'm absolutely sure about that!

 

Probably the nicest was the T5, Space Station for onanists, which came as a kit of pre-coloured parts with a small sticker-sheet and therefore had a lot of inbuilt value-for-money, easy to build, it would be useful for all that micro-space wargaming some indulge in? "That's not a moon, it's a pocket-money trap!"

The flying Stalwart! Based on the TV reboot, the vehicles aren't quite as bad as the execrable movie, but nevertheless, they ain't the originals either, so not sad to see them die, a story which was told at the time over on Down The Tubes;

 

https://downthetubes.net/dc-thomson-cancels-thunderbirds-are-go-magazine/
 

What I managed by way of a collection, the T1 and T3 are relatively unchanged so why fuck-about with T2, which was everybody's favourite? Except for the big girl's blouses, who liked FAB1! I don't know if there was a FAB1 in the . . . 14 (?) issues!

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 -

Welp, it seems to be Rack Toy Month already! But I've the Sandown sequence to finish first, just a few composition figures I picked up as samples or to compare with those in my existing collection.

 

Three - in khaki - marked NB for Nazaire Beeusaert, the Belgian composition maker and a fourth - sailor - who may be from the same maker, but is unmarked and a little smaller, so he may be another Belgian maker, they had several manufacturers who shared a certain style?

A Zang to check against the existing sample behind, and in front two which I was told were TAG, and may have shown here as TAG? Except I don't think they are, any more, TAG's seem to be larger, better detailed models, so these two are probably one of the other early British composition makers?

An unknown prisoner (who probably doesn't go with the Mountie, but 'goes' with him quite well here!), with his hands tied behind his back (possibly Italian?), and, errr, a Mountie! The Mountie is Durolin, from Germany, and I'd happily accept any help with ID on the seated Westerner?

He's quite rough and looks cheap, his paint a water-soluble thing, which has soaked and spread into it's not very dense composition, which almost has the feel of old egg-boxes, but isn't papier-mâché as far as I can tell?

 

And a few close-ups of the RCMP figure and his base mark, in the best traditions of learning something new every day, or whenever you can (life-long learning!), I was today-years-old when I learnt that in French they are the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada or G.R.C., which may be the 'R' on the left side of the saddle-cloth, with MP on the other side for Mounted Police, but a quick google-search only confused, with various saddle-cloth marks including a badge, but MP on both sides seeming commonest?