Bits in salmon-pink are later additions, notes or further information supplied by others.
Bits in Khaki-green are 'work-in-progress' listings and anyone is welcome to add missing details, whether single items or whole chunks.
All photographs are 6.5 (old Fuji), 8.3 (Samsung) or 16 (new Nikon) Mpx, and most will blow up to greater than screen size if you hover on them and click. However I've noticed some of the older images aren't enlarging, this is probably a Blogger/Picasa/date/traffic/auto-archive thing?
If you think you can add some information, or identify any of the 'unknowns', please use the comment feature rather than emailing me.
Bold; denotes 'real-world' product titles or nomenclature - sometimes!
Please report any dead links, and suggest any links you think should/could be added.
Note I have now found out how to switch-off the slide-show thingy, so just clicking on the photographs will open them on a whole page where most will then enlarge further with another click - if the cursor is in a 'plus' sign.
This doesn't seem to work for some of the older posts, this is a Blogger/Internet coding change thing I can do nothing about, one day I'll update or replace the more important ones but that's years away.
While waiting for an ok to join the RPG Bloggers network, I became a bit
frustrated.
So, here is a current blogroll of 1000+ English Language RPG blogs, an...
... and with strange aeons even death may die.
I'm not dead, just working on something else. That "something else" should
be released before the end of the...
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.
My local games company has changed its
name! It's now Asmodee, and they have
(or carry) several games with figures in, none were on display at the show
though so I'm only showing you catalogue scans in this post, but worth the read
if you're not a dedicated follower of these things.
Catan is a popular game, although - I think I'm right in saying -
normally the generic or 'original' sets have wooden counters? This Game of Thrones version from Fantasy Flight Games however, has some
little figural game pieces which I think are around a 15mm War-gaming
compatible size?
From the same 'GoT' trope comes A Song of
Fire & Ice, a joint project between CMON
Ltd., and Dark Sword Miniatures,
and what nice looking miniatures they are. I'm guessing here that expansion
packs and extra-figures are the hook?
As well as board games, Asmodee also import a lot of the
blind-bag Moshling type stuff (post's
half-done, just on the back burner) and more traditional game and pastimes.
They also ship-in the Heroclix figure
packs from WizKids with Star Trek and DC-licensed blisters illustrated here.
While these may well be more akin to Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars range?
New for this year and another one to build-on with extra sets I suspect, Fantasy Flight again, but all these are 'Asmodee' in the UK.
This looks lovely, a kind of Steampunk, Golden Compass, World War One-and-a-Half,
Russian Revolution in a box! The woman with a big-cat and the armoured bear are
taken straight from the Golden Compass!
Which reminds me, I finally watched the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the
other day, several extraordinary ladies - as it happens - but I found it to be
very disappointing, with huge plot holes/continuity errors and an overall feel
of wasted-opportunity, almost as if three unrelated, shorter, films had been stiched-together
with a blunderbuss full of nails!
But back to this game, from Stonemaier (and others) the figures
would paint-up well and look to be around the 28mm mark?
The Asmodee
line-up for 2018 seems to fill every cell as we move from Steampunk to tick the
post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, hardboiled zombie-mutant fantasy box! I don't know if
the figures in Fallout (Fantasy Flight again) are metal, but
they have that sculpting style, which I know some people like - for painting -
but I'm not so keen on the 'Nottingham' school of chunky, over-emphasised
'fine' detailing.
Myth and legend; Eastern-style, with this
one from CMON/Asmodee; that's every
box ticked except prohibition-era Chicago, I think! From the illustration;
figures look to be at the larger end (28mm) but it's not clear, neither is it
clear how many useful figures will be found in the Rising Sun box, or need to be purchased separately?
Ah! Prohibition-era Chicago, well . . . New York! The figures
look to be about the same size as the old Parker Games game Vendetta, they
also remind me of the Cluedo figures
I was looking for the other day, grey with coloured bases, although a couple of
the games above have similar, these are closer to what I was thinking-of. I
like the little 'stash' tin to keep smuggle the playing pieces in.
That's eight games/game-systems and I'd
happily give house-room to all of them, sadly; games like these don't often
turn-up in charity shops!
The big disappointment with Oxford's
die-cast range is the fact that they seem to have decided to pander to the
worst of the combat-wombat fantasists usually found at Beltring or Wheels and
Tracks at What's-it Hop Farm by providing a totally fictional series of
Berlin Brigade urban camouflage schemes for various models in their Land Rover
family.
