S is for Siblings - Take 2

Way back at the start of the Blog, I posted the little 'bubble-car' saloon of the 1950's type VW Beetle/Morris Minor shape here;

S is for Siblings

I then returned to them again here;

M is for Mysteries (which included a look at the probably Tudor*Rose version with thermo-printed star)

And recent purchases have caused me to return to them with a little more info and another variant...

Firstly a bog-standard set of three Kleeware versions from the Service Station play-set, the nice thing about them is that they are all in a 'pearlescent' plastic, giving a metallic effect. Also, I noticed that all three were slightly different mouldings, most noticeable on the grill, where the vertical strengthener varies from partially to fully down the whole grill (yellow one) and the horizontal vents are different, but also windows vary and one of the tow-hooks is more pointed (yellow again).

Then this turned-up - An Ideal version, same size as the Pyro/Kleeware/Tudor*Rose and Lido ones and having similarities with both the other Pyro/Kleeware moulding (licence plate DP 7189) and the unknown (larger sized) one from the first post above with its more boat-tailed shape, but without the separate rear wheel-arch feature of those two, having instead a continuous body moulding line running the full length of the vehicle in a more rakish and 'futuristic' manner.

This one - like the Lido one, the Empire copy and the smaller, angular Mohawk effort - has no licence plate. It came as a load on the inset transporter, but didn't fit well, being a bit small, a different red and a better finish, so I suspect they don't actually go together, but if anyone knows the lorry's make I'd be grateful for an ID. It's poor finish leads one to suspect Hong Kong, but it's unmarked, which is unusual for a HK toy of this type, so it may be an American or European rack-toy/dime store thing?

H is for a Hover of Hong Kong Helicopters

I'm rather pleased with these pictures, nothing special, just a nice juxtaposition of 'cheepie' helicopters covering 60-odd years of both toy production and helicopter usage in combat.

On the left is a modern/current production pound-shop toy from the nineteen-nineties through to the noughties [awful bloody word], and showing in the inimitable style of Hong Kong/Chinese toy producers, the sort of command/control/utility helicopter flitting around in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The middle machine (with a bit of a mend on the rotor!) is the classic HK take on the UH1B 'Huey' or 'Slick' of Vietnam and the drug wars of the 1960's, 70's and 80's and was a typical rack-toy inclusion in carded sets of the late 1970's/80's. I have a couple of complete ones but they both have red plastic rotors and look a bit silly - even by HK standards!

While on the right in each picture is an early HK toy dating from the late 1950's to the early 70's and while also trying to depict a UH1, seems to carry some of the earlier 'chopper' styling of the Korean conflict or a dozen brush-fire/colonial-exit conflicts about it.

Each given a vaguely corresponding figure from Airfix as a scale reference.

T is for Terracotta

I saw these on Mercator Trading's stall at Sandown Park the other month and just fell for them instantly, a bit outside my purchasing power but Adrian let me photograph them for the blog. I just love the more esoteric toy or model soldiers, and these are pretty off the wall or 'out there' compared to the usual plastics or lead figures.

A nice group of plaster, or soft white terracotta French Marines or a Naval landing/boarding party with wire rifle barrels, no idea as to the make, or how many poses there were originally? Made in an open-bottomed mould like slip-wear, it was a miracle they got out of the factory in one piece, let alone survived half a century or more of transport, storage and play.

In the same batch he had these other odds-and-sods, also French, but of more durable fired terracotta or clay. The inset top left has an undecipherable (by me!) makers mark which someone may be able to make more sense of, it might be better the other way up (but that didn't help me!).

To the right is what appears to be the number 74, probably a workers mark for QA purposes? Likewise the two red dots on the lower-left shot. Note also how the base material varies from a true terracotta pink through a clay-beige to an almost blue-grey colour

R is for Reichssportfeldstraße...

...where some very smart houses used to sit in greenified splendor. A strange juxtaposition being Eva Braun's house sitting next to the Brigade Padre's! Indeed a quirk not lost on the Padre who pointed it out to me.

Still, in 1936 I'm sure the wide boulevard street that runs from the Heer Straße  (the western end of the main arterial route through Berlin that becomes Unter den Linden and eventually runs under the Brandenburg Gate) up to the Olympic Stadium, with its broad pavements (side-walks) and expansive central median (now used for the typically 'Berlin' herring-bone parking) would have been lined with little kiosks selling tourist trinkets and memorabilia of the 1936 Olympic Games.

Others stands would have been selling 'Bratties mitt pommes-frits und mayo'...but that's another story!

