Amishtat

As promised, the old Corgi A60 is painted!
I still couldn’t decide on colours. I very nearly painted it maroon with white stripe, but having tested the paint colour first I wasn’t convinced. 
But, to be honest the colour scheme corgi used was nice. It was just the L plates and roof wheel thingy that bothered me so I decided in the end, if it ain’t broke… or whatever!
So,


Lada Adriatic blue with a gloss white stripe. The blue will tone down a bit once it dries. 
The stripe was a bastard to mask up well. A combination of fairly rough casting edges along what would be bright trims on the real car and this particular car has some pretty heavy chips and dings in the same place so the tape was hard to cut where they were. But, it’s a toy that’s been played with over the past half century plus so what do you expect!
The good thing is though I can disguise the wavy edges between blue & white by painting in the bright trim which Corgi didn’t do. That’ll have to wait a few days though as the blue needs to harden off.
There is a bit of a ding/damage to the boot lid too which I didn’t fix, and a slight - very slight! - bend to the roof… but it’s an old toy!
Not sure if I’ll find a replacement front solid axle for this or just glue the original steering wheels in the straight position. 
Obviously the steering mechanism won’t be getting refitted so the steering wheels will just flop around independently of each other if I don’t glue them.
I still think Corgi missed a trick not releasing this model later, maybe by altering the tooling to remove the L plates and fill the hole in the roof, and punt it out in various colour combo’s but what’s done is done I guess! We’ll never know!

It’s actually in white primer now with the base painted, but I couldn’t make my mind up about colour(s) so it’s been sat on the bench in the shed for ages!
I will make my mind up tomorrow and paint it. No excuses!

Another Farina.
This time a Rustin Cambridge.
Like buses, two come along at once.

Round headlights on Hunters too for the first three years.

Round headlights on Hunters too for the first three years.

People go out every weekend and piss much more money than the sticker price on those sets up the wall at pubs and bars or worse still, throw money down the crapper in betting shops. 
I won’t suggest those things are a good idea or a sensible way of spending (losing!?) money, but it’s their thing and it seems to make them happy so whatever! 
If buying (definitely not collecting!!😄) those Matchbox play sets makes you happy then why the hell not!?
I don’t think you can always try to successfully reason why with a hobby like this. It’s different things to different people. 
Some might, as adults, want to buy themselves the toys they had or wanted when they were kids. 
Some might be just in it for collecting stuff.  
Maybe it’s a trip down memory lane and reliving that childhood thrill of Xmas morning or birthday getting a new toy. 

I think for me personally, I’m more interested in them from a model perspective. I do like the toys but since I’ve started collecting these things again as an adult it’s been the ‘model’ part of the hobby that’s piqued my interest. Again though… why!?
Ive thought long about this! 
I think it’s a way of living what I feel I missed out on. I’ve always been a petrol head, but I’ve always thought I was born in the wrong era. I’d have honestly been a pig in shit if I was an adult in the 80’s or 90’s when all the cars I love now were around in much bigger numbers and cost considerably less than they do now. I feel wronged in a weird way that I got stitched up with not being old enough to have enjoyed them!   
But… in a way I can now. I can buy a model of a Renault 18 (example!) and look at it and it looks exactly like a real one but in a size I can keep easily(ish). It also means I can have lots of them! And I can also do something constructive with my time by changing them, modifying or repainting them to make them a bit more realistic. And I like doing this!
Not everyone, even here, will see it the same way of course but each of you will have your own reasons for doing what we do. 
Really, does it even need to be a reason why!? If you enjoy it and get something from it then why not.
I used to get loads of shit off my peers as a kid for liking cars and trucks and trains etc etc, and even more shit would have come my way if they knew I also liked making and buying models of them. I kept it to myself and did it anyway, and I’m glad I did! Fuck the rest of them that don’t think your cool unless you spend all day kicking your brain around a field and aspiring to be some sinfully boring little tosser like (insert premier league footballers name here). 
Be different and do what makes you happy!

Some Matchbox Action Drivers silliness, then - as promised.

I just so happened to have assembled some of the latest purchases on the day the DanBox arrived, so that's broadly what populated them.

Matchbox have made, licenced and sold assorted little garages and other accessories since their early days so kids can augment their play experiences - sometimes plastic, sometimes cardboard. Sometimes great, sometimes daft.
Most of us here seem to have owned a few over the years, and after I let my much-loved Motorcity sets go sometime in the mid-1990s, I thought I was done with that sort of thing. I mean, detailed diecast cars are one thing, but brightly coloured plastic buildings are a different thing entirely, right? Too big, too simple, too kiddie-oriented. Not collector grade stuff. Not serious.
Turns out I was wrong... last February I encountered the Auto Shop set over in Home Bargains at an attractively low price. 