They. Did. Not. Get. Urban. Camouflage.
Ever! Bit of a rant today!
Worse, I think all three of the ones I'm
looking at here weren't even service-vehicles in the brigade, so they are
doubly fictional.
It's a long time ago. But I don't remember
1-Ton's in Berlin, at all. The Wombat platoon had old stripped-down series
threes with a false floor to stow the Wombat's ramps, while the mortar platoon
had series threes (replaced by defenders in 1986, maybe '87) with trailers for
the base-plates. There was a Milan platoon, but I seem to recall they
man-packed everywhere, broken down to one tube per infantry company? They ('Milan')
had had Forward Control's in Tidworth though . . . I think!
The other uses for One-ton FC's was as 105mm Gun-tractors - we didn't have 105's in Berlin - and as
ambulances, but in Berlin we had the old 'camper-van' overhanging-bodied'
3-series (as modelled by Corgi!), or - uniquely in the British Army - Unimogs.
So this vehicle wasn't in Berlin, and if it
had been, it wouldn't have got the urban camouflage, which was confined to the
larger AFV's - The Chieftains had it (for summer 1986?), the FV432 and 432B (Raden turret)'s had
it first (they were wearing it for the Royal Hampshire's 'trooping of the colours' as senior battalion on parade for the Queen's Birthday Parade (QBP), so '84'ish?) and the Armoured squadron's Chieftain ARV's, Ferrets and FV438RE's had it,
but our Fox's (bigger than a Ferret and armoured) were green and black.
This example also has far too much grey and
not enough chocolate and white for the BB urban camouflage scheme's ratios
which were closer to 40/30/30, but that’s going to be the obvious trouble with
an invented paint-job!
This is comical, not only were
'lightweights' not service vehicles in Berlin Brigade, the camouflage on this
has been copied from a combat-wombat's own civilianised Q-plate vehicle (Q568
GFV) which can be found on the internet; his mate had the most ridiculous
aerials on a series-3 LWB and they spent their time worrying sheep between
petrol-head events like those mentioned at the start!
Lightweights were considered 'special'
vehicles, and while I seem to recall one FFR per company-HQ in Tidworth, it
just wasn't a vehicle that the Berlin Brigade ever qualified for, there being
no air-portability requirement for units written-off the strength of NATO, due
to their low survivability 'forecast' in the event of the shit really hitting
the fan!
Again, Land Rovers didn't get urban scheme,
again; too much grey, not enough of the other two colours, but also, the
series-3 safari's we had tended to window bodies with heavy, full-length
(over-hanging) roof-racks (the CO had one I think), and while we did take
delivery of the new 110 Defenders while I was there (ahead of both UKLF and
BAOR), they were all green and black, and the hard-tops were fibre-glass
pull-on's, windowed and all-green. But time's a bitch; and of the three, this
is the one I'm not so sure of - as a service vehicle - and it could have
arrived in the brigade after I left, but it didn't have the camouflage.
Again there's a combat-wombat one (soft-top
Series-3) wearing military plates at shows (85 KB 80), but he's got both
colours wrong, the chocolate being instead a camel-shit orange and the
dark-grey; a pale ducks-egg colour!
He uses the scheme on the original
experimental vehicle (01 GF 98?)'s scheme (from 1982?) which was placed on an old series-3
long before my time in the city, and which was only cleared for use with colour
modifications, on the larger AFV's.
The thing is, the AFV's had a war-function
of providing fire-support as rolling or emplaced 'bunkers' for ad-hoc
battle-groups carrying out whatever task/s they had been given, within (holding
actions) or through (breakout-infiltration-harassment) what was to be assumed
would be a shattered or damaged city - if they had survived whatever indicated
the beginning of hostilities! As such, they were painted to effectively
disappear into the rubble.
Minutes 2.18 and 3.10 - 432's only, 1984 or '85
The soft-skins (and Fox) were primarily
tasked with normal, day-to-day, 'peace-time' transport, patrolling the wire
(foxes) and regular exercising 'down the zone' and therefore carried the
standard NATO/UKLF scheme of broad black regions over an mid-olive drab-green (called 'Deep Bronze Green). The Fox'es were eventually painted 'urban' as well, but not until '88 or later.
