R is for a Return to Premier's Pocket Rockets

Well, it's been four months and I can honestly say Windows 11 is the worst version since Vista, or even Windows 98. I used to enjoy 'computing', now it's become a necessary chore! Anyhoo's I mentioned the other day we’d return to these in a future post, this is the future, or it was until you read it, so let's go!

This is how they arrived, and it was not a pretty sight, thick layer/s of stab-and-hope (with a 'craft' brush) paint, which would have looked quite fetching if done properly! The gloss black and matt red are OK, in that they are quite flat coats, but the yellow is as thick as cheese and cracked like a lakebed in a drought?

While this is mid-way through the thorough cleaning I gave them, at this point they have just been rinsed after washing, after an hour or so in TFR (Traffic Film Remover - concentrated ammonia), after an overnight dip in 50% bleach. The red is clinging to the contact-line with the yellow, while the yellow isn't budging, one iota!

I repeated the process over the next 24-odd hours, and maybe got them a bit cleaner, but that yellow 'aint going nowhere, and while because it's definitely a different type of paint, I was wondering if it might be factory-applied, the fact is I can't find other examples, and the red is still clinging to the contact-line so may go under it, which means, I guess, the painter used some powerful, pre-health & safety era, probably lead-based shit they found in their dad's tractor shed . . . 1950's Claas-yellow Rustoleum anyone?

I do have another hard plastic one somewhere in blue and a couple of polyethylene jobbies, I think, but since Ed Berg went through them all, I know I have a ways to go, so these will stay like this for a while, and at some point I'll have to give them a new coat with an airbrush or aerosol, just to neaten them up a bit! At least the wheels are there on the bigger one.

Ed gave them a nomenclature which makes sense, so I'll adopt it, and he calls the little-one a 3" Wide Body - version 1 while the larger model is a 5" Dart - version 6, I think? And they are all described here with links to the individual posts.

A is for A Little Bit of Silliness

Unless you worry about rubbish, in which case Wombles are very serious things!

I picked this chap up in a mixed lot the other day, I think he may have been Uncle Bulgaria once but he was beyond tatty, and it was either save him somehow or . . . off to recycling . . . sniff!

Now; I feel I have a close association with Wombles, my Granny made my brother and I very realistic ones in her craft group when we were kids which I still have somewhere; you often see similar really good unbranded Wombles in charity shops or on feeBay and I think they were all produced with the same plans/pattern by WI-circles and the like? They sometimes have sewn-in paper or card stiffening the ears! We had Uncle B and Wellington.

Also; we were big fans of the TV series anyway, and later we rented a field from the Author (Liza Beresford) who would sometimes chat to us over the wall while we worked it, so throwing Wombles in the recycling is akin to cold-blooded murder, ergo; 'Do something Muttley!' was the only option!

The flock had to go, I tried to save the scarf but it fell apart due to age! I saved the eye (2) and the nose (3), and would have replaced the missing eye, or both with glass beads, but the remains of his looking-glasses had such a long locating-stud (1), I managed to melt a bead on the end with a cigarette lighter (at the cost of heat-tendered finger-tips) and form a new eye. The key-ring chain-loop (⊂) was the last thing to go.

The scarf was then fashioned with a section of bootlace, which is looped through itself in the modern style and was held-tight and glued at the knot over-night, before being trimmed and the ends frayed with a hat-pin!

As there is already an Alderney ['she'], I shall call him Berlin and he can join the hard plastic ones we've seen in-part, a couple of times now, but - while I want to tick that box - I'm still waiting for an elusive Madame Cholet to turn up.

I suspect both these flocked blow-moulds and the similar-sized hard-plastic ones were HCF imports, certainly there were the remains of one of those little gold stickers on the underside of his feet, but it's a guess, not yet empirical.

I is for Indian Camp Set

I bought this the other day offofov evilBay, I'd had it bookmarked for some time, a year or so, and thought well, if I can't celebrate Brwreakshit after all, I'd better get myself a prezzie or two instead! I don't know if the seller has loads or if no-one wanted this one, but for a generic pocket-money rack-toy I thought it was dinky and inexpensive!

How it was presented on the feeBay, contents had come loose due to perished rubber-bands, but it was otherwise in one piece and an interesting combination of Britains piracies, a Jean-copy totem-pole, scaled-down, and the tee-pee.

The remains of the elastics along with the marks on the three brown pieces, all having a simple HONG KONG. The tee-pee has a MADE IN HONG KONG, which is double/part-triple stamped on the inside of the rear wall of the tee-pee, and almost impossible to photograph, so you'll have to believe me (except TJF the poor love; he'll have to wait until someone he trusts holds his hand and confirms the detail!), but as a small scale collector, for years, over years, I'd hoovered-up about ten of them, loose, and I can assure you they all have the same mark.