I saw it, I had a vague thought along the lines of "oh, that's quite a nice little set", and then I went away again. I hadn't noticed any of the Action Drivers range before, had never heard of them, had no intention of finding out any more about them.
But something had been set in motion, deep down inside. Over the next few days, a curiously strong desire for this set started to build. By the time the following weekend rolled around, I was almost sick with worry that they'd all be gone, and I wouldn't get to own one. 
Why? I really dunno. The heart wants what it wants, I guess. And I very badly wanted this.
So I went over on a Saturday morning, early doors, and scythed myself through the weekend shoppers with a sense of rising panic in case all I encountered was an empty shelf.
But it was okay. I found one, and for £6.99 it was mine.

I love putting these things together. Somehow, applying the stickers and slotting it all together is a big part of the appeal.

These are good-quality sets, too. I can recall being a little disappointed at how much cardboard was involved in some of my childhood Matchbox sets from the 1980s, which inevitably bent and tore and split after only a little use. These are all heavy-duty plastic, and the components snap together really firmly.

There's always that sense of a 'point of no return' when the stickers are peeled off the backing paper and stuck on permanently. I tend to keep the backing sheet even after the stickers have been removed; I always have, along with all the rest of the packaging. The packaging feels like part of it.

My rationale was that this model garage would be a nice background when photographing my various toy cars  - better than just a flat table, right? Bit more interesting.

I was very pleased with it. The whole thing with  Action Drivers sets are that they have automatic mechanisms in them, and this adds to the playvalue - in this case, raising the ramp causes a little dude to scoot out rolling a tyre, while pushing a car into the adjacent bay brings a woman pushing a V8 engine block on a stand round to the front.

Of course, I felt a bit self-conscious. Bashful, even. I didn't want MrsDC to see it, in case she found it a bit ridiculous and immature, even by my standards.
I also felt that although she might tolerate me picking up the odd model here and there, acquiring larger sets like this might set her alarm bells off. The unpleasant memory of 2022's Diecastgate - when it emerged that pretty much our entire attic was crammed with my models and other rubbish, at the point we were urgently needing to move house - hovered unpleasantly.

So I kinda kept this acquisition secret. After a few pics taken in the early hours of the morning, I disassembled it, repacked it into the box and hid it away under the bed in the back room.
And then in June last year, I found some more, in a different branch of Home Bargains.

The two Auto Shop sets were quite speedily dispatched to a fellow-shiter, but I kept the Bus Station set for myself. At £4.99, and with a Matchbox model included, it seemed pretty bargain-tastic.

It proved mildly disappointing, however. Although the little passenger moving forward to hail an arriving bus was a nice touch, this set had less going on, since it was about half the size of the Auto Shop and seemed a bit more toy-like, with improbable parking spaces on the roof and a far-too-steep ramp. One of the road pieces supplied was also incorrect and the connector tabs couldn't line up, so it also looked a little incomplete.
It went back in its box and under the bed too.
And that was that.
Until January this year, when...

Aargh. Another one, encountered by chance over at an independent Toymaster branch. This time, the Fuel Station set. Three sets on the shelf, all the same.

This set looked about the same size as the Auto Shop, but was quite a bit more expensive. For £6.99 I could see myself making an impulse purchase, but at £16.99... mmm. Seemed a bit pricey, for what it is. I didn't much fancy the generic 4x4 thing either.
So I didn't.
But a few days later I found it playing on my mind again... so I had a look online, in case someone else might be doing it a bit cheaper.
Nope, if anything it was even more expensive on Amazon and eBay for this set - anything from £24 to £50.
Crumbs.
And of course, since capitalism is a finely tuned instrument these days, it didn't take very long before my YouTube 'recommended videos' feed started featuring people unboxing Action Drivers sets.
And, because I'm easily influenced, of course I started watching them. And desiring them.
Not all of them - some were a bit too juvenile for even my tastes, like the 'Canyon Adventure' set I'd encountered in TK Maxx late last year.

But the ones featuring buildings - fire stations, restaurants, police stations, multistorey car parks, building sites - now those appealed.
I think I held out for just over two weeks before scuttling back over to Holywood one lunchtime.

