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!"

T is for Tente's Tactical Toy Troops

We looked at one of these many years ago, at which point I thought it was the only one, a bit of a casual thought, an accessory for the vehicle kits, but, it turns out, that like the spacemen, there were two generations, and with three poses in each generation, more to know, and more to collect!

Older at the top, newer at the bottom - I think?

From the left - Officer/Driver? - Vehicle Commander - Trooper.

 

Officer/Drivers.

 

From behind.

 

Not least of which (things to know/collect), is that there are two colours, and while I still only have the one pose in the sand yellow we looked at back in 2011, I seem to now have all six in this khaki-drab. I don't know what plastic they use, but I'll Tag them ABS and Propylene, as it's that type of hard-wearing polymer?

 

The newer (as I believe it to be) Tente figures, have better detailing, are slightly smaller, and have wider crotch-areas, so I guess are less likely to break at the point of articulation. In both cases, though, there are no moving arms, as we saw with the astronauts. Thanks go to Peter Evans for finding these at a car-boot sale.

B is for Blockmen (or Cubix as some are calling them!)

Just when I thought I’d got all the Daleks I could on the Toy Soldier page, I found another one! I’ll put it over there so you’ll have to go and have a gander separately.It all came about because I found a free offer of an Amy Pond figure.


They were being given away free in the paper the other day, and I thought they were Lego, but it turned out that they were actually Character Options, who already have various licenses for Dr Who stuff.

In fact the papers have been having a bit of a gift-war in the last few weeks, with Lego, these and other toys on offer most days! I was pleased to see they were putting proper feet on them…typical that they were in fact somebody else’s figures then, as the history of Lego figures has always been “Where our rivals lead, we will follow”!


Predating (the UK Toy Industry Award winning) Lego Space (1978) by some years was Tente Space from Spain, which was advertised on TV when I was still quite young, and I can remember it coming to Fleet Toys and Mum not letting us have it, because she’d heard on Woman’s Hour or You & Yours than it wasn’t compatible with ‘another leading brand’!

Early figures had non-moving arms (top left), while later figures (top right) were not only better articulated, but also had connection points (female connection on the back-pack, male on the ‘butt-tocks-sirrr!’), both versions of the figures had male-connectors on their feet. The soldiers that ran alongside them had no connectors (bottom right).

The back-pack usually had a 'Space' logo; to start this was a metallic blue, then a plain blue, before being reduced for the second design and finally dropped (bottom left).

The original Lego Space (top center) and other figures including the Nestlé ‘Nesquick’ Bunny, one of the first uses of Lego ‘minifig’s’ as an advertising premium by another company, some enemy of Spiderman with a shaped helmet and a Gamorrean Guard with an all-over body-shaper.

The two Martians make use of the design tested on/coming from the skeletons and – then – new Stap battle-droids from the Star Wars franchise. While finally the Pirates are by COBI, with the beard which clips on to a hole on the face of the ‘Captain’, mirroring - in construction - the figures produced by Res Plastics and others for Kinder in Italy in the mid-1970’s.

Once Lego had got the ‘collectable’ idea, and realised the implications of Adult Lego fans, they got well into the production ‘sets’. The first were the sprung-loaded Basketball players, and now a set of 12 new and ‘unique’ (nothing unique about something produced in its millions – if not tens of millions!) figures appear next to a million tills every 6-months or so.

The South-sea islanders from the ‘Pirates’ range, these have been added to over the years with Newspaper-freebies and the new collectable figure sets, and are among my favorites from Lego. Actually from ‘Enchanted Island’, they seem clearly related to ‘Achu’ from the Adventures range!

Lego were sliding into oblivion about 15 years ago, and it was touch-and-go whether the newly purchased (at the time) Star Wars franchise would save them, but it did!Here are 3 types of Stap battle-droid, the Dri-Decker droids and some Gungans!

Main picture shows the vinyl Snow-monster from Megabloks, which led-off the Lego 'Artic Explorers' by several years! The Lego version stands behind.

To the left are two more Megabloks, with more realistic feet, swiveling arms in all plains and better heads (two of which are to the right). Like Lego they started with a simple ‘smiler’, and added individual features latter, as all these makes are really following Playmobil/Little People, it’s all a bit achademic!

Bottom left, and the level of ‘realism’ is getting silly, with a chunk of hideousness from Megabloks from the Medieval/Ork? Range, this range also beat Lego to a Viking Longship, and having seen the price of the follow-up from Lego, I don’t know how they get away with it, or why some of these other brands aren’t more popular?!

Bottom right shows the tool-set that came with a Megablok's Spaceman.