Put together, as it was before old-age attacked its integrity - lesson for us all there I fear! I've seen the other bits before but the Jean rip-off is new to me, it's quite reduced in size I think (I'll do a comparison at some point) and painted, but then so were early Jean issues. I'll be looking for a loose one now as having put it back together I can't put it in the side-collection of totem poles.

All back 'in one piece' on the right; when I take these apart I ease everything off the opened staples, leaving them in one side of the card, and making a note of which-way round the bag was and where the folds were.

When I put it back together I ease each layer of the bag onto the staples, ensure any folds in the bag have laid-flat correctly, then slip the other half of the card onto them and close them (the staples) down again.

The main image shows what was probably an [earlier] donor for this set's 'second-generation' copy teepee; it's larger, has different painting, better etching of detail and a HONG KONG mark on the outside rear. We have seen later, mono-coloured versions of this tent from Rado and someone else here in the past, while full-size copies also exist.

Happy Birthday to me,

Happy Birthday to me,

Brwreakshit's been-kicked....further down-the-roaaaad!

Happy Birthday to me!

And it was days ago so none of that mawkish shit in the comments! But I'm off the hook now, it can be someone else's day, if it ever happens!

O is for Only One Casualty . . . so Far!

Moving all your stuff into storage, then having it moved - in situ - on the back of a lorry up a rutted farm track (without your say so) to a new site, and then getting it out of storage, cross-transferring it through two vehicles and piling it in the garage - over seven years, is bound to lead to casualties, and while there is a pile of matchwood to super-glue (not for the first time) in the kits [half-tracks and armoured cars drawer] cabinet, the only real casualty so far has been Edward Ryan's excellent tome;  Paper Soldiers . . .

. . . which got wet in a squall/thunder storm the day of the move, long after I'd given up for the evening, a small trickle of water got into the garage and while all the books in the box were the same way-up (open ends down), this seemed to soak it all up!

Anyway, three whole rolls of kitchen paper and a couple of months to let it dry-out 'un-forced' and it's almost as good as new, a couple of pages are slightly ribbed and one has a water mark, why only one, I don't know! And it's lucky, 'cos the price of a replacement copy on-line is getting as silly as Opie's Big Book of Britains!

The trick was to place each sheet of paper-towel toward the outside/open-side of the book, so that not too much strain was put on the spine (which didn't get wet), this allowed air to circulate, once the whole book was done the weight of it pressed the pages out gently which - I think - is why so few of the pages ribbed, although I turned it every few days so the weight wasn't unequally pressing on one half the whole time.

D is for Drevopodnik

Wound-up in Czechoslovakia around 1998 - some ten years after 'The Wall' came down (actually it was the falling of a curtain!) as another bankrupt former state manufacturing concern and based in Brno (when the Bren-gun gets half its name from!), all I can find in relation to this company is that it was a general household goods manufacturer who also offered glass-grinding, glazing and drilling as well as apprenticeships in cabinet making!

At some point someone thought to manufacture at least two sets of figures in a rough composition (very similar to the old Rawlplug 'plastic wood'), the set shown here and another I've seen with more colourful Napoleonic or ceremonial type uniforms.

These came to us at a general antiques fair, where someone thought they'd be a 'bit of us', and my mate - who's stall it was - said "..go-on then", and bought them while I was out having a cigarette! By the time I got back to the table he was having serious second thoughts, having looked more closely at them and seen that there was a fair amount of damage.

I thought - wow, they're a bit different, I'll have them, I'm sure I can fix most of them! So silver crossed palms on them for the secound time in minutes and they were mine. I won't tell what my friend paid, or what I paid, but suffice to say it wasn't much either way, but probably more than I can afford given my current circumstances...I still owe him twenty-five quid, but that's for something else!!

A quick look at the three sets shows a cirtain amount of damage, particularly the figure top-right on each card. There were also four loose figures from the same set.

As they came out of the heat-shrinked packaging, it became obvious that the damage was a little worse than appeared, with bits falling off more than 75% of the figures, paint damage and other horrors. Also it was clear that Q/A and/or Q/C was not a priority in the Drevopodnik works and they seemed to have been finished - at least partially - by hand.

So each figure was placed in a separate bag, with all it's bits and the bags were stacked (open) in a shoe-box and placed in front of the ducting vent in my flat's wet-room, where hot-air (this was back in the spring) was blown over them for 48hrs, to remove any damp that might have been responcible for some of the finer crumbling.