They were not expected to survive the
opening of hostilities, or be much use in the confines of rubble-strewn city
streets, and would have been unlikely to have had time to be covered in a
non-existing series of schemes. There was supposed to be a secondary function of the schemes - which were 'identikit' for each vehicle type - that of confusing the Russians into the exact numbers of armoured vehicles we had.
Foxes (briefly visible extreme right at one point)
still NATO too - I'm in there somewhere!
However - given that A) each vehicle had a unique number-plate clearly visible, B) 'Soxmis' (the Soviet Military Mission) were allowed to roam freely over our sector; looking and counting, and C) the Russians knew exactly how many of what AFV-types had gone up and down the 'corridor' rail-lines over the previous 30-odd years - it was an excuse for playing with paint; which only the ruperts at MOD could come-up with!
And why don't the model manufacturers produce Bedford's or
other larger soft-skins in the BB scheme? It's lazy, easy, pandering to
vicarious combat-wombats! And if you've bought one - give it to your
'Nottingham' space-marines, for that is where it belongs . . . La-la Land!
I really must try and get the last of the
Toy Fair reports off the computer and on to the Blog!
Shouldn't be too much blurb today as the
photo's will speak for themselves, second visit to Oxford Diecast's stand at
the [not so] recent British Toy Fair at Kensington Olympia, and the various
vehicles I shot there.
An assortment of 1:76th scaled vehicles
including a nice group of steam traction engines and road-rollers, and some
very nice Glenfrome (?) 6x6 Range
Rovers in various liveries. I also like the AEC Armoured Command Vehicle in err
. . . both liveries!
Further down the line-up sees nice
soft-skins from World War Two and the Cold War and an intricate looking Bofors,
along with a totally fictional 1-ton Land-Rover! In the background are some
lovely showman's wagons and circus vehicles, which could help bring the lovely
Preiser sets up to OO-compatibility for UK layouts.
AFV;'s in the guise of Churchill IV's (?)
and both short-76mm and 'Firefly' Shermans, the fictional lanny again with
another in what looks like 1:48th scale, both the 'rovers are fictional in two
ways, but there'll be a post on them later!
Catalogue page with a plethora of AFV's,
ancient and modern, the tele-porter 'Long Reach' is an interesting and
different model; it would look good serving either a modern jet or an artillery
piece/SPG in a little vignette? And we've seen the Post Office version of the
BSA here on the Blog in the past.
I thought the RAF centenary set was a bit
lame; three modern/late type 'rovers, a JCB and and WWII truck with the
ubiquitous Spitfire? They could have done better from what they already list,
with a bit of paint!
More Land Rovers, I'd love this set, but
it's got another fictional one to be repainted! The three one-tons's are the
best thing about this set, along with the little desert theatre paint-finished,
series-one. In the background can be seen boxed-sets of thematic commercials,
military and civil vehicles.
As well as the odd 1:48th scale vehicle or
two, Oxford have a growing range of
N-gauge vehicles and I'm rather taken by the trio of little tractors!
Knowing next to nothing of N-gauge (I had
the non-powered Treble-O trains from TriangLone Star as a kid) I can't be sure, but
the Churchill looks too wide to make a useful flat-bed load, which would seem
to be the main-point of making one at this size? Especially as I think they had
to have the side-sponson engine/air-intake louvres removed for rail-trooping
anyway? And - is the turret on backwards?
I used to help on a stall at a show in
Crawley, but that was in a sports centre, it was a good show with a nice mix of
traders and a decent 'door'. I don't know if it was Gerry's show in those days,
and I like Gerry . . . but, same day, down the A24 from Crawley and hang-a
right toward Dorking-Guildford or - further down - Winchester . . .
_....----==========<>==========----...._
Events
. . . one of the best days of the year . .
.not just a show but a 'day out'
Saturday 16th June
The Bob Legget National Festival of Toy Trains - aka: 'Alresford'
Perins School, Pound Hill, Alresford, Hampshire,
SO24 9BS
Adults £6, Children £2, early entry (sales
hall) from 09.00hrs £10, family ticket (2 adults 2 kids) £14. And if you've
picked up a flyer at recent shows, check the back it may be a kid-goes-free
voucher?
Bar-b-que, live music, 20+ running railway
layouts, 80+ trade tables, toy displays, stalls, licensed bar/real ale, parking
&etc.
I haven't been for a shamefully long time, especially as it's only just
down the road, but it really is a fantastic day out. The layouts usually
include old tin-plate, OO-gauge Triang-Hornby
types, TT-gauge, triple-rail, Trebble-o
Trains, &etc.
