Shite in Miniature II

[sheffcortinacentre]

9 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Aldi now have the Q case, three boxes in store #1

And in #2

Nothing in the third one though. Still, I got what I wanted

Last fortnight local Asda hot wheels box has been full of cheap tat!

[AndyW201]

8 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Really pleased to find the Q case in Aldi - no Super in the 6 boxes I looked through, but the regular version was in there. Drift stuff is a bit hit and miss but I do like the colour - I think the blue glazing will work better for customising too

Regular Treasure Hunt is this baja

New casting in the form of this Land Rover - I reckon that surfboard will come off fairly easily too for use elsewhere

I do like 60s style paint, Nomad casting was improved a while back too, grille etc is much better than the old one

Sweet Firebird 

New colour on the Alfa 

I would have said this paint scheme was right for a Mustang but it actually works

I know these are weird but I like them!

Barbie Corvette looks great in baby blue

Nice AMX recolour

Same again for the Autoshite sunshine bus

Conti looks good in new colours as well

Red Raudi

Yet another recolour - I  don't do bikes generally but I can't help myself with the Cub as I used to buzz about on the back of a C70

Hmm, quite a few there that I missed the other day. So stopped off at the big town centre Aldi on the way home.

I agree with the comments on the refreshed Nomad. I do love a '60s style drag car myself, this one has the slotmag style wheels too.

Like Sir Mix-a-lot, I do like a big backside...

This really is a great casting!

And that IS it for the Q case for me now!

[Spottedlaurel]

They had a nice HW display in the big Ipswich Asda I visited yesterday, but certainly none of that new/recoloured stuff. Big Tesco was rather barren, the only thing I got on my trip out was an F&F Silvia in a B&M.

[bunglebus]

Talking of Tesco, they have also discounted HW and MB in preparation for Chr*stm*s

Still not as good as 3 for 2 @ £2.00 each in Entertainer though

[sierraman]

11 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Last fortnight local Asda hot wheels box has been full of cheap tat!

You need to get thi sen down to The Entertainer on the Moor. Loads in there! 

[bunglebus]

Gave myself FOMO last night as lots of people are finding the Super version of the Volvo 240 in Aldi, and it looks so similar I got paranoid that I'd missed it! Maybe I did but there were two left today and neither were special. Store 3 still hasn't got any so I'll have to send the Mrs in tomorrow...

[Datsuncog]

2 hours ago, bunglebus said:

lots of people are finding the Super version of the Volvo 240

What's the difference between the standard and the super version of the 240?

(I did ask a search engine first, but couldn't get any useful info from any of the results)

Still nada round this neck of the woods - and Sainsburys have put their Hot Wheels back up to £2.30 again.

[bunglebus]

26 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

What's the difference between the standard and the super version of the 240?

Slightly different green, TH on the front wing and Real Riders - think the biggest giveaway is the front wheel

[bunglebus]

Oh and Entertainer had a new MB 5 pack - lots of stuff is discounted now too £6 for the 5 pack

[flat4alfa]

Might give that Volvo Super Treasure Hunt a miss, if it's so common.

Ha ha what am I saying..

Next year the green Escort mk2 Super Treasure Hunt posted a while back by @bunglebus

is intended to be followed by this, which doesn't look exciting to me.. 

However this does, or would, around Golders Green..

Possibly this too although where are the tampos?

Oh there they are!  They all landed on this

But I'll probably die of old age by then, so better make some 'pre-production' counterfeits quickly

[bunglebus]

I can talk about this now but I was annoyed at the time;

Spotted a mint in box Welly Lupo and bought it for my partner's birthday. The eejit send it just in a paper envelope. This is what I received 

Grr. I put the car itself with the others prior to returning it to the seller

[Zie]

Been mad busy lastly, but managed a little hunting today. My Aldi only has the cases with the Silver Sierra Cosworth in.

B&M had some f&f stuff and no other singles. 

Did get a King Dick spanner from a charity shop for £1 though. 

[danthecapriman]

A few more stripped and prepped today.

Corgi A60 learner car and a Matchbox Volvo 240. 
They both came apart nicely and nothing got broken. The A60 will not be getting that stupid roof mounted steering wheel put back on! It’s going to get the cast L badges ground off too and be a normal car. 
240 is a simple colour change. Needs suspension clamp on the back axle fixing too.

 

Ectoplasm applied!

 

The old Corgi paint shrivelled and fell off as quickly as I was putting the stripper on. Matchbox paint was somewhat tougher and took a bit of time to melt the old paint.

Since I was on a roll I decided to strip down the bread van and get that un painted too!

 

[danthecapriman]

The Matchbox paint was weird. As it melted and fell off it revealed a dark blue colour under the original metallic red! No idea what that’s all about? Matchbox’s weird primer?? You can see it in a few places in the pic.

Forgot to get pics of the A60, but it’s now totally bare metal and been washed off. 
Here’s the others.

The 240 in particular is a really nice casting! 
 