Then they were taken one at a time to the surgical bench and stuck back together with super-glue (which was of course it's original use - in Vietnam). The really bad ones were left in the bags until the end, and some figures had to be composed from several, to get a 'full set'. Others were fine though and as they were given the once over they were lined-up on a bizarre parade!

When the whole process was complete, the pile bottom-right in the above collage was left over, and after humming and harring for an hour or so - I threw it away. It took two days to fix them all, and I am now looking for some paint to match them, especially the Paratrooper, as the best example lost all his helmet paint as he was peeled off the backing film. I also need to track-down a tube of the aforementioned Rawlplug plastic-wood (that hasn't gone hard), to fill a few gaps...do they still make it?

Top left; The NBC alert guards - three out of four 'aint bad as Mr. Loaf might say! These were particularly hard to mend as they had all suffered their brakes up the legs or around the hips (or both) rather than the more common - and easier to fix - ankle-damage of the others.

Below them is a shot of their bases, with what I presume to be the makers mark's, possibly the wood-working apprentices...using-up wood-filler to produce a Christmas 'cash-crop'??

Top right; are a conversion/head-swap using the staff-officer's head, that came from the bits that were left-over after I'd got one decent set together. The figures on either end of the line-up (medic and traffic cop), had to be built-up from several donors and still need a bit of filler and stuff.

So - if any Czech or Slovakian readers are following this blog, can you add anything? Did you work in the Drevopodnik M. Brna factory in Brno (Bruno), or know someone who did? Does anyone know the extent of the full range?

I think there may have been a card of Indians (native American) as well, but that might be a false memory, and the trouble with false memory in the age of the Internet is that it tends to reappear as someone else's fact!

Note; The figures reached some untouchable temperatures as I bled super-glue into them. I don't now the physics or the chemistry but it was a hell of a reaction...I was using pound-shop stuff, as you get three tubes for a quid and they tend not to produce the white deposit of the more the expensive glues.

A is for Angel...Airfix Angel

...coming at you out of the sun, to do some worthy stuff! The Airfix Captain Scarlet 'Angel Interceptor' piloted by Destiny Angel*. This came via a mixed lot from a car-boot sale years ago, in a hell of a state and several pieces, however all the pieces were there except some pitot-tube/sensor-probe thing [*] coming out of the top of the nose which still needs to be fashioned from stretched sprue, but I'm waiting for a piece of white Airfix sprue of the right age and if I wait any longer there will be no point in posting it as I believe this model is scheduled for a re-release from Hornby - if it hasn't already hit the stores?

[*It's actually the cannon! How many times have I looked at the old box art! So: complete...?]

I had to remove a lot of yellowing glue-stains with very gentle scraping of the bodywork using a new scalpel blade, then put everything back together with a modern non-staining liquid poly-cement and er...that was it! Luckily the canopy was not too bad, and I've held it in place with one of these non-invasive aqueous liquids railway and car modellers use to create window glazing, and apart from a set of transfers - still to be found - was going to leave it like this.

I will get one of the re-issues and give it a wacky 'Trigan Empire' paint job with panel wash and staining, move the canards to either side of the nose rather than under it, and give it some landing gear from an airliner - multiple wheels instead of skids (maybe the Concord quadruple wheel arrangement?) and turn either the wings or the tail the other way up so that the geometry of the tips match, but this one is in a near perfect 'out-the-box' state now and can stay that way!

* Other 'Angels' were available and your statutory rights are not affected by this fact.

B is for Blitzkrieg

It is one of those perennial questions, often leading to heated debate; Why the interest in German 'Stuff', if you add SS/NAZI party organisations to the mix it gets even more heated, but ever since I have been reading or buying modelling or wargame magazines there have been regular debates on the subject.

And it can't be argued that when it comes to AFV's or Figures (the formula doesn't carry over to warships or 'planes), the manufacturers will tell you the Germans out-sell the rest of the combatants 3 or 4 to one. My brother's Detail was no more an exception than my Airfix kit stash; as could be seen from the box shot the other day, and here they finally are...

Sorting them out lead to 4 piles; Filthy with no stickers, dirty with stickers, needing a wipe and on the right - almost as good as the day they left the factory.

I have read all sorts of complicated suggestions for cleaning vinyl/PVC, and have learnt the hard way not to use paint-stripper (they just blister), there is no great science to it and I've just used a dollop of shower-gel in a bit of warm water, soak for a minute and clean with an old toothbrush.

Before (above) and after (below), they clean up very well, and while the 'wash' finish on the early British Infantry, Wild West and 7th Cavalry did tend to wear-off, the solid colour used here was itself a kind of vinyl, so is pretty much 'welded' in place, and a quick clean brings them right back.