There's often stuff going on outside in the yard and in the other
buildings, in past years there have been displays of Blue Box civil sets, Bayko,
Lego, Meccano - all sorts!
If you are at a loose-end on Saturday - head for Alresford - even the
scenery on the drive at that end is
lovely!
Viewing 10.00-17.00hrs on Thursday 14th
(tomorrow) and from 9.00-10hrs on the 15th, a major collection of comics is
under the hammer along with a Hornby Dublo
collection
Here's a quick addition to the growing bendy-toy
sub-collection/trope and/or the growing Pink
Panther sub-collection, or even a bit of a follow-up to a recent Blog-post
on the Jolly Jaguar.
A modern (marked 2006) bendy from the - now
- superhero experts NJ Croce! Tail's
a bit chewed! But he's a happy looking chap, and quite like the TV/Movie
original, now credited to MGM rather the the United Artists of older Pink Panther toys.
I have really needed a new camera for over
a year, and meant to get one back in the Spring, last year, or at least I said
I'd explore the possibility of re-instating Adsence to see if it might pay for
one ('on paper' is should have!), but it turned out Adsence isn't as easy as it
used to be and the appeal process takes up to six-months, not that I bothered.
Then, about this time last year, I was
walking in the woods at the back of the pond on a hot day photographing
wildlife when I lost the grip on the camera and it flew-off, mercifully landing
in some soft pine-needle leaf mould under a Scot's Fir.
I didn't notice for a few days but the
large jigget on the lens (which had become an obvious problem) had been knocked out of the way, bargain! So I carried
on with it for another year, but recently the lens opening/closing mechanism had
been playing-up (a common problem with them), so I knew it had to be replaced
and was hoping it would last until after the storage unit move (8 weeks
Wednesday if my sums are right) - when it's battery housing went phutt!
I umm'ed and arrh'ed at what to get, popped
into Farnbourough and looked around, checked Argos (four day wait) and ended-up getting basically the same
machine from a Swiss dealer off Amazon
- yeah! Kill the High Street!
The reason I picked the same machine is
because the dead one (which can still serve in an emergency) was four years old
to the month practically, and was therefore the longest-lasting of the six I've
had since 2007. They all died (with the exception of the first, a Fuji) because
they are carried 24/7, bare, in my trouser-pocket and get hard-knocks and lots
of fabric-lint and other dust working into their bodies. They also get a lot of
use, I may pull them out several times a day, in addition to actual toy 'photo-sessions'.
But, - as you can see from the above - the
worst problem with a long-lived one, is electronic dust. You can format the SD-card
occasionally, or even get a new one, but there is a build-up of electronic
'crap' on the camera's own brains, both the main memory and the exposure screen/sensors
and there's nothing you can do about that.
Those two photographs were taken a few
seconds apart - as long as it took to remove the elastic-band and swap the
batteries and SD-card - with identical settings (macro and two stops down on
the exposure) with unchanged artificial light.
The same thing, just like with humans - the
fog of age!
It was still taking OK pictures, but I had 'excused
it' to you a few times since the autumn, usually when shooting in poor light.
Soooooo . . . should be some improvement in pictures for a while, but there's a
lot of old ones in the queue and other peoples images, scans &etc, so it
shouldn't actually be that noticeable?
Cover the lower image with a book or your
hand and the upper image is acceptable, but comparing the two is sobering! You
have no idea, with digitals; how the camera is slowly degrading.
I'm going to try and keep it in a little
self-seal bag (or series of self-seal bags, they won't last long in a pocket
either!), this time, to cut the ingress of particles, but they weren't
ultimately the problem, it was the battery trap-door catch, killed the camera!
The Second Fuji was OK, three years, but it's brain went very suddenly and
while there had been global recalls of the same units a year or two earlier, I
was in another legal battle at the time so couldn't be arsed to pursue Fuji
(who claimed they couldn't find the crappy images of the rose I put on the blog
which showed the problem!), and when that battle settled I bought a Samsung (in cherry red to match my
'phone! Tart!) in late 2011.
When the lens-winding mechanism on that one
failed in 2013, I got a similar Nikon,
on offer at Argos for 40-odd quid,
that was an L27, and when the lens-wind went on that; within a year, I rushed up to the
local Argos with the warranty (and the receipt - always keep it for the first
12 months!) and they happily gave me an upgrade/replacement for nothing.