Straight from the workshops of Bavaria or the Black Forest or anywhere else that had a tradition of wooden toy/plaything production now usually erroneously titled 'Erzgebirge' came this little charmer. An SA Oompa Band in full cry, approximately 25mm, with only the boots painted or stained black.

This was just the sort of little inexpensive item you could carry away on the day, send back to relatives elsewhere or abroad and which with the odd glueing over the years and the acquisition of a fine layer of nicotine has lasted to this day.

S is for Spring!

Well, although it's getting colder by the minute this afternoon, and we've had two-and-a-half days of intermittent rain mist and drizzle, we did, back on Monday/Tuesday have the most glorious days of warm sunshine, bringing the Mirabelle plum out in a thick shock of ivory-cream blossom and getting the blood stirring in the wildlife...

This young Blackbird came right up to me as I weeded the rockery, looking for little bugs and things to breakfast on, bold as brass!

There were several Brimstones flying around but they didn't land long enough to catch on film, but this Tortoiseshell, was sunning itself for quite a while on the lawn and I got some nice shots.

It's funny - I think the brimstone is probably my favourite butterfly, or equal with the orange-tip, while the Tortoiseshell is usually only photograph-able at the end of the year when his/her wings look like the one that got away from  Manfred von Richthofen's flying-circus, all shattered and bitty! So there is a symmetry in not getting a shot of my favourite but getting the best shot ever of one I usually don't shoot!

Finally a moth that had the appearance of being fashioned from bits of sun-bleached bracken...as it emerged from a clump of er...sun-bleached bracken; there is the cleverness of nature in all her wonder summed-up in a little thing less than an inch across!

 

 This little mouse looks a bit damp as I had to rescue him from the mouth of Frodo, who was having a wail of a time not killing him for sport! I then had to engage in a great deception with Frodo, helping look all round the wheelbarrow for the 'escaped' mouse, so that he didn't blame me for loosing it.

As I was doing so, I saw the mouse had not gone far before stopping to groom cat-slobber off it's whiskers, so I then had to distract Frodo further, in the hope he wouldn't spot it. In the end the mouse disappeared down the back of the privet hedge, Frodo got to kill my bootlace and everyone was happy!

C is for Colecion not Comet

In the past I've thought these were Comet-Authenticast but I've now got enough Comet originals to know that A) they are multi-colour painted, and B) have separate figure sculpts for the Russians and Germans. These plain-painted US G.I.'s would however - seem to be from the original moulds as the Comet-Authenticast US Infantry and one has to assume that Birmania got the moulds as so many South American countries have ended-up with American toy soldier and European food premium moulds.

There is another of these kicking about the Internet, which has I think also appeared in a book somewhere, it shows a pink card with a red/yellow/orange rainbow boarder, but the contents are the same, and as contents go, very realistic.

A unit in combat will mostly be on their bellies (or kneeling behind something) not wandering and standing about the place as most war-game and toy soldier companies would have you believe from the contents of their boxes or catalogues! This set has a third of their number advancing under covering fire from the other two thirds - proper!

A close-up of the set, waiting at San Carlos for a good drubbing! It is unfortunate that so many of the prone figures are the same pose, but they are soft white-metal and could easily be adjusted at foot/ankle or knee/thigh to give a better representation of a group of guys behind low-cover.

The little gun is a bit fictional, I think Comet-Authenticast/Holgar Eriksson were/was aiming at a representation of the 37mm AT gun.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that Industria Argentina (listed in several books as a separate make) is in fact just the Spanio-Portuguese/South American for 'Made In Argentina', and not an entity in its own right at all? Given I've had over 150 hits from Argentina in the last 24 hours, it's a pity no one has thought to add that fact in the comments section of one of the Argentine posts for the benefit of all collectors who follow the blog...hay-ho - some people don't want to share!

S is for Self-indulgence

 No toys here...move along...nothing Toy Soldier...keep walking...next stop some other blog...

Still here? Oh well then, I'll try and explain, but really you need to have 'been there' or have to be familiar with the back-story, and I have to be careful what I say, because - unlike some of the staff involved - I don't want to libel or slander anyone.

So, certain things happened, some more stuff happened, I was exonerated in an internal investigation, certain other stuff then happened which was outrageous, I held my ground (with the help of my Disability Advisor and the County Psychologist [try spelling that when you've got bits of brain missing]), leading to a Chief Executive's No. 2 making an assurance that doesn't seem to have been kept, which all came down to my kicking my heels in the studio today waiting for nothing much else to happen as our tutor kept wandering off to 'meetings' - a dangerous thing to do with no cover and a studio full of adult students with 'issues'!

