Funny story behind this one, the guy wanted (and I don't normally deal with the grubby stuff, but it's central to the story) 55-quid for this, a bit steep I thought, but I know this imported stuff commands a premium, so I thought "Fuck it, I'm playing catch-up with bushy the twig, I might as well?", and got sixty out, "Have you got a fiver?", I asked the dealer, at the start of the day . . . bear in mind, the dealer I was with, had a wad of fivers, and a bag of £1 and £2 coins, because he's prepared his float!
"Err, no" he says, so I asked him what we were going to do, and he half-heartedly muttered 'the wife' or something, and with no further words, exchanged a glance with her, and said
"No".
"Well, I'm not going to give you sixty?" says I, and he leaps back indignantly
"I never asked you to!",
"No" said I,
"But that's the other logical solution?" To which he hummed an acceptance of that logic, and after a laboured silence, I said
"Well, I'll leave it than, maybe later?" handed it back and walked away.
And I would have left it at that, indeed I went back past the stall a couple more times, gave it the once over, and studiously ignored the set, and would have left it. If you're setting yourself up as retailer for the day, no matter what your 'day job', you either go to the bank and get a wad of fivers and a bag of coins, or, if you don't do that many shows, save your one's, two's and five's in the two-to-four months between shows? It's common-sense as much as anything else.
However . . . on the other side of the hall, another chap had the exact-same contents of this set, in two window boxes, one with
T2,
T4,
Pod 4 and - I think -
Fab 1, the other having all the other vehicles, and the spare
Pod 3, he wanted £60 or £65 for the first, and £40 or £45 for the second, I can't remember the exact amounts, but it was going to be over a hundred-quid for the pair, so in the end, I went back to the first stall, and I bought it after all, while he wasn't there, as it happens.
But, that was only half the story, as when I first spotted it, it had no price on, and I asked the lady (who would transpire to be the dealer's wife), how much it was, and she said she didn't know, but that 'he' was coming back, so I hung-on for a minute or two, then she said she didn't know what had happened to him, so I left it with her, assuming she would keep it behind until I returned.
The standard approach at shows, when someone shows interest in something, and the helper, for whatever reason, doesn't know what's going on. However, when I returned to the stall, it was back on display, for any Tom, Dick or Harry passing-by, to purchase, with it's newly added pink £55 label!
It takes the shine off the day, dealing with these fuckwits, you know? It's not rocket science, there are rules to the art of pretending to be a retailer for a day, and this stall literally failed all of them! Fackin' ell, G'want! An ironic cultural reference, as they went through a phase of wearing
Thunderbirds Are Go T-shirts!
Anyway, I am now the pround'ish, owner, of a maybe cheaper than I thought it aught to be, Thunderbird Two from Bandai, with most of the more memorable pod-vehicles, to add to the already growing collection of micro-mini's we looked at here;
To which I've already added a vinyl tree-hanger, the dug-out 'Colourform' ones, a board-game foursome, and a couple more, in plunder-posts which didn't get the
T-bird Tag!
Mole, Firefly and the Excavator, which should be red, and which I saw in an episode the other night, there's one of these 24-hour live streams on YouTube, which seems to be connected to the remastered Blu-ray, and I'm dipping into it from time to time, but you never know where in the loop you're going to drop-in, so you then have to fast-forward through a few, to get to where you were, after which the episode cursor stops progressing, all very confusing, but great-fun seeing them all again!
Fab 1, and the two blueys, the ray turns on the
Transmitter Truck, and the grabs (I don't know this vehicle's name? Another
Excavator?) are articulated, the only other interactive one is the
Excavator above, where the bucket is clip-on and can be configured for travelling in the Pod, or as shown.
I'm minded, if I ever get the time, to scratch-build a few more to go with these, the last episode I watched was 'The Uninvited', about the mysterious pyramid of Khamandides, with the half-tracked 'Jeep', it would be fun to do that in this scale!
Three more, I don't know what the first one is, a laser-cutter - should it also be red? The second is one of two
Recovery Vehicles, the other would need to be scratch-built, and it can be red or yellow? While I remember a trio of the
Elevator Cars (which should also be red, or white with a red cab?) trying to save the huge (and rather silly)
Firefly, I can't remember the whole story, and will catch up with it soon, hopefully, but I think they sort of succeeded?
Thunderbird Six . . . it's not a Pod-vehicle! My late father's
Tiger Moth, which was an ex-WWII trainer, had a very similar paint-job, but blue, not red, and I wonder if the MOD-approved sellers painted them like this, to hide the military markings, prior-to-sale, but, like so many things (you realise, after they have gone), I never asked him?
One of the great continuity errors of
Thunderbirds, which niggled me, even as a kid, was the fact that
Thunderbird Four, was named thus, and got its own Pod, while none of the others got either a number or a dedicated Pod, I don't even know how many Pods there were, was it six? The two Pods in this set are only numbered on the front, they should be numbered at both ends, and the registering of the sticker here, leaves a lot to be desired!
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