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 Britains - Seen Elsewhere, Eye Candy and Odds & Sods

Although, some of this might hurt your eyes, but even the mighty falter and in the end, everything dies.

 

Toward the end, Britains tried to get away from 'war' war, and the whole WWII, 'Boys Own', ♪♪♫Two World Wars and . . . ♪♫, "I mentioned it once . . but I think I got away with it / You started it!" type toy theme which had served British kid's so well since 1945, by adopting first this generic UN theme, then some of the silliness below! Standard farm version of the Short Wheelbase (SWB) Land Rover, given a United Nations makeover. Here missing its 'hard-top'.

 

Using the late version US Infantry (solid sculpts, no moving, plug-in arms), accompanying UN troops (Task Force Action Figures) were provided, along with several other paint schemes as 'enemy' or just other units, only available for a couple of years in the mid-1990's, they should be rare, but many retailers were left with unsold stock, and a few years ago most dealers had mint sets on their tables!

Arctic warriors?!

 

Sold with a desert version of the Land Rover as 'Desert Storm'!

 

75p was still a fair-bit of money for a kid in 1996, and that's for one figure!

 

 The final indignity - Task Force Special Units

 

I showed a few of the other-coloured ones on the Airfix Blog;

http://airfixfigs.blogspot.com/2020/02/1983-cold-warmodern-sas-special-air.html

with more shots on the Modern British Infantry post. 

 

Slightly safer ground with these, the two standard packagings for the earlier WWII-themed support weapons 'Combat Weapons', here the British Mortar (also given to the Germans) and the US Recoilless Rifle (also given to the Japanese!). There was a longer card, which was the display one, designed to sit across the top of the counter-top box, and sold last, after the box was empty.

 

 

There was an attempt to relaunch the range in the mid-2000's by First Gear, who had bought the intellectual property rights and a few of the moulds (most are with DSG in Argentina), and a couple of 'realistic' paint issues were forthcoming, I think these are the second tranche, the first having matt-green bases and better paint?

K is for Khaki Kattle-truck!

There is a tendency, particularly among cheaper toy makers, for military versions of civilian vehicles to be produced, by the simple expedient of manufacturing the civilian toy in military-coloured plastic, this third Jimson post covers one of those! And I should point out, yesterday's Land Rover was based on the Daktari one, not a clown/circus one!

 

These came with the Land Rover and futuristic Transporter/Tank combo', and while I don't think the figures have anything to do with the vehicles, I shot them with this one, just in case! They are high-grade piracies of the Matchbox American Infantry from 1974/75'ish.

 

Compared with the transporter's tractor-unit, the body is longer, and the stake-sided superstructure is held in place with the same clip used on the transporters. It would seem these late-cab toys are harder to find, so must have been made right at the end of Jimson's reign?

 

The mounting hole equates to the other position on the tractor-cab, which is the further-back one, not found on the first version, so clearly there was an attempt to mount some other bodies on the tractor, before the newer stretched-chassis was designed, as seen on the cattle-truck? The newer chassis, like the transporter cab-units, has no mark/number.

 

Badly damaged, but I was buying the lot for the Tank Transporter and Land Rover really, and, as I say, I don't think the figures belong with the set, but they might?!

J is for Jimson - 116 & 127 Tank Transporter and 128 'Bulldog' Tank

Except the numbering is not that clear! This is one of those posts, that's been in the queue for ages, but I couldn't decide what to do with all the images, or remember what I'd wanted to say about them, so I just lost interest after the first collage was done, about four years ago!

But I looked them up the other day looking for something else (which turned out to Hover-Hoover!), and I got minded to polish it off, and get it out of Picasa! And in fact it's a tale of two transporters and two tanks!

Jimson 127 Tank Transporter with Action Bulldog Tank. "Fully Metallised" refers only to the wheel-hubs with this toy, but other toys had more chrome-effect detailing, and presumably the message was just put on all boxes! I think this is the same box-art as you get with the Fairylite issues, where Fairylite is just over-printed, but I suspect the Jimson box was different for the second version, but I don't have an example?

 

As they left the box, you will recognise the tank from a previous post on it and it's similarity to the Airfix '1st version' Patton Tank, now believed to be originally a T. Cohn design, the older one is above, and a reasonable rendition of a post-war US 'big rig' truck, the later version is very 'spacey', but uses an almost identical tank.

We'll return to the tanks in a minute, but here they are stripped down, and both have an unexplained, and unexplainable hole in the main bed/plane of the trailer, if I had to guess, I'd say the hole might be to stop warping, as the hot moulding is released from the tool?

The newer version (the trailers carry the 116 and 127 numbering, the cabs are both unnumbered) has two holes for the locating pin and clip of the trailers, and I'm guessing this will be due to a slightly different stud on one of the civilian trailers, I think there were fuel-tanker, and car-transporter bodies available, and maybe a plain flatbed for loads?

How the clip locks the pin/stud into place - older version.

As well as a whacky tractor-unit, the 127 version has whacky wheels, still 'metallised', but far less realistic than those on the earlier version, in this they were mirroring moves in the die-cast market, where realism gave way to silliness, in a need to keep kids interested, or entertained!

Piggy-back! The whole-width ramp of the later model, was separate ramps on the earlier, which loosely sat in channels, using words like 'clipped' or 'locked' wouldn't do justice to the lightly sitting-there, they were actually managing! I think they are meant to be wedged under the two suds behind the cab, but are already quite a loose fit, and with nowhere safe to store them, if you can't find a boxed one, you might not get ramps!

But, while they both carry the 128 code, the tanks are very different, while looking almost the same! The mudguards have been extended on 'II', the cupola MG lost, the main-gun shortened and the flash-eliminator fattened, while the turret itself is set back a bit, and, on my example . . .

. . . there's no push and go motor on 'I', it has the mounting-holes for one, so again, guesstimation suggests the motor was fitted to single-boxed tanks, but not to the transporter ones, because the tractor-cab has its own? But in the end it was easier to have one assembly-line, so the later tanks all have a motor?

The track-guards, extended on II, still short on I, which is how we find them as Airfix, Brumberger and/or T. Cohn, in the smaller scale, in which guise we looked at this last;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/p-is-for-patton-pershing-by-airfix-and.html

 

II (left) v. I (right)

 

Image dump;

Type I at a slightly different angle!

 

Even the same-numbered baseplates are not exactly the same.

 

Recent eBay sale, which is a II with motor, it was sold with the 'space-truck' transporter. As per previous viewings, the turrets are soft polyethylene, colour-matched to the hard polystyrene bodies and baseplates, and scale is around 1:48th.

A couple of scans I took at a later date, I think the tank is the key to the odd numbering of these sets, originally awarded 128 as a stand-alone, boxed, and probably motorised version (1960's), when the tractor-unit (unnumbered, and possibly already in use with other-number carrying tanker or car trailers) was married to the flat-deck trailer and tank, the box got the 127 number, because it was spare, and/or closer to the tank's 128, than the trailer's 116?

Then, when the combination was redesigned (1970's), the new trailer was numbered to match the earlier box, because . . . well, it's only conjecture, but the truth won't be too different? Although, as the whole thing would have required new box-art, it could have all been given a new number?

116 - 1st version trailer

127 - 2nd version trailer

127 - 1st version box

128 - Bulldog Tanks, both versions

Both tractors unnumbered

FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?