I needn't have worried - all three sets were still there on the shelf. But I had worried. A lot. I'd tied myself in knots at the thought of missing out on one of these. The FOMO is strong.
And y'know what? It's pretty good. Maybe not really good, but pretty good.

The pumps swing down automatically when you drive vehicles over the little pressure switches, and the door to the mini-mart slides open when a car parks outside.

The pumps are pretty toy-like, but good all the same.

There's even an EV charging station.

I guess the question has to be, why would a grown man want to spend time and money messing about with this sort of thing?

I really don't know.

But it feels like this appeals to my 43yr-old self in broadly the same way it would absolutely have appealed to my 8yr old self. That same very pure rush of joy at something designed to delight and amuse - even though you'd think that several decades of being an adult, and having to fill cars with fuel to get to work, might have soured my enthusiasm for make-believe play of this nature.
So I dunno.
Through watching the YouTube unboxing videos, I slowly came to learn more about the Action Drivers line of play sets.
Of course, Matchbox have been making this sort of thing for decades, but the Action Drivers branding only started in 2020, when the Fuel Station was launched, along with a Fire Station and a slightly alarming 'Helicopter Rescue' set, featuring a helicopter that seemingly drops an ambulance through the roof of a hospital, where it crashes down two storeys through the building and out the front, straight into a barrier.

Both of these others were available online; the fire station at about £25 and the hospital for £19. While the hospital seemed to be about the same size as the fuel station, comprising two square base units clipped together, the fire station seemed twice the size at four base units, and boasted light and sound features.
The idea is that all the sets can be clipped together to form streets and junctions, to build a small but rather busy town.
As seems to be Mattel's way of doing business, rather than just making the sets for as long as demand sustains it, the 2020 Action Drivers line were deleted and replaced with three new releases for 2021. These included a large multistorey car park with light and sound, about as big as the fire station (four base units); and an even bigger Airport Adventure set, with airport terminal, car park, runway and control tower (a whopping eight base units, I think).
These can be found online for anything between £40 and £90.
Additionally, as is Mattel's habit, they released an exclusive Pizza Hut restaurant in late 2021 which (I think) was only available through Target stores in the US.
For 2022, a slightly different Pizza Hut set was released worldwide, which seems to command a bit of a premium (£30-£50), despite only being a small single base unit set.
A whopping six new sets appeared in 2022, comprising another single-unit set, the Bus Station; along with the twin-unit Auto Shop; a twin-unit Construction Site; the four-unit Canyon Adventure shown upthread; a four-unit Police Dispatch Centre; and a large six-unit 'Volcano Escape' set.
Busy times.
2023 saw five new sets - a single-unit FedEx Depot (which seems to be very sought-after, as I haven't seen any for sale anywhere), a twin-unit Ferry Terminal set with push-along ro-ro ferry boat; a four-unit Super Clean Car Wash set; a much bigger six-unit building site set styled as the Epic Construction Yard; and a slightly weird 'Transforming Excavator' which isn't a city-type toy, but rather a large plastic lorry with fold-out bits allowing you to play with smaller Matchbox on it.
So far this year Matchbox has released a 'Tow & Repair Truck' set similar to the Transforming Excavator, as well as a more conventional Traffic Control Centre single-unit set, and a large 'Farm Adventure' set that looks like it might be a six-unit set. So far.
I'll level with you - I don't want them all. Some of them just don't appeal much; others seem quite expensive for all they are.
But I do like a lot of them.
Watching the (predominantly US) YouTubers picking these sets up in Walmart or Target for like $8 or $12 made me a little indignant, as they're so much more expensive over here.
FOMO and rage, what a great combination.
Having scored well over at the Toymaster in Holywood, it occurred to me that the branch in Newtownards might be a good hunting ground for any other sets.
But I was wrong.

Just another fuel station, this one with the Questor car robbed out of the packaging.
However, after another few weeks of YouTube, FOMO and bitterness at how UK collectors seem to get screwed over pretty much every which way, I remembered that there was another independent toy shop over in Ards.
This one proved rather more fruitful, and of course I fell into it wallet-first.

Yup, the 2020 release 'Helicopter Rescue' - for a few quid less than its online listings - and the 2022 'Park & Play Garage' came home with me.

This store also had the Canyon Adventure set for £17, and the Bus Station set for £14, but I don't much fancy another bus station and the Canyon Adventure isn't my bag.
But the multistorey car park is quite good, if somewhat overly-orange.