As the 29 did so well, I've stuck with the
Nikon's, all three - L27, 29 and A10 - are 16.1 mega-pixels; I toyed with a 20.1,
but the extra expense didn't add up to the limited extra image size, so I went with
the same again!
This problem with the winding mechanism
probably is connected to the dust and pocket-fluff - wearing down the
very fine bayonet-fit channels and the little ears that travel in them,
telescoping the lens's; in the end the ears pop-out of the channels and the
micro-motor rattles like a dying thing!
Well, that was a title that wrote itself,
even if it was a bad pun, it was waiting to happen!
Another week, another board game! More
charity shop plunder, I love 'em, and you don't feel guilty shoving the 90% in
the recycling bin when it only owes you a quid . . . or two, I think this was
£1.95!
This is the third generation of playing
piece, with primary coloured 'milk bottle' counters for the longest time, then
in the late 1980's/1990's sometime, they went over to realistic sculpts in grey
polystyrene with coloured 'penny' bases, then in 2002 we got these PVC vinyl
(or similar) figures in full colour, each having the dominant 'traditional' colour
of each suspect, except the housekeeper . . . and Professor Plum who is a bit orange.
The new['ish] figures and what a
dodgy-looking bunch of near-do-well's they are! Colonel Mustard the old
B'stard, Miss Scarlet - so the blood won't show, Reverend (are you sure?) 'the
hulk' Green, Mrs Peacock, silly name - silly hat, the Ging'er-ming'er should be
called Professor' Tangerine' now surely and the housekeeper - black [heart] is
white!
They all have a back-story now, but did
they always . . . I don't remember back-story's on the sets of my childhood?
And the cartoon graphics are very Manga-style in execution, I seem to
remember as a kid they were quite sober-looking, realistic, if slightly
Edwardian? Fashions change - I guess.
I'm joking-about to make the blurb - it's a
board-game and there's only so much you can say about it, but joking apart,
it's got a much nicer playing board with more realistic birds-eye views of each
of the suitably furnished rooms.
Also the murder weapons have had a
make-over, although the loss of the little bit of golden 'rope' in favour of an
ethylene moulding is sad I think. The new dagger, on the other hand, is quite
fine, and very useful for 70mm Romans, if you happen to have one lying around,
unarmed!
The spanner has been replaced by an
adjustable monkey-wrench and the gun is now a little six-barrelled
'pepper-pot'.
Which three cards are in the envelope? We
used to love this as kids, far less fights than with Monopoly and there was a certain magic in 'working out'
who/where/what, before anyone else!
I thought I'd posted the grey figures back
at the beginning of the blog, but I can't find them to link to; so we'll look
at them here another time! In the meantime there's boardgamegeek:
The update I flagged the other day has gone in . . .
. . . with updated images and/or text-box screen-capcha's to provisionally numbered figures 6, 10, 13 and 24 and actual numbered figures 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 43, 60 and 65. It's starting to look like there was a set of sequentially numbered brown-based figures in sand or grey plastic to match the previous unnumbered sets from the mid-1990's, and a whole crossover set in navy uniforms with numbered and unnumbered bases. It's all on-line somewhere, and I'll write-it up one day, but for now it's not a priority, however the image updates are here.
Speaking of Barney - as I was earlier today
- I had a brief eMail exchange with him last week and he reassured me his Herald Toys and Models site is
up and running as normal.
In the run-up to the PW show he issued a
couple of 'head-ups' for new stock, neither of which I got round to posting here
as I was A) busy doing other things and B) winding down for a break, but it's
always worth popping-over to have a check for new stuff as the better bits tend
to go the same day!
For those not used to Blogger, the below 'index' allows you to find similar posts by their content, just click on the label (word) that best suits you search needs. I have tried to label by
- Country of origin of toy - Country represented by toy - Maker - Material - Scale/Size/Ratio - Era represented by toy - Whether subject is civil/military - Other 'themes' Etc...
Re-annotating the index is an ongoing project, in the meantime to save on space (there is a limit on the number of characters and the number of labels) I have started using abbreviations, which are as follows:
All other abbreviations are part of the recognised name of a company or organisation.
The hiarachy of the listing pushes non-standard letters to the end of the section so Märklin (with an umlaut) is the last 'M' &etc...the Cyrillic lettered brands are at the end of the whole list.