A few years ago Andy Harfield actually sourced some vinyl paints, but there was a poor take-up at the time (I believe) and he only carried them for a year or three. I once did some work for a corporate entertainments company and we used large tins of the stuff to make 'It's a Knockout' (Jeux sans Frontières [JSF]) type structures and I can only tell you that it runs at two to three times the cost of equivalent emulsions or oil-based household glosses.

There are only one or two decent arm-swaps in this set, while my Brother converted (through necessity) a broken MP38/40 guy into a Mauser armed NCO or dismounted AFV crewman? The butt being explained by the fact that a clip-on rifle type stock was available for the Mauser!

I realised while cleaning them that the officer is the only figure from the Afrika Korps set repainted by Bro to fit in with his early-war temperate theatre guys, while one of the missing helmet-stickers turned-up on the rear stock...where I have a vague memory of placing it many years ago!

Notice also how our mother (My MUM!), ever resourceful - has taken the sidecar in for a service and sent it out with an aerodynamic wheel hub...she'd used a domed upholstery pin to mend the broken axle! I can report that it still works perfectly and is neither stiff nor loose, 30-odd years later.

His whole collection putting in an attack supported by an emplaced gun and the Sd.Kfz 215 from Dinky Toys. Between those shots is a pose line-up, missing being only the radio operator from the 2nd pose issue. Broken mortar's teams providing crews for both the AFV and the Britains artillery piece.

The third figures along (in both rows) are often described as having MG34's or 42's (even the wikipedia entry for Detail makes the mistake) when it is in fact - in both cases - a close representation of the Panzerbüchse 39 (PzB 39) anti-tank rifle, why Britains would produce such an obscure weapon (for a toy figure to be equiped with) not just once but twice is a bit of a mystery, although with the early-war uniforms, such weapons would have been common at company if not platoon level.

D is for Detail

The real reason I grabbed the Japanese in the post below when I was at the unit the other day was because I thought I had the Japanese Detail figures missing from this lot; I didn't but we'll look at them anyway...

This rather grubby box was not a car-boot find, it came from the attic at Mums and consists of my Brother's childhood collection of Britains Detail, which as you can see is A) German heavy, and B) in a bit of a state brought about by 24 years or so in a poor environment, luckily they are PVC and will take a lot of punishment.

As can be seen some have a black 'bread mould' all over them, others a white bloom. They will clean-up with nothing more than a little mild detergent such as washing-up liquid or - as I used here - shower-gel!

Before and after shower-gel shots of the US Infantry. These are all early types with the separate arms, some would later be redesigned to have integral arms. The very earliest had brown bases, but they changed to green - as memory recalls - within the first year or so, the early Brits and Germans also got brown bases initially.

If you clean them in mildly hot/warmish water, you can also straiten any bent bits and get all the figures to stand-up properly at the same time.

There is a pose missing, as the officer in these shots has been removed from the recoiless-rifle base, yet without a catalogue to hand I can't remember the missing pose! The fact that they got a second set of new poses doesn't help...there was another advancing pose, a bazooka-man, a grenade thrower and others including another waving rifle (was he the other first series?) and a stabbing with bayonet.

Various arm-swaps, a paint colour variation (bottom left) and the rather tatty Recoiless-rifle given a new lease of life with a different figure. The rifle has been wedged in to the original slots! These guys are all missing their helmet stickers and while I know someone with German sticker sheets, I don't know anyone with the US stars (black on a red shield).

My brother has said in the past that I can have this box for my collection, but once they have been posted here there is no real need to keep them and I will clean them all up, give them a better container and put them back in the loft, he'll be glad I did one day...

C is for Cautionary Tales

I bought this about a year ago, I had finished a job and felt like a present for myself, so managed to tick-off a couple of the items on my 'wants' list with a bit of judicious eBaying. The purchase produced an immediate response on one of the Forums and I quote;

"An empty box for the Airfix Attack Force Set just sold for a staggering £67.87 on eBay. I shudder to think what that means for the value of a complete set

The seller made no secret of the fact that it was just an empty box, so the four bidders must have known what they were bidding on. The description that this is "easily the rarest of all the playsets" I do not share: the same size Beach-head Invasion Set is far rarer than this one, which - that much is true - is quite difficult to find."

Now, it must be understood that A) The same weekend a common (and fifteen or so years younger) Pontoon Bridge Assault Set went for £170-something, while I also 'ticked-off' one of the Britains Lilliput carded sets for £40-something. B) In the last few weeks; equally common play sets have been reaching anything between one and three-hundred plus. C) The author of the above comment already had one so we can't even blame 'sour grapes' in the traditional sense for the mealy-mouthed comment. D) He almost certainly knew who won it as these guys obsess over eBay, and was making a wider 'point' re. internal forum politics!