There's barriers to get in and out, a lift with light and sound, and parking for a fair few vehicles.


I'm not all that keen on the light and sound functionality, though it can be disabled on this set by taking out the electronics unit. Certainly not because it sounds very loud at 1am.

EV charging points on the top floor.

It's very appealing. Yet still, a sense of 'why?' nags at me.
The hospital is a bit weird, and also makes something of a nonsense of Matchbox's 'real world play' tagline, as I'm not sure how responsible it is to teach kids that hospitals are drive-thru buildings.
But it really looks well when they're all clipped together.



And it was into the midst of this turmoil that the Airport Adventure set arrived from a courier; I'd been swayed by discounts applied into my Amazon wishlist item. £55 down to £49.

Hnnng.
I haven't opened it; apart from the fact I've some vague notion of gifting it to my brother's kids, I understand that once the airport terminal building is clipped together it can't be taken apart again, so will never fit back in the box.
Not a problem for 99.999% of buyers, probably. But an issue for me. To the point that, once I realised the toyshop in Ards had another airport set for £35, I was giving serious consideration at the weekend to going back over and buying it as a second one.

But - I didn't.
Yet.
So they're all back under the bed at the minute. You can be sure there was no trace of them in the kitchen by the time MrsDC got home.
All the while, the Ferry Terminal and Fire Station are still sitting in my wishlist.
But I don't know if I want them. Not really. They're very appealing, and very ingenious toys, but I keep looping back round to why I'm so drawn to these sets. Even as a kid, I found the idea of sets like these better than the reality; often there was that sense of "oh... so that's all it does" about 10 minutes after opening it on Christmas morning or whatever. So I know better. But I still like them.
Ah well. It's probably fair to say this post hasn't exactly gone the way I intended it to when I started typing this morning.
But thanks for coming to my TED Talk, however involuntarily. 
Hopefully the pics are enjoyable, and you can avoid the rambling.

While we wait for DC to get back, here's my selection after a barren week in the supermarkets I got a bit from one or two places this morning:


Small stuff. The Matchbox Truck was one of the last things left from the dairy-themed batch of diecasts at the charity shop. Loose HWs were £3 for a bag at secondhand shop, it had the most Japanese content. Cadillac from the Co-Op.

Big stuff. Rancho has the attractive 4-spoke wheels. Apart from the Humber these were £1-£1.50 each.
And popping my Spot-On cherry:

 

 

 

 

The colour appears to be original, so did it start life as this one? https://diecastgems.com/product/spot-on-toys-306-humber-super-snipe/

Shame about the bumper and glass damage, but it's still quite an appealing thing (especially for what I paid for it).

Win in life, and death.
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/326823813736244/

Been a funny old week, kids - could be that the effects of market tat withdrawal are kickin' in.
As planned, I did head out on Saturday morning, early-ish, to see if I could happen upon a fresh case of Matchbox or Hot Wheels that had been newly stocked out.

Also because out-of-town retail parks are famously lovely* places to be on a damp Saturday morning.
I've been heartened by some UK sightings of the K-case Jaguar XJC and Chevy C10 longbed, and had high hopes that today could be my day of days...
However, after scouring some twenty-six stores in the Greater Belfast area which carry Mattel diecast to a greater or lesser degree, I'm forced to conclude that, for 2024, it's probably only Poundland which are likely to be stocking any Matchbox mainlines - and even then, I don't think they're all that arsed about carrying them.
God help me, I've started divvying the city up into clusters of retailers, so I can carry out precise, targeted strikes on stores.
I know.
What has my life become?

Cluster 1 takes me the furthest away from home - focusing on Holywood Exchange and environs, allowing me to smack a Tesco Extra, a large Home Bargains, a big Sainsburys and an independent Toymaster store plus a Tesco Metro - should I wish to push my luck trying to park in Holywood town centre.
Having already stopped off at the big Sainsbury's on Friday night, and made the fateful discovery that they carry Matchbox 5-packs and Majorette premiums (but not mainlines), I didn't bother going back in there again - though their two-5-packs-for-£15 offer was kinda tempting.
However, the dark seed had been planted that there could be stuff out there, unbeknownst to me, hence taking an uncompromisingly rigorous and systematic approach to the act of procuring cheap mass-produced children's toys.
Because, as any Fule Kno, this are Serious Bizniss.
The big-ish Home Bargains proved a disappointment - no Hot Wheels mainlines at all, and only a handful of HW monster trucks huddled at the end of a shelf. No Matchbox whatsoever.
I'd held out some faint hope that a few bargainous Matchbox Action Drivers sets might show up on the shelves, as they did this time last year, but nope.
The big Tesco Extra at Knocknagoney had a few Matchbox left in a dump bin, but again it was the same early-to-mid-2023 dregs in torn boxes that my local store continues to carry:

