New Paper Project For Halloween: The Ancient Church Of Two Towers Paper Model - Pt 2

I have been busier than a one-legged man in a hospital diarrhea ward! Life is not slowing down and I feel like I'm in the middle of the maelstrom! 

That being said, it's been fun: trying to set up this year's Halloween display, taking pictures, taking video's, carving pumpkins, roasting pumpkin seeds. Oh yeah, and that annoying thing called 'a job' - all keeping me busy as heck! This project was started several days ago and this is about as far as it's gotten. To be fair, there's a bit more bracing added than what's shown in the photos, but as of this writing the roof still hasn't been glued on. The photos just show the roof loosely placed on the walls to give me an idea of what it'll look like. The kit is designed to have two towers but only one will be installed for simplicity and so I don't spend the rest of the year on the build LOL

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Jaymar #255 39 PC Railroad and Village Construction Set - Pt 2 Church

Yesterday we started a new series of vintage paper buildings here on Toys and Stuff, the Jaymar #255 39 PC Railroad and Village Construction Set. These sets were produced from ca mid-1950s onward first under the 'Jaymar' name and later under the 'Marx' name and were included with Marx 3-rail O-gauge train sets. 

I have to admit this particular set had me thinking twice about collecting vintage paper because, to use an appropriate metaphor, it was a train wreck of a set! Pieces were torn apart, the heavy cardboard was separating, building walls split or creased badly, painter's masking tape used to attach pieces together! Even the envelope that the set came in is held together by a solid cover of clear packaging tape on the outside. I actually put off doing the posts on this set because it was in such bad shape and I didn't want to mess with it. Part of the problem lay with the design of the components themselves. I have a lot of respect for Marx and their design and construction methods but the team responsible for the paper villages really screwed things up!! Why? The construction method used for the buildings is tab-&-slit, versus the much better method of tab-&-slot as found on the Built-Rite houses. The cardboard used in the Marx sets is so heavy it's nearly impossible to force the connecting tabs into the slits without damaging either the tab or the adjoining piece. I can see many a child (and parent) throwing up their hands in frustration trying to assemble these.

Okay, that being said, I did go ahead and assemble the kits as best as would allow. Only a couple of quick repairs were made in the set and those will be covered in the appropriate posts. The photos presented here will show all the warts and blemishes of the buildings as I received them. In addition, this time the hi-res scans of the components will be included in an unedited state (for the most part). That will give you, the reader, the opportunity to make adjustments as you deem appropriate. I'm also toying with the idea of gluing the buildings together with interior bracing, then rephotographing them. They couldn't possibly look worse and may even save them as display items. It would be nice to remove the masking tape from the pieces but obviously ripping it off is not an option as it would destroy the artwork underneath. I wonder if there is a mild solvent that would allow the tape to be gently peeled off???

We'll start the series with the Church. The Church is included in this 39 piece set but is not included in the smaller 34 piece sets. You'll notice in the photos that slits have been cut just above the front door, ostensibly for placement of an overhang, yet the artwork on the envelope doesn't show an overhang and the slits on our building have never been tampered with. The Church measures 4 3/8" (11.1cm) W x 6" (15.2cm) D x 8 1/4" (21cm) H. Enjoy!

The Church is shown top center of the village and clearly has no overhang above the door.

Notice the two slits above the door for the overhang or awning that was never apparently included in the set.

The photos also show the rather sorry shape these buildings were in. Who in their right mind would put masking tape on the outside of the building and cover up the artwork?

The unedited scans

See the masking tape? That was one solid piece which meant the walls couldn't be folded! I had to cut through the tape to be able to fold the walls for assembly. The walls were printed on one continuous piece of cardboard requiring two separate scans.

Kellogg's UK Paper Village - Village Church Built Up

The other night while the wife was watching the Bee Gees concert on PBS I decided to go ahead and start building up the Kellogg's UK Paper Village. Along the way I discovered a couple of interesting things. First, I had the year of manufacture all wrong. I had stated earlier that it was 1948. This was based on the eBay sellers information, but lo and behold, tucked away amongst all that writing on the sheets was the following:

The actual date was only 1989!! Now I don't feel so bad about putting these together. In any case, the pieces were beginning to separate from the surround anyway. The next thing I noticed was this:

Kellogg's offered a series of delivery trucks (lorry's) made by Matchbox over the years and lettered for various Kellogg's cereals. I have one set that was released here in the States but what I don't know is which vehicles were released in the UK during 1989. Looks like I'll have to get on eBay and do a little 'research'.

The models were built straight-forward. No glue except for one part which I'll explain in another post, and no bracing. They utilize a simple tab-&-slot construction method that, overall, didn't give me much grief. I found it easier to ever-so-slightly enlarge the holes using an X-Acto knife. NOW, all this being said, I do in fact plan to add bracing to the structures later, but I want you to see how they look as designed and built right out of the package. So let's get started with the Church. The Church consists of four main parts: tower/steeple, nave, choir, and porch. It measures 7 5/8" (19.4cm) L x 7" (17.9cm) H x 4" (10.2cm) W (from wall to outside of porch floor). It appears to be at least 1/50 scale and perhaps even 1/64 scale. Not having figures small enough to make comparisons I can't really say right now. Bettina & Fritz Berg :) Enjoy :)  

Kellogg's UK Paper Village Pt 4 - Village Church (pt 2)

The blog has been doing fairly decent since its first post back in October 2010 and I hope you've enjoyed it so far. I s'pose it bears mentioning that every photo and every scan is something from my own personal collection. The only exception to-date has been the history of the Batmobile graphic which I had permission to include on my blog from it's original poster. What brought this on? Nothing really except after reading a couple of other blogs I noted that sometimes images are culled from other sources without attribution and that's a habit I really don't want to get into. I still enjoy those other blogs, but I think it's best I take the straight and narrow course, goodness knows I have plenty of raw material to work from.

The Kellogg's Village - UK is printed on three sheets folded into five panels per sheet so as to be mailable and many of the buildings are printed over multiple panels. The Church is printed on three panels HOWEVER, it is also printed such that it overlaps the fold from one panel to the next. In order to compensate for that I had to make a separate scan which would properly show the pieces. That means the first sheet will actually be presented in six parts.  A little awkward but it'll all work out in the end. So, now that we're all clear as mud let's just take a peek at more of Kellogg's Village - UK Village Church. Enjoy!