The fact is; It's a reasonably rare set, it was in pretty good nick (see below!) and at 70-odd quid a bargain. However - eBay is a bit of a snake pit, you pays your money, makes your choice and have to live with the consequences. The seller has almost no influence these days, the buyer - should he choose - can literally get away with criminality and most national police, postal and consumer affairs organisations will have nothing to do with any problems generated by eBay sales/purchases.

I have been suggesting for sometime that eBay is on it's uppers, and turning into a market place for new goods, and eBay would seem - with every change they make - to agree with me!!

But; that's not the cautionary tale, the cautionary tale is, if you want to share your knowledge with other people, get a blog and they'll come. It's true they'll go back to their own blog and 'discover' the cricketers you've just posted without crediting you, but that's human nature and one should rise above it...if one can...?

Don't go to a locked-down forum with 300 members, 200 of whom want to sell you Italian sandals, Viagra, rubber love-rockets or wholesale toasters, with another 50 having not posted in over a year leaving you with 40 or so genuine members and a few sand-castle builders giving it the big 'I am'.

Rant over; lets look at the beast...and sort it out!

This is the original sales picture, it is clear from the photograph that both the front corners are split top-to-bottom, OK; 'Caveat Emptor', I can see the damage, but it's not in the description, so...polite note to seller along the lines of; "It looks like/Are the corners split, is there any other damage?"

Nice chatty email back; "Seen your blog...really rare set...only selling 'cause I need the money/space/changing scale of my collection...", whatever...but - no mention of the corners or other damage. Well, I'm an easy going chap - until someone riles me (then I'll hold a grudge a thousand years!), so similar eMail is sent off and of course while you hope he's got the idea that you don't mind the damage but just want it packed carefully (resulting in a second reply to the effect that it will be well packed) you end up assuming by now he is just misunderstanding your need for a reply to non-rhetorical questions!

You bid, you win the item, it arrives beautifully packed in a larger box than itself, in all dimentions, with newspaper-twists (the best - and cheapest - form of packing for lightweight items) holding it firmly in place...

But!...to 'help'; he's taped both corners together with what looks like half a mile of crystal-tape (very sticky) AND lined the insides with brown-paper tape!!! Several layers!

Do you laugh? Do you cry? do you swear out-loud and rip it to pieces! Or do you send it back? I laughed a little and swore a little, but knew deep down that I'd half expected something of the sort.

Second lesson...If a seller doesn't answer questions 'right' the deal is suspect, it doesn't matter what or why, a genuine seller should answer all questions fully within 48 hours of you're asking and supply any extra images you ask for. Indeed it's a good test to ask for extra photographs, as the item should be at hand, having already been recently photographed to put on whatever auction site you're dealing with, and ready for posting? You can't seriously run an eBay seller account without an eMail address, a PC and a digital camera.

So accepting that greed and a pocketful of cash had got me in my own - typically 'eBay' - predicament, renovation was the only choice. I decided that I'd use it as an example for the blog, but my camera was dying this time last year and I still hadn't got the loan of Giles', however it worked a bit better indoors than out, so while they aren't the best shots I've posted they aren't the worst either!

The first thing to do was get the tape off without damaging the paintwork or underlying cardboard. A hot-air paint stripper is the answer, but turned down to the point where you can almost use it as a hair dryer - suggesting that a hair dryer turned up will probably do an equally good job?

The shot on the left shows the tape starting to curl-back on itself, while the little scraps on the right were my entry in this years Royal Academy exhibition!! You can see that there is a slight loss of printers ink as the tape comes away.

Shots showing the dog-ears you'd, expect even if the deal had otherwise gone right, along with the multiple layers of brown paper tape. He's done a good job, and a few years ago I'd have done the same, but having done the inside like this I would never tape the outside? I guess he taped the outside first to get the shape, but you can do that with string or rubber bands...

So - next step; dampen the paper tape and peel carefully, a layer at a time, I use warm water as it seems to penetrate quicker, and a fine mister. Stop peeling every time a tear/peel extends into dry paper or you need to pull harder, go back to the mister, this phase is all about patience. If you over-mist, soak up the residue with kitchen paper.

