Toy Store

 Having sorted out some glitches associated with the recent purchase of a laundry machine, Karen and I betook ourselves to a Toy World to see what might be found there.  This was a treat for me, you understand, Karen not being into this sort of thing, herself.  The first thing to catch my eye was the little item above: 1:144 scale aircraft.  I thought it might be a Yak3 or Yak9, but the packaging didn't actually say. Research indicates it's a MiG3  - but that's fine.  It's a Soviet Union WW2 aircraft.  For some reason I have found that 1:144 scale aircraft 'go' better with 1:76 scale ground vehicles and figures than do 1:72 scale. Haven't a clue why.  At any rate, although there were other aircraft of this manufacture there, there were no more MiG3 types.  Five bucks: that'll do... ...

After a bit more strolling around, I found some Army Men stuff stapled or riveted in clear bags to the card thingies you see pictured.  Now it has to be said that this constitutes misleading packaging.  Had I believed it, I would not have bought two packs at $10 the time.  The figures pictured are a reasonable sampling, but the vehicles... not even close.

I've been looking around for equipment for my Jono's World armies.  These packs seemed to fill the bill.  Here's some of the interesting stuff you do get...

To begin with, a very handy looking artillery piece.  True, the gun bit was upside down, and a wee bit of trimming had to be performed to make the gun shields sit right, but the outcome is a righteous piece of ordnance - very like the good old British 25pr.  Bear in mind I bought 2 packs, so the equipments are being pictured in pairs in this posting.

It is my habit to draw small round circles in the ends of the barrels to give them at least the appearance of tubing...

 There was also a tank: recognizable as a Centurion.  You will observe that I misliked the gun barrels enough to replace them with plastic tubing (I have a considerable store of cotton buds, for which I have to thank a pair of chronically itchy ears...).   The originals just looked horrible.  It was easy enough to bore a hole down the stump towards the mantlet, shove in a sliver of toothpick and glue the cotton bud over all.  It gives the look of the early 20pr gun armed Centurion.

 Of course these tanks are under scale compared with most of my Army Men guys, although in these packs the Army Men aren't as large as many that I have, these ones being pretty consistently a whisker over 40mm overall in height.  So they look pretty compatible with the tanks.  Below the two Centurions face a PzIV I bought in Hokitika just over a year ago.  Of course, in Jono's World, these aren't Centurions, but something a little lighter.   Incidentally, I not worrying overmuch about the varying sizes of my Army Men soldiery, being anything from close to 40mm to nearly 60mm tall.  Mixed up and painted, the differences are barely noticeable.

Now this fellow below is interesting.  What to do with it?  It was about the size of the jeeps, and I did think of keeping it as is as some kind of dune- or swamp-buggy technical or scout car.  It just doesn't look quite right though.

The alternative plan is to remove the larger weapon and use that as the basis for infantry water-cooled MMG cognate to the Vickers machine gun.  Then replace this with a circular turret using the mudguard-mounted weapon as the mantlet and gun.  This vehicle would then become a light armoured/scout car.  

Each pack came with a pair of jeeps pretty close to the scale of the figures, and quite a lot smaller than some examples I had from a different manufacture that were too over scale even to be called 'Beeps' (Big Jeeps) or 'Heeps' (Huge Jeeps) or even 'Wgheeps' (Whopping great humongous jeeps).  It seems they ought to have had drivers with them, though, judging by the suggestive looking spikes (since removed) on the driving seats...  Meanwhile the 'BgBgeeps' (Bally great Brobdignagianly gargantuan jeeps) will become light trucks or artillery tractors... or something...

Along with some assorted impedimenta such as tents and weapons emplacements and oil drums and such - and the oddest-looking (and useless) helicoptery thing I have ever seen - came this interesting item:  an assault boat. Taken in total, then, the packs contained quite a selection of useful and handy stuff.

Before closing this, here is a pic of the artillery device I have ... erm ... devised for my Jono's World project. The original you will see pictured in the Jono's world Archives, but I have since modified the design slightly, and printed it on clear plastic (overhead transparency film).  I will explain its function and use in a future posting...

The original device in use.  The building in the left was the target, but the fall of shot was 'over' and to the left, with fatal results for some Raesharn soldiery sheltering in the village square...

Oh, and meanwhile, I've finished painting the kitchen... :-)