Not that these are bad - but I just have all I need from this range.
There were quite a few late-2023/ early 2024 Hot Wheels in an adjacent tub, including the slammed VW T2 dropside which I probably should have picked up - but ultimately, I left the store empty-handed.
Having hit up the Stewart Miller Toymaster store in January and again in February, with diminishing returns, I felt it more prudent to focus my attentions to stores I hadn't visited for a while.
So it was over to Cluster 2, in East Belfast - Connswater Retail Park.

There's the original but much-modified Connswater Shopping Centre on the site, dating from the 1980s - and the Poundland in the mall was the first stop.

Okay, so five pegs of various 2023 case releases - though none of which I was mad keen on.
So, so many of those pointless little luggage cart things.
I very nearly picked up the blue Goodyear Tyres release of the Renault Kangoo - but I dunno, it just seems like quite a flimsy little thing. I kinda like it, but don't really love it. Especially not at £2.
The few Hot Wheels left that weren't daft fantasy releases were ones I already have, too.
Just across the concourse, Poundstretcher beckoned...

With a dump bin crammed full of import 2021 Hot Wheels longcards they're plainly having trouble shifting, and a shamelessly lying sign.
These are not 'great value' at £2.50 - not when Poundland directly opposite are knocking them out for £1.50.

Looking closer, these seem to be Japanese-market releases, curiously with no import distributor details stuck to them.

Well, okay then - I'll do my best to refrain from putting it in my mouth, or using the sun. No promises, mind.
I'm still hoping these will go down to half-price, as Poundstretcher have done before with their slow-selling Mattel stuff, but maybe their corporate buying team cut a dreadful deal to acquire these, and Head Office won't authorise a reduction.
They'll be sitting for a while yet, in that case.

Further round, in the toy aisle, their 2023 Power Grab Matchbox mainlines were still kicking about, too.
I really like these rectangular boxes, better than the blister pack equivalents, but again - I already have all I want from this selection, and I'm not buying any more duplicates just cos they're in different packaging...
There used to be a mid-size Tesco store as Connswater's anchor retailer, but it packed up a few years back and there's now a branch of The Range where it used to be.
The Range used to have Hot Wheels shipper displays prominently placed a few years back, but now they only had a handful of mid-2023 releases swinging forlornly on some sparse pegs.
Other than the little Mighty K pickup in bluey-grey, with the skateboard in the rear bed, they were all mostly fantasy castings and so didn't really appeal... and I already have the teeny-tiny pickup in its earlier metallic pink iteration. I'm not gonna fall down the every-casting-in-every-colourway collector trap...
Not today, anyway.
So I bustled out past the checkouts, clinking my keys and trying to look confident - as I'm afflicted with this fear I'm going to be challenged as a shoplifter because I'm leaving without buying anything, despite my years in retail teaching me that minimum wage staff don't care - and made my way across the car park to the newer big-box stores.
This branch of Home Bargains had a small number of Hot Wheels mainlines on about three pegs - once again, that coppery-coloured Ford Coupe gasser and the Cadillac Seville in two-tone blue were prevelant - but again, nothing I really fancied.
The Connswater branch of B&M is one of the larger stores, with several aisles of toys, but they make relatively little of it available for diecast.
Instead, there's a few pegs just inside one of the emergency fire exits, which are easy to miss as you approach it from the main entrance.

Eh... nothing new, and although a Matchbox Subaru Forester in black and a Hot Wheels Dodge Ram in white did raise my pulse slightly above tickover, they just felt like I'd be settling for something out of desperation, rather than finding something I really wanted.
So I left them.
While wandering the aisles just in case I happened upon any clip strips, I thought these 10-packs represented quite good value for money, at £20 for two...

Good to see the first release version of the Volvo 240 Drift Wagon making it into the multipacks now - although, with a high proportion of them either fantasy or exotic castings, I can't say I was very much tempted.
So I left, still without anything small and with wheels.
There were other places to try...

[TBC!!]