[bunglebus]

I really like looking at the bare castings and seeing all the detail that's often lost under the thick paint. Older Matchbox and Lone Star are especially nice.

[bunglebus]

This one's currently in the dunk tank

After mocking it up on some better wheels.

Something offensive like bright yellow or pink for this I think

[danthecapriman]

12 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I really like looking at the bare castings and seeing all the detail that's often lost under the thick paint. Older Matchbox and Lone Star are especially nice.

They do look so different sometimes. On the 240 you can see cast badges on the front wings, that are exactly the right shape for a flat hood 200 series! I’ve never noticed them before.

The UAZ van looked totally different too after the original paint came off. Being yellow they’d gone heavy with the paint, presumably to stop it looking thin, but it hid lots of the details.

[FakeConcern]

In the post today, two I’ve never had but wanted since I was a kid.

First Corgi Rambler Marlin (or is it Marlin Rambler?) in red and black, I remember this in a Catalogue when I was a kid.

Mrs Concern has one in blue and white with the trailer and canoes.

Also a Dinky Ford GT40, both of these were filthy, but came up well with a quick wash. Missing the mirrors, really good apart from that.

I like these in silver with the red lamp surrounds, just as on the cover of a catalogue I had.

I like the Dinky number plates as well, I had a sheet of decals to stick on my Corgis as well and need to look into getting some now.

Not sure what’s the point of the detachable suspension cover, not surprising many of these got lost.

 

This Corgi E Type is my owned from new toy that’s been waiting to be finished off. I got a repro of the headlamp/bumper unit from Steve Flowers and the lights had really bad dimples in them. I filled them in and used the Molotoy pen to re silver, another thing I learned on this forum, thanks guys!

The rear bumpers are also repro, but rather than open the car up, I cut them down and slipped them in on top of the broken originals after some judicious filing.

I also got some repro mirrors, but found the originals so I will try to convert them into something for the GT40.

 

 

[bunglebus]

Some bare metal beauties:

Hot Wheels Gas Monkey Corvette I polished up

A pair of Superfast 911s, showing how worn the moulds must have been by the end of the production run

Hot Wheels Custom Volkswagen Beetle

Dinky Bedford CF

Matchbox RS2000

Whizzwheels E-Type

Yatming Buick

Matchbox 33 Ford

Hot Wheels DeLorean

Corgi Rockets Eldorado

Hot Wheels Subaru Brat

Matchbox VW 1600

Hot Wheels Alive '55

Lone Star Zodiac

Corgi Wild Honey

 

[bunglebus]

More metal;

Mini HaHa part way through some body mods

Polished Mod Rod

Speed Kings Gus's Gulper

Lone Star Mustang

Dinky Volvo

Corgi Mazda B1600

Lone Star Transit

Corgi Mini Bus getting some slammage

Matchbox Mustang

Guiloy Taunus showing door cards and unusual cast-in dashboard

Dinky Gran Fury with plenty of casting defects

Welly Lupo

Corgi Morris Minor

Little and large Matchbox Mercurys

Matchbox Model As, again showing mould wear over time

Dinky Big Cat

ERTL General Lee

Modern Matchbox Capri

Maisto Baja Bug

Matchbox Mercury with a few mods

Hot Wheels Nitty Gritty Kitty

Matchbox Flying Bug getting modified

Matchbox Muira fresh from the stripper

Lone Star Fiat 

Hot Wheels RS2000

Corgi US Van - what happened to the door shuts?

Hot Wheels 240

Mebetoys Simca

Corgi Dodge Magnum

Matchbox Lincoln Continental

Matchbox Anglia

Hot Wheels Anglia

Husky Thames

Matchbox 928

Matchbox Pontiac GP

Guisval Sierra with cheapskate doors

Lone Star Taunus

Hot Wheels '59 Chevy

Matchbox Alfa SZ

Fin

 

[barrett]

Love those bare metal cars. Reminds me of my childhood 'restorations' (much better, obviously). I loved uncovering all the hidden details in castings.

Anyway, I have a new arrival, becausxe I'm definitely not collecting Marklins

I love the Matra M530, and I love that toys of the Matra M530 exist, but like the real thing I don't think they were particularly popular and so I put quite a high bid on this when it popped up on ebay

Somebody's had a price sticker on the windscreen and the residue doesn't want to come off. Glad it wasn't on the paint. I reckon this is a brilliant encapsulation of the real thing. The lines are complex and, I imagine, not easy to model but this looks bang-on to me

Nice badge detail on the engine cover. The little inverted tow-bar thingy works the mechanism for the headlamps...

It's lost an eye, sadly. Still mega pleased with this one.

 

[bunglebus]

35 minutes ago, barrett said:

Somebody's had a price sticker on the windscreen and the residue doesn't want to come off

Surgical spirit or meths

[Datsuncog]

Saturday's arrival, which I only got a chance to open today...

Yup, the latest mail drop from those scallywags over at Corgi Model Club - the replica No.247 Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman.

I was utterly transfixed by the first one of these I ever saw, at a model fair around 1992 or so.

