About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label Universal Powermaster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Universal Powermaster. Show all posts

Sunday, May 30, 2010

U is for Universal Powermaster Corporation (UPC)

Strangely absent from recent printed works on the subject, these are not too rare, you just need to get to the shows and ferret about a bit!

The important one - from a Toy Soldier collectors point of view - is set 3022-29; 'Combat Group Soldiers', it is - like the rest of the range - a straight copy of the Roco Minitanks set 'U.S. Soldiers Combat Group'. The 29 being the US price in cents, a suffix shared by the whole range.

The box states "Litho in the U.S.A.", I suspect however that the contents came from Japan, where a dozen or so companies were producing this 1:87/1:100 stuff, most of it copied either from Roco or Roskopf.

Shots of the figures, with comparison close-ups of the Roco originals. Pantographing has reduced them from the already quite small Roco's to even smaller, however they still look OK and painted-up the size differential would be even less noticeable.

Study of the Roco sWS (schwerer Wehrmachtsschlepper), in front of the UPC copy, the copy is quite good size-wise having lost less than a millimeter, however it looses heavily on the detail, note the 'washed' effect on the bonnet (hood) side plate. Piracy extends to the small hole-filler used by Roco for the GS/Cargo variant, where it fills the mounting hole used to locate the hardware of the other versions, UPC copied them also!!

One fundamental fault I forgot to mention, they have managed to get the mounting slots on the running gear reversed from the Roco original, so the drive wheels are at the wrong end!