The Corvette is one I distinctly remember, it came in a set I had once for Xmas, long gone now unfortunately. At the time I was sourcing everything from the car boots, new 1-75 seemed thin on the ground, I think my mums line was that you could get 5 of them at a jumble sale for the cost of one new one. I don’t know if a lot of you were the same as a kid but I always looked for the usual cars in the street so these were an unusual departure for me! 
 
I remember I’d always have a favourite’ one that I’d have, Rover SD1, Cortina 1.6, Porsche 959 spring to mind. I’d always play the same game if you like, I’d line up all the broken ones as a scrapyard (I was fixated with dereliction and scrapyards) as a kid. My mum was confused as to why I always wanted to keep the broken ones instead of binning them.
 
Thinking back that was a really content time, a Saturday afternoon playing at scrapyards on the rug in front of the gas fire watching ‘Hollywoods Greatest Stunts’ or the A Team. Just a Lion bar for company but it was escapism that as an adult for some reason you cannot fully achieve. There’s always some other shit floating around in your head like work or jobs that need doing, so you aren’t ever fully free. I think that’s why I like collecting diecast, it’s as close as you’ll get to those hassle free days as a kid. 

Hi,
I’ve been aware of the brown forum for many years, but generally hung around on another well known blue hued forum, sort of on and off anyway. Most of my ‘fleet’ (if you can call a collection of long term broken cars that) is probably more at home on here but my most recent car tinkering finally pushed me over the line to sign up on here.
Ya see I’ve been spending a bit of time recently poking and tinkering with the longest standing, many years abandoned, heaps in my collection and I suspect this is the only place I might scrape some interest in what is basically a hopeless cause. Said heaps have been abandoned rotting on my drive for 17 and 19yrs respectively, but the house where they languish is going on the market soon so their existence hangs precariously in the ballence. Friends and family have been telling me to scrap them for about a decade now so their calls are almost deafeningly loud now. It would certainly be the sensible thing to do.
For reasons beyond common sense I want to move them to my current house which means making them mobile again. I mean ‘mobile’ as in I can load them onto a trailer and preferably drive them up my short but annoyingly steep driveway, not as in make them ready for the road. 
Anyway, so what do you make of these two beauties?



Artefact 1 - The gold one - 1989 1.3 XL special equipment
This was my first car, bought by a much younger self circa 1999. I saved up the £600 by working weekends in Burger King while doing my A levels. It was well used and abused until 2005, but it’s been parked up ever since. It was retired as a fully functional car on 109k miles, I just replaced it (with a 34k miles 1.3 mk6 Escort I bought as Cat D salvage and returned to the roads). It donated its windscreen to the blue one around 2009 after vandalism so it’s been open to the elements for a while too, it’s become home to some ferns growing in the carpet.
Artefact 2 - The blue one - 1987 1.3 GR Profile
This was my mates car for a year but he donated it to me when the MOT ran out, in 2007 according to the MOT history. The original idea was to fix this one up using the gold one for spares. After a couple of years ignoring it I did drag it to an MOT test in 2010 which it failed due to much more rampant rust than I had given it credit for, it’s sat ever since.
So what ya thinking of doing with them I hear you say! Well, the gold one has probably (though not certainly) had it’s day as a regular 309, but I’m sentimental about it and have a very harebrained idea for it in the back of my mind. It might never happen but I want to hold on to the possibility, so the goal is to just move it and sling a car cover over it. The blue one however is calling out to live once more, I want to get it back on the road. I’m better skilled to weld it back up now than I was back then, and once the old house is gone I should be blessed with more time and lower outgoings which should help. I just kinda fancy fixing it up a bit, I want to feel the mighty power of the Simca rattle box engine and savour the rolly polly handling on skinny tyres once more. But firstly I just need to move it so I can achieve priority no1 which is to get the old house up for sale.
There you go lots of waffle, I’ll post about where I’m up to and what I’ve got stuck on soon, if anyone cares.
-Steve-

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1066869481070363/

Well, obviously, I couldn't just leave it behind.

This casting was originally introduced as the Super Kings K-110 Magirus Deutz Fire Tender, all the way back in 1984 as one of Universal Toys' new expanded range of post-Lesney 'big toys'.

It featured a working turntable ladder which revolved, raised and extended manually.

After two years in the lineup it was retooled and renumbered as K-132 for the 1986 catalogue year, with different tampo decals and the addition of steerable wheels activated by pressing down on the emergency lights on the roof, now mounted further back to accommodate the steering mechanism.
Further changes were made when the colour of the ladder changed from grey to white...