As a result, and because I'd taken all my files off and cleared the PC's history, cookies and the rest of that tedious stuff (registry mend, disc-clean, defrag, etc...), I was mucking about with Google, looking-up Photoshop blogs and AutoCAD tutorials on Youtube, when I put the following in to the search bar....

....and got bollocks up as the first result! Try it, it works, with or without the apostrophe! Like I said, you really needed to be there, just take my word for it, it's funnier than it looks to you - casual viewer! And a half-dozen visitors (by request) will - I suspect - be tickled. I also suspect if you put 'Google' in any random sentence you stand a good chance of getting bollocks, but then everyone knows that!!

Elf

While I'm being self-indulgent, and for the invited viewers in particular, this was done by my mate Jimijames (who sent me the too-cool email the other week), he was also treated pretty poorly by the same institution and is now 'doing it for himself'! If any design company in the Southhampton/Eastleigh area likes the look of this and has an opening for a trainee illustrator I can put you in touch. I think it's very good and given he was 2D Autodesking a few weeks ago, bloody good, but then you should see his free-hand black&white work, sublime.

EVB is for Beeju

For some time I mistook the EVB logo for the ELM logo of the Marx Hong Kong factory, an easy mistake if you're A) Aspergic and B) not viewing them together at the same time as they are very similar. Indeed somewhere Paul Morehead has an article of mine following up the original Marx/Blue Box article in One Inch Warrior in which I make something of the 'link'...fortunately he's never run it (probably spotted the error!), and if I weren't admitting the mistake, I might have got away with it, yet errors are an important part of research, but only if they are admitted too!

Double-decker trolley-bus, possibly missing a wire power-pickup or two (cantenery)

The first vehicles advertised by Beeju were in the late 1940's, and there are two distinct periods, the - now warped - cellulose acetate phase and the latter polystyrene range which doesn't suffer from warping. The range included larger vehicles for the American market, ships and boats, novelties like clockwork chicks and TV licenced stuff from Muffin the Mule, but by far the largest part of their oeuvre was the approximately 1:76th scale vehicles, which often have little figures attached.

This particular Trolley-bus has the most people I've ever seen in one of these and is an early, warped version. The model seems to have been dropped from the range before the transition to styrene, however another maker, possibly Portuguese did make stable copies, in brighter colours, without figures, in a styrene plastic.

Here we see a picture previously on my Imageshack account and also shown here before (top right) of the later styrene range mostly in military green, but with a few silver versions, along with several of the earlier vehicles which are all stating to distort. My fire-engine is a bit rough and lacks two firemen and the head of the third!

A lovely metallic-green bus which goes quite well with the military range as a troop-transport. I've seen gold ones, and there are others on the Internet, but this is the only green one I've come across, it's missing it's transfers, which tend to wear-off.

This model was carried over to the stable-material period, where - like the late version lorries - it got a clip-together makeover with locating tabs, instead of the glued components of these earlier types.

S is for Achtung! Achtung! Englander Spitfuren!!

And so to Sandown this weekend for the first show of 2013, and thence to what is becoming a bit of a (non) perennial on this blog...the Palitoy aeroplane range, previously covered in these posts;

Palitoy Search Result
 [if you click on this now and read-up the page from the third post down (to this post) it might all make a little more sense if you are unfamiliar with these 'planes]

Wandering back to the table from visiting my mate John's stall, or breakfast (or a fag-break!) I spotted what was obviously one of the two or three I don't have (the others being either version of the Sunderland flying-boat and the orange flying wing/experimental Northrop in the above link, and - maybe - a Hurricane?...read on!), at first glance I actually thought it was another Bolton-Paul, but I quickly realised it had no shake-the-wings-off turret!

Turned it over...'SPITFIRE', definitely one on the wants list, so I parted with a bit of hard-earned and wandered back to show off my trophy to Adrian and Gareth! Being one of the less-deformed silver ones I have previously suggested were actually earlier than the flecked or whole coloured ones, I was well pleased.

Here she is, funny old kite, thin wings, canopy like a Hurricane (you can see where that's going can't you...), odd looking tail, tram-lines running down the fuselage, hardly looks like a Spitfire at all, and arguably less recognisable than the Northrop to the real-life prototype. Indeed; it looks like a generic trainer!