Once the paper tape is off; undo the box and lay some hardboard on the floor, then carefully, gently using a clean butchers rag (not a duster - it'll dye the whole thing yellow...don't ask, but renovation is a learning curve!) or cotton-wool, and some distilled water (from an auto-parts place) proceed to wipe the whole thing, changing wool/cloths frequently until either of the following happen;

- The cotton-wool/cloth is only slightly discolouring (pale greyish residue)
- The cotton-wool/cloth starts to go pink (or whatever colour the piece you're working with)

Then place a towel over the hardboard, dampen the whole box and then using an iron on a medium setting (not a steam setting - the misting you've given the card will produce all the steam you want), and proceed to iron through a plain sheet of white paper until the whole thing is 'dryish', turn it over and do the same to the other side (to prevent curling).

Once both sides are dryish (the seams and folds will still be dark with moisture), take a new (dry) towel and place an old white t-shirt or sock over the iron, and continue to iron, turning the flattened box regularly until it is absolutely dry...you'll know when that is as it will regain it's full rigidity.

Finally; fold it back up together, and where - a few years ago - I would have advocated the brown-paper treatment, you now only need to bleed a bit of super-glue into the join and hold until it's set.

You can speed-up the setting by huffing on it, like you'd mist a train-window as a kid, the moisture in your breath will activate the super-glue, that's why fingers glue so easily when you're working with the stuff. The hint also works with aerials, photo-etched fret-work and other things on small kits. Indeed - I sometimes set super-glue with a wet paint brush.

The two insets and the circled items in the photograph show a slight discolouration of the super-glue, but you're never going to get it perfect without a three-year museum study course! The arrow highlights the fading caused by eh tape removal, I can live with it, some couldn't.

Was it worth £70 quid?...Of course it bloody was! And nothing some farty little middle-class, middle-aged, overpaid, jumped-up twerp from a country who's military history t'ain't worth writing a book about (yet still managed to do more damage to Africa than us, the French, the Italians and the Germans put together!) says about it, will change the fact.

The vac-formed insert will turn up in a mixed lot of vac-forms at a show eventually - guarantee it, while the vehicles and figures are already in the box! I also disagree with his claim that it's not as rare as the one below it in the above picture, I've seen/handled three of the orange ones (which was later and contained a cross-over mix of early and late type ready-mades), this is my first red one (which being earlier - only contains Attack Force), but those grapes must look so much nicer in his cupboard!

PS - Never, ever, EVER be tempted to use bleach, it eats cellulose and will turn you cardboard to dry papyrus slowly in the cupboard over time, like grapes turn to sultanas if you don't eat them when you see them going cheap!

M is for MPC...Miniature Military 'Minis'

In 1997 - just as I was moving house and he was moving States! – I read about Bob Maschi’s publication on MPC Minis, due (if I remember correctly?) to the issue of an update actioned by his earlier reader’s feedback. He kindly sent me a copy with the fatal words “We can sort the money out later”.

Well, the more astute of you will be ahead of me on this one…I never managed to pay the man, lost the guides, lost his new address details and now 14 years later I find myself unable to locate him, even on the internet! So if anybody knows the current whereabouts of Bob Maschi, could they either let me know or pass my email [maverickatlarge@hotmail.com] on to him, so that I can remunerate him properly?


These little vehicles (They also did ships and Aircraft which I will cover another day and civilian cars of which I have hardly any) were issued in various forms and supplied to other people as premiums, but there was usually also a ‘standard’ pack with the complete set or a large number of the range contained within it.

This is the box for the military vehicle’s – also known sometimes as ‘Teenies’. When I got it; it was in two parts among several boxes of paperwork, the back panel/instructions having been torn away down the fold lines. However, as the tears were ‘clean’ it was a simple matter of supper-gluing it all back together again!


Some thematic shots, I’m missing 8 in total, which I think should have been in the box, so they’ve gone the way of flesh I’m afraid. My ‘Beep’ (Big Jeep) was found in the UK years earlier and is missing its aerial and a bit dirty, however I have the aerial for the missing set Beep, only it’s a different shade of metallic Blue! So far I’ve only seen these in metallic blue but seem to remember Bob saying they came in green early on.

There are also piracies by a Hong Kong producer in green marked IPA (I think? I’ve got a T54 somewhere but could I find it for the photo-shoot! I’ll have to add it another day). The subjects are all either late WWII or 1950’s kit, so would have been pretty incongruous to the child-collector of the 1960’s. The self-propelled 88mm (or 105mm?) and the CMP-cab’ed allied truck being the most unlikely vehicles to have served alongside the latter stuff!


American 6x6 trucks, THE military symbol of two generations, but increasingly only seen in home waters these days, among my favorites and the GS was seen here a while ago when I covered them separately, but I saved the other two for this post.

The Honest John is rather ruined by having its product information carved in relief down the sides, but considering it’s a three-part model in less than 1/100 scale, you can’t really kick-up too much, it’s a lovely little model.