...and the wheel centres went from chrome-effect slot mags to slightly less snazzy red plastic ones, along with the interior going from white to black (as did the front wheelarches, which were part of the same moulding).

In the early 1990s, the former Super Kings emergency vehicles were grouped together into what was called the Action Emergency range. It was accompanied by this dramatic artwork on the inside and back of the box, showing many of the models that made up the range:

The catalogue number for the Magirus Deutz Fire Tender also changed again at this point, to EM-5; although the K-132 code remained cast into the base, along with the defunct Super Kings logo. This time, no changes were made to the model itself.
Not long after, the packaging also changed again to folded-over, open-fronted boxes - possibly as a cost-cutting measure, as by this stage Universal were making substantial losses and seeking to offload the Matchbox brand.

With the sale of the Matchbox brand from Universal to Tyco in 1992, it seems the casting continued on as before with slightly revised packaging, in terms of graphic design if not in style:

The toy I brought home with me today seems to be a super-late example, as the Matchbox Wiki seems to reckon that the fire tender was last produced in 1992 - but that's not what the box says:

Sadly, the Tyco years seemed to mark a bit of a low point for the Matchbox brand - to the extent that I don't have many catalogues from this era, so I can't have a flick through to see when it last made an appearance. The big Charlie Mack book seems not to bother with this information.
But even so - I can't help but get a bit of a thrill from finding a NOS Matchbox on a toyshop's shelves some thirty years after it was made. Leaving aside for a second that this specific model doesn't really look thirty years old - or indeed, forty years old, as that's how old the casting is - can you even imagine finding a 1964 model still sitting on the shelves in 1994?
Where has this little thing been, all this time? Did it fall into a corner of the storeroom and only just got found again? The packaging is absolutely as-new, and there's no dust or anything on the lorry. The price sticker looks new, too.
£8.99 seems about right for the time, price-wise - I can remember Super Kings cars in Woolworths priced at around £5 in the mid/late 80s, so I'd expect a fire tender with extra working bits to be a little more than that again, a few years after.
And, what with inflation and suchlike, I guess I could claim I got it half-price...

All in all, very mysterious.
But, it just goes to show - you never know what's out there...

This looks rather good despite the accident damage:
Looks nicer and considerably cheaper than the one @morrisoxide posted on the last page.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225980252679?hash=item349d790207:g:V3IAAOSwb9Nlt~fH&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4PZoigZ1Ezn7tbjep9zYBtCKfHxXNW1f0qv4c5fQ%2B1mpmtWr0vVOLw9KyvVEpquEJP8X0MQEpD3gIvQoYba63DXM7YSjcgXxMtZ3u5pN088oPOwaB%2Be0GP6z9M4ngQHK8gQca7UjCfhrPs5hzbjYBoJjp1U0HiEcOtaeHgposfZBxX3GomgFY88VdAvcMNY9Z5j1TQS8sRV8i5PHvqkG%2FEV4PhhMeedrRgHGauDmrD8N5apg3931%2Ftyx5O9K9%2BMRZqCni99aswM8DW01R3UrifduGNNsgmU0V9B89arkW%2BCV|tkp%3ABk9SR4rzv-2qYw

A visit to a Colchester charity shop (after all my whinging the other day) finally yielded Stuff I Couldn't Not Buy, so I came to own two items.
First up:

Dinky Hillman Imp. Plenty has been said on here about this delightful little casting in the past, so I'll just say that I really like it. This one has survived for nigh on sixty years relatively intact. Some of the decals are peeling at the edges and it's lost an offside headlight jewel, but the glazing has survived and the paintwork has just the degree of patina it deserves.
I spent five quid. Absolutely no idea if They Saw Me Coming, but it's for charidee like.

Back in the olden days, when I was forced off to Sunday School at the weekend (presumably so my parents could do stuff that I didn't want to know about), I used to get a lift with Brenda. That meant my ride alternated between a Hillman Imp and an Austin FX4 black cab. This was circa 1985/6.
Second of my wise investments is this:

I've really liked this since @junkyarddog picked one up aaaages ago, so this one was a must buy. It's just adorable. It's a shame the glazing has a crack in it, but that and a slightly askew lower 'hydraulic' spar are pretty much all that's wrong with it. I'm sure that can be bent straight and the plastic cherry picker platform can be persuaded into shape with a bit of gentle heat application.

I absolutely love how that parallogram mechanism works. In fact I've just sat here doing lots of up and down movements while I frankly should be getting some work done.
Actually, I've just decided that I like every single thing about this Corgi and it makes me very happy indeed. £2.50 that I couldn't have spent more wisely if I tried.