My first thought was that maybe it was based more on the Schneider-trophy Supermarine whats'it (Googles....)..S6/6B, which I vaguely remember ruining an Airfix kit of, as a very small boy (sliver plastic, very skinny pilot), but Wikipedia reveals it to have an open engine cowling and massif, round-ended wings. Next suspect was the Type 224, but that looks more like a Blackburn Skua or Junkers Stuka than this little model!

The moulding line down the fuselage seems to have more in common with the Supermarine Type 322 Wikipedia, but that was a high-wing design with an air-scoop under the engine, but it is a suspect for a British Caseloid employee researching for the toolmaker?

But I'm getting ahead of myself...next trip across the hall, I spotted another one, nice RAF blue plastic, but...wing cannons..."eh'up" I thought, "I've bought a ringer with broken cannons, better buy a whole one!", walking back to the table, I thought it looked a bit more like a Spitfire, but put that down to the cannons, not the wing-shape, as the canopy was the same Kittyhawk/Hurricane looking arrangement...

This is the other baby, she's a much more recognisable war-winner, but still with the shelf down the fuselage and the long, strutted canopy. Researching for this post, I've checked most of the non-float plane Supermarines I could find (and a few with floats!), and the only one close and so far not mentioned is the Type 300 trials prototype for the Mk I Spitfire. In some photographs, taken at a certain angle it does seem to have a canopy that looks more like an Me.109, and in other photographs can look to have thin wings, but neither optical illusion can explain the upper - silver - variant!

When I got back to the table, a quick look was all that was needed to see they were completely different models, and after I'd got the silver one out of it's little bag and run my fingers down the wing it was equally obvious that there were no missing cannons, just no cannons, period - Phew!

This blue one though, despite the faults has the distinct - even 'world' recognised - lines of a true Spitfire, with the double ellipse wings coming together to make the iconic pointed wing-tips, the sharks nose and the little round-ended stabiliser/elevator assemblies.

What to make of this new mystery - well, turn them over and it's clear that the blue one is a re-cutting of the silver one's mould, to be specific, the female part of the mould only. Extending the wings out, adding the cannons, redesigning the tail area and cutting new aileron/flap detailing, while leaving all the 'stuff' from the male part of the mould - the canopy, makers title & marks, tail wheel, wing cavities and nose-shape along with the strange lines/shelves down the sides.

On to the new guesswork - the silver 'Spit' seems to be a conglomeration of pre-prototype sketches, artwork and rumour, possibly married to similar Hurricane sources, probably garnered from prospective drawings or 'recognition' silhouettes in 'Boys Own' annuals, engineering magazines, air cadet or scouting publications and the like from the mid-1930's. The blue one is a corrected later version, using the same moulds - where possible - to give a better outline of a 'plane that was a hero before the last leaf was off the trees in the Autumn of 1940, despite the Hurricane doing the donkey's load. Therefore, my suggestion in the original post that there might be a Hurricane in the range, may have come from sightings of the first version Spitfire, and actually be a red herring, although; after reader Alfred turned-up the Northrop, who knows what else is to be found?

What it means - that my theory previously voiced here on the blog, stating the less deformed (this one actually is quite deformed!) silver Palitoy 'planes are the early ones, is almost certainly the case, that they also almost certainly pre-date the second World War - as issued play-things, that the flecked and whole-colour models are later (with the flecked one probably being recycled wartime production, and the whole-colour being possibly post-war), and that people who insist they were a wartime or post war toy are not seeing the evidence suggesting otherwise.

Also on view this Saturday, the seller of the blue Spitfire had a really nice all-yellow Lockheed, and the seller of the silver 'Spit' was offering a silver Lockheed and a flecked but majority brown Bolton-Paul flying Flak-wagen.

O is for Options

Last post on modern production Dr. Who products for a while - I promise, but this time we're not looking at Dr. Who Adventures Magazine, it's Character Options and their licence to produce 'mini-figs' after Lego, after Hestair-Kiddicraft!

Following the Lego 'collectable' figure sets with figure sets of their (CH's)  own which we have looked at before, an innovation Lego themselves took from the 'mono-block' and 'designer figure' fields, Character Options (hereafter; CH, as I can't be arsed to keep typing a word I've never been able to spell!) have just issued their third series, and look what's in it...a proper 1970's gold Dalek, old school, old stylie, old enemy of the doctor, and if you fill in the stud receiving-holes in the base and give it a wash or dry-brushing it will be the best small scale Dalek ever made by the toy industry.