The collection to date, less the Beep which is a darker blue and I’m missing one of the plug-ins for the SWS (a radar dish). The most felt absence is the Land Rover. I’d also like to locate the two missing British Armoured Cars and the Sd.Kfz.234 Puma.

Also missing are a Weasel, and an 8” Howitzer tractor, plus two French vehicles (no loss! They probably stayed in barracks).

R is for Rescued!

Into the valley rode the six-hundred...some of the horses returned without their riders...

I dug this out of a flower bed on Tuesday, recon it's been there for at least 40 years. I thought it might be Crescent but it doesn't seem to be, therefore I'm going to guess a German make as the detailing is too good for Britians? Hussar? What to do with it? It's too far gone for restoration so it will go in the 'Cabinet of Curiosities'!

F is for Finishing-touches - S.A.E. tray, part 2

Right, so, we left it drying...after about 20 mins./half-an-hour it's time for the more radical element of this restoration, as we are now going to add 'stuff' which will forever change it. Up until now it's just been cleaning/shaping. if you want to preserve the item 'as is', this next step is not for you.

Taking gummed paper parcel/book binders tape, cut lengths to cover all tares, piercing holes creases and other structural blemishes (sometimes I will reinforce the whole length of fold-lines), in this instance I've just run a strip down the feeder-holes for the figures, and there were a couple of small tares - not photographed. Soak the paper on the gummed side (really wet it with a slow tap, licking it won't work, it'll dry-out and come off in a month or two), and place carefully where you want it, then dab it down with kitchen paper, getting the excess water off at the same time. Dab only, if you stroke across it while it is still very wet, it will slide and fold and you'll have to start again while the restored card gets wetter and wetter!

Because - up to this point - both this and the earlier post represent about 45 minutes in real time this afternoon, the iron is still warm, so dry everything off with it. Again; both-siding it.

Note: to prevent the paper leading to curling, days or weeks in the future (or when you iron and it dries-out quickly) you NEED to do two layers, crossing the tape, which you will see has a natural tendency to curl one way, wet or dry. If doing tiny mends, you will need to mark them with tiny pencil marks which can be rubbed/erased after it's all dry.

Once everything is dry - properly cheek-test dry - cut out any pieces that overlap the product, that cover a 'meant' hole - as here - or that are blocking a cut line (when you reinforce the torn end flaps, of a box for instance, its best to cover the flap, side and main panel with large pieces of paper tape overlapping onto the work surface, and then trim everything back afterward (in the past I've stuck the whole lot to a piece of paper underneath to hold it all together, and then when you trim the tape the paper falls away).

The reason for the end-grain being useful now comes into play, trimming without damaging the original, especially on something as complicated as these feeder-holes, is best done on a very smooth polished surface (stone cutting board if you have one) or an end-grain board, or the sort of thick card you get under a note-pad. If you use a long-grain work table, it can grip the tip of the blade (always use a very fine blade for this job - I use a Swan Morton No. 3 handle with size 11 blade) and carry it into the product in a millisecond, if you're not very careful - and I'm not!

Last would be to replace any clear panels (Airfix or Matchbox boxes for instance) by cutting a piece of the correct material bigger than needed, gluing with a contact adhesive, waiting until both surfaces were dry, then lining up the clear sheet, carefully dropping one corner in and then working across on the diagonal to the far corner, keeping everything smooth. Best thing is to use a plastic scraper or ruler to 'draw' the sheet across/down onto the product.

Finally you can re-fold/re-build the box/card/container, at this stage old card will crack down the fold-lines, or existing flaps of the surface material (most cardboard's are ply-laminates) which were on the outside and haven't benefited from the work on the interior/reverse will pop up. These are best fixed by a little bleeding in of a thin superglue and then smoothing down with a whetted finger, careful not to stick yourself to your beautiful new/old box! There's a knack to this, if you daren't try, use an accelerator pen instead, holding the piece to be clued with the fine point of your knife or a pin or toothpick.

The rubber band is due to the fact that while I was fixing the tiny flap in the photo, the opposite corner ripped (not cheek-test dry enough!) and I had to glue it, or start again! Nightmare! But these things happen when you're restoring 40 year + paper products!

Larger cracks will probably/should have had gummed paper applied to the inside, so will be less problematical and can have white/wood-glue bled into them, which will soak in and dry with less marking...too much super glue, or resorting to the accelerator pen will result in a permanent matt white bloom, given the thing was all but wrecked earlier, it's a small price in my book, but you may think differently. The white glue option at this point will require an overnight drying.