I got the Matchbox E30 cab finished too. There's a bit of a back story, my best mate for the last 30+ years had a bad motorbike crash in 2018 when a woman turned right across his path, he was pretty smashed up and had to be airlifted to hospital. He's been through multiple surgeries and although he's kept his left leg, he won't be driving manuals again. 
Having eventually got a payout, he bought himself this

He's had a handful of E30s and E21s but never a cabrio.
Started with this tired Matchbox Baur

I'm not ashamed to say I really pushed myself on this one, converted it to a normal cabrio including cutting the door shut lines into the body where the pillars used to be and sourcing a set of BBS wheels (Creative 164 - highly recommended).

I even did the BMW roundel on the bonnet for additional eye strain.
Only things I'm not happy with are the yellow windscreen, which I'll change when I find a clear replacement, and the tonneau cover being the wrong colour - which is his fault for only sending me a pic after I'd painted it and forgotten which colour I'd used for the interior!
 

Into March, then, and the mornings were somewhat less dark and dreich.
Some improvement arrived in the form of a good ol’ fashioned 50p rummage box.

What was less good was the realisation that these were mostly my childhood toys, which I’d sold to Market Blokey over a year previously during a high-pressure clearout. I’d hoped he’d have already sold them on during my enforced market exile for most of 2022, but apparently not.

So I bought a whole load of them back again. For much more than I’d sold them, obviously.

Damn, I’m good.
I also started revisiting the Model Shop in Smithfield, and went so far as to pick up a few items, before remembering why I don’t go in there much anymore.

It’s the lad who owns the place, he’s a total melter.
A glut of Vanguards also hit around mid-March time, giving some thread regulars cause for palpitations.


Also, one particular rarity spotted amongst the mayhem by one of our eagle-eyed correspondents…

Yup, this was the rare resin model of a front-loading Routemaster already flagged as a highlight, one of 300 built by Jotus. Generally these are a bit spendy whenever they do crop up; so this was a virtual steal at a mere fiver.
I'd no idea what it was, nor its true value, and it took @Rover414 to give me a virtual tap on the shoulder and alert me. Seems no-one else local twigged its identity/ value either, as it was still on the stall the following week and duly snaffled for passing on.
Just goes to show - you never know what might turn up.
And for me, that's kinda the draw of Tat Friday - it's not so much about acquiring specific models (hey, there's eBay for that), but rather just expanding my tat-horizons. It's finding stuff I never knew existed; odd variants; strange knock-offs. Because it's unreal how many truly odd things seem to roll into this little corner of Belfast once a week.
Purchasing for March looked a bit like this, then:

Most of these were buy-backs.


Some hot VHS action was also had, this week.



And there's more...

Jensen CV8, but that's a 3 litre mark two Princess. The one facing the camera is a 4 litre R.

Jensen CV8, but that's a 3 litre mark two Princess. The one facing the camera is a 4 litre R.

You may already know this,but there's a lovely period film on YouTube from about 1958/9 called In the Rover Tradition. It's largely concerned with the new 3-litre P5 but it gives an interesting insight into the no compromise quality and construction of Rover as it was,rather than the second-rate gasket-blowing fwd landfill which was later to bear the name. Well worth a watch, I'm afraid I'm not technically proficient enough to post a link.

The Northern lights happened last night, localized entirely in my bedroom. I'd just finished my steamed hams (that looked grilled to me) for tea. 
So I got a moody shot of the Moggy.

The next morning by the Universal serial bus.



That's it! Back in the garage the back bumper has fallen off again.
More pics to follow as the colour is more blue IRL. I also need to make some number plates.

A blokes life isn’t complete without a shed/garage of some sort. If it’s nothing more than a place to hum to oneself over a Marcel Van Cleemput book. 

My head's all pickled today.
First I forgot to take a picture of the view from the doorstep this morning; then I forgot to post a customary wrap-up pic before leaving this afternoon.
It's been quite a long week.
But, behold:

Not so much a day for utter tat, in the best tradition - but there were some interesting items at a fairly reasonable price, I hope you'll agree!
I'll decant these into their assorted tat boxes when I get a chance - everything's somewhat jumbled at present, as the renovations rumble on, with beds in the kitchen and clothes in the sunroom and tat in the... bath, I think.
So, despite assorted tribulations - it's good when Tat Friday still comes through.
Happy Friday, kids.