What it also means - I suspect - is that the Fatlek is all but dead. Explanation;Coming so soon after the Dr. Who Adventures mag issued a set of six on what might be the tail-end of their figure range (I hope not - I've undertaken to collect them for Sam!), we have a company - CH - who probably talk even more closely to the makers of the TV series about how to use and exploit the licence - to the benefits of both increased toy sales and more seats on the sofa at transmission time - than the magazine, taking Fatleks out of their range? It can only be good news for fans of 'proper' Daleks! (apologies for that rather crucified paragraph!)

Musical Daleks! The beauty of CH having utilised Hilary Page's construction system is that you can become your own Skarovian living-suit development engineer, and with four colours of Fatlek issued so far (red and blue in tranche 1, this white one in tranche 2 and yellow ones in a larger set) there is a lot of scope for general silliness! This seasons larger sets include the same gold Daleks, lets hope other colours will be issued by CH - in the mean-time there's always paint, and remember; it's easy to find them by squeezing the envelopes!

[they contain the largest single piece, and it's bobbly...but the new 'old' shape are not as easy to spot as the Fatleks]

T is for Dobbin-burgers

Sorry but I couldn't resist it!

To any Tesco's supermarket executives who may be directed here;

It's HUMOUR! It was bound to happen and it might make you check the sourcing of your 'product' a little more efficaciously!

Another one....

This is going to run and run unless it ends-up in a pre-cooked stew! These came out of a conversation we were having at lunch today (yesterday!), other gems included changing the small-print on the nutrition panels to read;

• May contain traces of more than one species
• Meat product of the European motorway network
• ...Aspartame, Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), Binding Agent (crin de cheval)....

and products such as...

• Red Rumble - A 'mixed' meat pizza
• Lassy-sagne - an honest lasagne 

S is for Stars and Bars and Stripes...

Continuing with the results of a photo session I had a while ago now on some of the Marx Miniature Masterpieces, we come to the American Civil War...The Beguiled, The Good the bad and the Ugly, The Red badge of Courage...stirring stuff from a childhood both more innocent than today's...yet somehow more bloody for having it's violence steeped in historical fact rather than the extra-planetary futures of today's 'gamers'?

The set we're looking at tonight is a mint set and one of three I've documented over the years, the contents barely differ between them, even down to the odd duplications.

There are various boxed sets in the 'Wild West' range and this is one of the more popular - and more common. Costing 22 shillings and sixpence back in the day; Blue and Grey Armies did exactly what it said on the box. Also showing the UK issue paper label over the US/Hong Kong message underneath.

The bag of rip-off Merit fir trees, Marx had a lot of Merit stuff in these sets and while it's difficult to research who copied who when it all happened half a century ago, I've always felt the Merit were the wronged party here. Their (Merit's) barrels are far better finished than the Marx ones, while Marx would have had no need for the mail-tags on their sacks if they came first as military play-set supplies (not that the Marx copies have 'MAIL' in raised letters like the Merit ones, their tags are smooth), so the conclusion is that Marx/Elm or one of the other Far-eastern partners of Marx (there was a unit in Taiwan for instance) were doing the copying.

Artillery and the command/staff elements of both armies - the Confederacy suffer a shortage of gunnery troops, with one of the few duplicates in the set, but have an outrider to deliver ordnance to the battlefield with more accuracy! While the limber riders seem to be shouting obscenities at each other!

 "Can you help me live a little more? I expect good news"

Casualties and Confederates - one of the things I've always liked about this set is that where another manufacturer (most!) would/will produce both sides from the same sculpts in two colours, Marx didn't, and not only did they not do so for the fighting poses, they even produced two completely different stretcher-teams and casualties. And - three different standing firing poses..."With these figures you are really spoiling us Mr. Ambassador"

Clockwise from top left - The accessories, if there is a slight difference between sets it tends to be with the sacks, chavaux-de-fris or - sometimes - the ammo-piles. This set also has less of the small accessories than a lot of the other sets in the range which would get a whole bag of sacks or barrels, or more boxes.

Union cavalry get the advantage every time, having had the foresight to draw their sabres before entering the forward edge of the battle area! Three slight colour/paint variations of the prone figure, you only get one per set though. Finally - the Union foot figures advance to contact together.

This collage is a bit of a muck-up...the lower shot is of the other contents of the set described above, while the upper shot shows the mint contents of the cavalry version of the sets described below, if you can get your head round it! Too late to re-do the collage.

