Temu Dragon vs. The Pirates

I wanted to do a little quickie photo shoot using the Temu dragon and my pirate toys so I put this together. It's getting too warm out in The Cave to spend much time trying to assemble display's for photography so quickie set-ups like this will be the norm until autumn. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

I envisioned a scenario wherein Pirates who were busy trying to bury their loot on a small island had a not-very-friendly encounter with a sea monster! If I were a betting man, I'd say the dragon was gonna come out on top of this battle. The Pirates lose, the treasure is lost, and another legend is born.

The backdrop is one I painted many years ago for a Christmas train layout. The hill is a leftover terrain piece from an old train layout. The pirate ship is a vintage MPC (the larger of two that MPC offered), and the pirates are repo Marx figures.

While I expected the Temu dragon to be larger, I'm glad it wasn't. It compares in size quite nicely with toy figures. 

A few shots of the set-up.

PIRATES: Epilogue

Every year is a challenge when my grand daughter tries to pick a costume for Halloween Trick-or-Treating. We all thought she would go as The Grinch this year (an homage to Opa? 😂😂😂) because her mother had already bought a Grinch hoodie for her. But then she puts the kabosh on The Grinch and says she wants to go as something else - but what? She couldn't make up her mind. So one day last week, they go shopping and this is what she ended up with.

Yup - she's going as a Pirate. I can only believe that her decision was a direct result of helping me with the Pirate set-up's posted the past couple of weeks! That's my Schatzie! 😀   Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Captain Blood vs. The Red Coats - Pt 2 More Playing

Some more pics from the play session with the Captain Blood playset that my grand daughter helped set up. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Marx (of Miami) Captain Blood and The Buccaneers Set #4794 (1992) - Pt 6 Toy Street MPC Recast Small Pirate Ship

We're winding down our series on Pirate toys - at least until I can add to the collection. 

Another fine example of how just a few applique's and some string can bring this toy out of the ordinary. It's funny how Toy Street gave the smaller ship the "HMS Shark" moniker implying that this was a ship of the Royal Navy, while the larger ship belonged to the pirates! Okay, I get it, it's a toy. So - Enjoy! Opa Fritz 

The length of string provided was used for the anchor and maybe thicker string would have been more appropriate, but I was thinking, "What would a kid do once they opened the box and saw the contents?" - yeah, the kid would probably just use the string that was included - if they bothered to tie the anchor to the boat to begin with.

The applique' for the Union Jack was printed incorrectly, thereby not allowing for graphics on either side. Unfortunately I didn't have any self-adhesive printer paper to print out a mirror image and rectify the problem

Here's the sheet of applique's

The two images of the Union Jack are exact copies, if you try to place one behind the other they will not line up

This is the flipped image and how it should have been printed on the sheet

PIRATES: Marx (of Miami) Captain Blood and The Buccaneers Set #4794 (1992) - Pt 5 Toy Street MPC Recast Large Pirate Ship

I really love the ships that came in this playset. While the peel-&-stick appliques' plus the printed cut-out deck adds a lot of detail to the ships, but the icing on the cake is the rigging. I can't honestly say if the rigging was a Toy Street feature or if it was something the folks at Marx Toys added to the playset because the Ship's Log/instruction manual included in the set was a Marx Toys product and the rigging instructions were in it and not the Toy Street bag. ANYWHO, it's a great feature. These being toy ships and not model ships, I had to fudge how the string attaches to the ship and masts, but overall I'm pleased with the results. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

This is a cardstock cut-out, not a peel-&-stick applique' which simply fits inside the ship's hull 

The rigging really does wonders for the look of this toy!

Here you can see what the cut-out looks like in place in the ships hull

Rigging

This shows how the rigging was 'attached' to the masts and hull. Nothing was glued in place - only where I had to tie knots was a dab of super glue used.

I used one length of string for the front mast, another to connect the two masts at the top, and a third for the stern mast.