The finished tray. The figures needed to be placed-in as I was reconstructing, in fact set 20-s should be Morocco Infantry 1954 Standing, but someone else got that lot at the auction, so if you have the troops, but a Highlander box (17-s, Scottish Infantry 1914 standing) I'll swap Yah! You would have bought them from the 'Short Equator'.

If these two posts have been useful - albeit long winded - let me know and I'll try and do others in the same vein. The whole process including photographing took an hour or so. it's taken half the night to process the photo's and write it up!!

R is for Restoration - S.A.E. tray, part 1

Right - The first thing to do is take the damaged tray apart slowly and carefully, making sure as to not extend any existing tears, picture shows the tray laid out with the already separated tag.

Then, the really nerve-stretching bit; run the tray under a warm tap, warm water will penetrate more easily than cold and seems to help soften the card, although this may be pure imagination. This phase needs to be very quick, I had a firm hold of one large area of card and my fingers are supporting the other main area underneath. All you're trying to do is get it damp all over.

Immediately the card is covered with water and has changed/is changing colour as the water penetrates, get it on to a porous surface, I'm using an end-grain cutting board (for reasons that will become apparent in part two), and start to dab of the excess water with copious amounts of kitchen-roll.

Inset - where there is damage of the twisted/scuffed-card type, gently ease the card back into its proper shape/position, or press down as I'm doing here, below is the torn piece now back in place. [In fact - you can see in the left hand photo, how it was scrunched-up]

Note: Depending on the printing type, you might do this phase with the printed surface uppermost. Later (1970/80's) laminated card might stick to the under-surface at this point ant peel-off when you try to lift it. Because this is earlier print which is fixed into the card it's safer to do it this way as you can see more blemishes on the undecorated side.

Now we come to the (another) really nerve-stretching part! Dry the board after the card has been dabbed, and lay down a couple of sheets of unbleached paper, printer/craft/artist or type-writer, just make sure it's unbleached, so that while the product is still damp it doesn't take up some bleach which will cause problems in years to come. Not to say that it may not already have bleach in it! - yellowing packaging is a sure sign of bleached paper/card.

Holding another piece of the same unbleached paper (see how I'm carefully over-emphasizing the bleach thing, I'm so good to you!!!!), proceed to iron the product with a dry (that's DRY, not steam) iron on a low setting, you don't want to burn it by accident, taking too long on one area. Lift and move the paper regularly (burn thing again) so you get an idea of how it's going, in the picture you can see how it's starting to dry-out from the bottom left.

Once it's all reasonably dry on one side, you will notice it starts to curl up (as a single sheet though, not individual tags or flaps as it had aged. At this point turn it, iron the other side until it too starts to curl, then turn it back give it a quick go again on the first side and stop. You should now have a single sheet of reasonably stiff card which is all but dry (the cheek test - laundry - will reveal it is still slightly damp), it should now be left for 20 minutes or so to dry-out fully under the head now within it, check for curling after ten minutes or so, if it's curling profoundly, give it another go both sides, a slight curl can be ignored.

Notes: If doing say a first-version Airfix (cartoon artwork) box, you'll find the card very delicate while the ink will take a lot of punishment, while the later 'Blue' and 'White' boxes will have better card but delicate print. The 'Long' boxes are pretty robust in card and print, but the later grey-blue Humbrol and current boxes will de-laminate with a POP! if the iron is remotely hot, so warm-to-touch and patience. Not that you'd bother with a modern box as you can just source a replacement. The thing I'm getting at is - Experiment with packaging you're not fussed about until you've 'got' the techniques you're happy with. I've reinforced boxes by painting them with wall-paper paste in the inside, letting that dry naturally and then damping them with a spay-bottle before following these steps, to prevent the card sticking to the paper, I used foil, and a higher heat. If you give it a try, you'll soon have techniques of you're own you'd swear by!

More next time, when we sort out the tares which are still there, half-hidden by the ironing and rebuild the package only to have a minor disaster!

F is for Forthcoming projects

Sorting out some elves (as you do!) for my previously mentioned spurt of enthusiasm for a spot of painting, I encountered a couple of other little things I've been meaning to do, so I thought I'd have a go at all three.

At the back is the SAE box I said some time ago I'd renovate and put up as a post, to the left, some bottle/olive green carpet strands I pulled off the carpet under the leaf mould pile when putting this years 'soil conditioner' on the veg. patch, which I'm going to try turning into a couple of trees and a hedge! To the right a gathering of Elves (one female Mithril, two Games Workshop - 1x 'Warhammer' and 1x DeAgostini 'Lord Of The Rings' - and a new Mantic 'Games of War'), we'll have a bit of a paint session with them...Watch this space!