The other popular Wild West set in the medium-box sized Miniature Masterpiece range was (is!) the Fort Apache set, which came in two versions; Cavalry & Indians or; Cowboys & Indians, the only clue to the purchaser being the quite subtle change in box artwork illustrated here. Again we can see how the Swansea sets had the paper slip glued over the US message.

This only really proved to be a problem if you had seen a friend or sibling receive the 'other' set and after requesting the same opened something that er...wasn't! Otherwise the play value of the contents Marx packed into these sets meant that receiving either at Christmas or on a birthday was a real treat. We'll look at these in greater depth another day.

The other common form of marketing these figures (they could be bought boxed singly - like 'Tinykins', vac-pack carded or in card trays) were the crystal boxes that started this little on/off series of posts. As with the others so far posted here I don't have all of them, yet do have a few swaps. Seen here are four of the larger 7/8 item sets; 5 and 6 above and 10 and 9 below with the smaller sets sandwiched between in order - 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

News, Views etc...Painting Workshop and Blog News

A new blog has appeared, being the 'notice board' for Plastic Warrior magazine, and further information on the forthcoming PW show is to be seen there...

PW's Blog

For those across the pond looking for something to do in March, there is a painting workshop being held at the Chatham-Kent Museum, Chatham, Ontario, on Saturday, the 23rd March, 2013...

Painting Workshop

Sadly for us Brits, that's in Canada, not 'the' museum in Chatham, Kent!!

A is for Accompaniment

I was holding this intending to add another figure I got at one of the shows, but then I encountered the original show report post here somewhere looking for something else or answering a question and realised he was Salvation Army, so these can stand alone as a bit of a box-ticking exercise!

These are the Circus Bandsmen from Wendal with a shot of two different base stickers. I don't know if these were also issued by the French 'partner' firm of Quiralu, or - if they were - how they may have differed? Despite being made in aluminium they are really quite finely sculpted figures.

T is for Transdimentional Hoojamaflip Thingamybob Doobryfirkin

So to our third article on recent developments in the world of 'free' (insert the cost of the magazine and subtract the unit cost here!) premiums given away with the Dr. Who Adventures Magazine. This is the Tardis kit I mentioned in the first post a week or so ago.

This was a brilliant idea, and would have worked well if it wasn't for the poor execution, yet there was only one thing wrong with the execution...not enough paint.

The paint-your-own Dalek issued a while ago and covered elsewhere (click Dalek in the tag-list/index) had two pots of paint that were more than adequate for the job, while the two small pots in this issue (white and black) had more than enough for the job, but the blue was a piss-take.

And the thing is - if you are trying to attract, entertain and retain readers of a youngish age for a magazine that - compared to the comics and magazines of my childhood - is (lets be honest) full of ephemeral shite, you need to make sure the 'freebie' is doable, if craft based, this didn't.

The kit itself is fine, two relatively well-detailed parts, bit of super-glue gel (to fill any gaps), a quick scrape with a scalpel blade and it was ready to go, a kid not needing to bother with the gel, or even glue as the locating-prongs made for a tight fit. But, once a single coat of paint was applied, firstly there was very little paint left, and secondly the paint dried to a high-gloss, semi transparent pale sky-blue! At this point our imaginary 'Junior' losses all interest in the project and faith in the publication....along with his or her non-toy collecting parent!

 Because I am a toy collector I persevered; clockwise from top left...

• A second coat was extracted from the remains of the pot, with the addition of a few drops of water, it dried to a flat matt that scraped-off with a finger-rub!
• Black was added to the remains along with a single drop of washing-up liquid and a third coat applied, this is shot without flash and seems darker/more even that it actually is.
• The rest of the black (I was determined to only use the given constituents for the sake of experimentation), with a few more drips of water gave a forth coat and the half-full pot of white was employed for the massive task of painting the light on the roof!
• Finally, two shots of the finished article with the stickers applied, I had scraped the pot to touch-up the bits that still showed particularly thin, but you can see from the two shots that it's still very see-through under flash, and not much better under normal lighting.

It is such a shame that the supplying company didn't provide the correct amount of paint, as it would have been a disappointment to younger builders, I'm sure. I will re-paint this one day, and to that aim, removed the stickers back to their sheet as soon as these photographs were taken. Then the CAD-Monkey's turned-up to inspect....they weren't impressed.

The sticker-sheet was most impressive as you can see from the shot I took through a jeweller's loupe, the whole thing is a perfect 54mm accessory as can been seen from the Britains gorilla, and apart from the lack of paint was a very good premium, they just needed to go that extra inch!