Because - working wipers! With an on/off switch on the base, to engage and disengage the (quite ingenious) mechanism, which their designers chose to highlight rather than hide:

All these features have been recreated very nicely on the CMC repro.

As far as I know, this was the first - and possibly only - mass-produced toy car to be fitted with such a mechanism, and was typical of the Corgi 'gimmicks' of the era: trying to grab kids' attention by recreating a feature in miniature which made it just that little bit more more true-to-life.

Rather than actual wiper blades, the model has lines printed onto acetate circles mounted inside, close up against the partially frosted glazing, which then rotate back and forth as the axle pinion spins an offset cog.

But the effect is still reasonably convincing.

The paintwork is beautifully lustrous, to the point that indoor lighting does it a disservice...

Much better.

Rear door glazing goes up...

And down...

(You'll have to trust me on this; the potatocam didn't really want to focus.)

Interior is quite nicely detailed too.

Chrome-effect plating to the bumpers and badge-topped grille adds further realism too; a few years earlier, this would have just been done with silver paint, like the headlights. Pity they're not jewelled, but hey. Toymaking's always been a struggle between making it appealing and making it affordable...

And this was evidently pretty appealing to kids, as Corgi managed to shift damn near a million of them between its introduction in November 1964 and its final appearance in the 1969 catalogue.

Uh-oh.

Well, at least we're equipped, no?

Overall, it's an impressive model of what was, in its day, one of the most luxurious cars on the road; the preserve of the mega-rich.

However - one minor criticism is that, in order to keep the price down, Corgi also ended up scaling this imposing vehicle down to the point that the sheer size of the Merc 600 is kinda lost.

It's still a large toy, but one presumes that 1960s pop stars and despots did not, in fact, find themselves being towered over by Austin A40s while out and about in their Pullman.

But, maybe it's just me being a bit nit-picky. Spot-On were the only diecast manufacturer of the era who made it a point of difference to design everything to a consistent scale across the range; for everyone else, 'scale to box' was considered sufficient.

In time, Dinky would also produce a larger-scaled version of the 600 in a similar shade, which lacked working wipers but gained multiple opening bits - and probably better represents the overall stature of the car:

Corgi's defacto replacement for their 600, the #262 Lincoln Continental Limousine, was more appropriately sized in relation to the rest of the range when it appeared in 1967. However, its release didn't spell the end for the Pullman, which kept going in the Corgi lineup for another two years.

For my part, my eleven-year-old self couldn't quite afford the £15 asking price for the original (quite shabby) 600 Pullman discovered at the model fair, but not long after I happened across a new 1/43 version of the car by Vitesse in a model shop - which ultimately made it onto a Christmas list, and thence into my possession.

I absolutely loved that Vitesse Mercedes - which was a mild problem, as I insisted on carrying it around with me and so it lost a doormirror and the tiny Mercedes star from the grille before New Year even arrived. That was annoying, and I'd no-one but myself to blame.

Still, I kept it for a right few years - and I thought I might well still have it, but a quick check of the diecast spreadsheet shows that I sold it during last year's emergency clear out, for a paltry £4. So I can't do a comparison, as I'd hoped.

Still, that's a thirty-year-old itch scratched... I'll not lie, I've been eagerly anticipating this one since I saw it announced in CMC's upcoming release list back at the start of the year.

I'm not usually much of a one for luxury cars, but I'll make an exception for this. When I first saw it, I just knew it looked a bit special.

It still does.

[MiniMinorMk3]

For comparison here's an original

Looks like the new casting is not as crisp as the original, but then the original pictured above was for sale at £150.

Corgi 247 - QDT (qualitydiecasttoys.com)

 

[bunglebus]

I have one

Although mine has a once-clear cover to protect the mechanism

[sierraman]

Mines equally battered, paid 50p for it many many years ago. 

[RoadworkUK]

Mine's pretty good for £2 (from a Lymington chazza shop). Just one tyre short. I'll get a fresh set ordered at some point. Actually, could somebody give me a steer on what's actually the right type for this?

[FakeConcern]

I just had to see what M. Van Cleemput says the scale is

247 Pullman 1/52

262 Lincoln annoyingly he doesn't give the scale!

216 A40 1/43

 

I have a battered one I bought in a Danbox for £3, so if anyone wants it that's the price!

 

Wipers work!

Dinky did one as well, never seen it except in the catalogue so no idea on scale, but the later ones always seem pretty big.

[flat4alfa]

Your dictators’ limousines are our concern.

Dinky Mercedes 600 Pullman

Got three of these now due to the eBay job-lot trigger-finger.  Decided to keep the best intact and transfer missing headlight and passengers

So, the others taken apart to make the best of the spares. Thinking to paint one in Jezza Clarkson’s green?

 

I suppose one of them could actually go as a project to someone else

[flat4alfa]

...and remember this lot from the other day

Oh lookee, down there, bottom row.  Another boot lid for the Dinky Pullman spares car that needs one, and next to it a front bumper/engine piece too!