Shite in Miniature II

14,086 · February 13, 2023

Just noticed my photo was taken before someone corrected my error in the edge pieces under the Leyland Terrier😊

43,446 · February 13, 2023

Oh I’ve got to get one of those puzzles for the family camper van trip in a few months time!

Just all the pieces in a bag, no box or image of the result. Just to see the surprise/annoyance on my wife and daughter’s face when they finally realise what the subject matter is !

(Probably a bad idea TBF)

43,446 · February 13, 2023

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

Pic not working for some reason

Borked pic now fixed. No idea what happened. Computobork.

40,654 · February 14, 2023

Did check in at the local Morrisons, which despite being one of the massive ones don’t appear to stock the Matchbox. Likewise the same for the B&M. So regrettably I’m paying £2 a shot but no better supply...

59,813 · February 14, 2023

Just been in the biggest Home Bargains I've ever seen - not a single car. The revamped ones seem to be shite for toy cars

59,813 · February 14, 2023

Maxwell Jeep on eBay

bonnet decal looks familiar

42,529 · February 14, 2023

12 hours ago, Mine's a Leganza! said:

Was there a price on the Hong Kong buses

He didn't say, but with boxed OOC on the stall priced at £5 then I'd say the unboxed ones couldn't be more than £2 - £3 each.

Just a pity the box has vanished since the buses last showed up in early December.

if you're interested, I should be at the market on Friday morning... could find out, if they're still there?

5,218 · February 14, 2023

1,783 · February 14, 2023

I bought this Rancho for a quid last year. I like em but to me Ranchos are always red so…

Still need to clean up the plastics but I’m pretty pleased with it!

45,044 · February 14, 2023

14 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

Was only produced during four year period from 1968. Superfast wheel was 1970-71. Cant have sold that well? There doesn't seem to be that many survivors, compared to others

The Cortina was one of the castings that went off to Bulgaria, and was produced for a while out there. There are quite a few colour variations of them.

There are also Hungarian releases as well. (Box incorrect, the usually come in a bubble pack)

40,654 · February 14, 2023

36 minutes ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

The Cortina was one of the castings that went off to Bulgaria, and was produced for a while out there. There are quite a few colour variations of them.

There are also Hungarian releases as well. (Box incorrect, the usually come in a bubble pack)

I think they look the best of all with those wheels.

33,723 · February 14, 2023

1 hour ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

The Cortina was one of the castings that went off to Bulgaria, and was produced for a while out there. There are quite a few colour variations of them.

There are also Hungarian releases as well. (Box incorrect, the usually come in a bubble pack)

Those are great!

42,529 · February 14, 2023

4 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Just been in the biggest Home Bargains I've ever seen - not a single car. The revamped ones seem to be shite for toy cars

Funny, on Thursday evening I was over at a Home Bargains store on the outskirts of Belfast. It's a big 'un, open about eighteen months now, and housed in a former Homebase store. I was breathlessly informed by a cashier at its opening that it's "the biggest Home Bargains in Ireland!" I can believe her.

Now, they've generally been quite good with diecast - principally Hot Wheels individuals, sometimes premiums, though I've also seen some of the Chinese domestic market boxed Matchbox on the shelves there, plus I got some pretty decent Welly four packs of 'world taxis' a year or so back for the low, low price of £2.99 - but they seem to be running down their Mattel stuff in favour of the increasingly ubiquitous Zuru Metal Machines and Teamsterz generic castings.

This was all they had in terms of Hot Wheels:

Mostly plastic large-scale monster truck stuff, and kiddy-focused playsets.

Diecast Hot Wheels were limited to a couple of stray unpriced five-packs, one of which was now unexpectedly a four-pack:

Otherwise, this was your choice:

I can see how these could still be great fun if you're a kid who's into Hot Wheels cars and realism's not that high on your agenda; they're certainly much better value than Mattel's offerings, and no doubt as a retailer TJ Morris can shift more ten-packs of Teamsterz at £5.99 than five-packs of Hot Wheels at £8.99. So it maybe makes sense to run down the Mattel stuff, and give the customers what they want/ can afford in these difficult times.

These fantasy playsets are faintly reminiscent of some of the Matchbox ones from the late '90s and '00s, I reckon:

But of course, I've no interest in playsets...

Or so I thought.

Because then this caught my eye.

I'd not seen these before.

And, weirdly, there was only this one left on the shelf.

I mean... it's kinda fun. And it does remind me of some of the Matchbox Motor City garages I had back when I was a kid in the '80s. Certainly more appealing than the skull & slime Hot Wheels confections.

But I'm waaay too old for playsets.

Or so I told myself.

Thursday night, I was thinking about it.

All day Friday, even with the market to distract me, I was still thinking about it.

Saturday morning, this bloody thing was constantly on my mind.

I should have heeded the signs.

I had some shopping to do early doors, so I headed down the town and contrived to go into the (much smaller) local Home Bargains to get some boring adult stuff like dishwasher cleaner and ibuprofen. And, unavoidably, I had to pass the toy aisle on the way to the tills.

But - there were no Matchbox products to be seen anywhere.

Ah well.

So the mature thing would have been to shrug, accept this, forget about it, and return home to my adult house with my wife and pets and other accoutrements of an adult life, and get on with the various adult tasks needing doing on a Saturday.

The somewhat less mature thing would have been to scuttle back to the car, drive ten miles in the opposite direction, shove through the hoards of bovine Saturday shoppers in the 'big' Home Bargains over at Abbeycentre, barge aside pensioners with trolleys in my desperate single-minded quest, all the while steeling myself to wage a battle to the death with an imaginary six-year-old who I imagined may be holding the last Matchbox playset from the shelves - then seize the damn thing with an audible sigh of relief and hurry off to the till, suffer a fit of remorse and angst in the car, before travelling the ten miles home again with the playset concealed in a bag of shopping, and then hiding it behind the curtains in the back bedroom until such time as I could retrieve it once everyone else was in bed and pry it open with a paint scraper because the damn box is sealed shut and you're apparently meant to tear it open along perforations at the back.

Can you guess which of those two options I took?

Well can you?

I mean, I'm nearly 43, for god's sake.

But this sort of thing gives me the same kind of panicky butterfly feeling as I had when I was 10, on my way down to Woolworths with a birthday fiver in my hot little hand and a gripping fear that the Superkings shelf would be bare.

I'd planned on just having a look at the bits; maybe trial fitting it together loosely. But not building it; that'd be silly, and anyway this could be an investment. I was so careful to remove the blue Chevrolet Silverado without damaging the packaging so I could put it all back together again.

I mean, I wasn't going to put the stickers on or anything.

But this garage does manage to straddle that boundary of being both reasonably realistic and also kinda fun, in an ingenious way. There are two mechanic figures, one with a tyre and one with a V8 engine block on a trolley, who move around when various levers are activated.

It's quite impressive.

So I went to put one of the walls on loosely, just to see how it all fitted together.

And the damn thing locked intractably onto the base.

Seemingly, these are one-way fittings, like a cable-tie - there's no way to easily undo them once they're snapped together.

Well, bollocks.

After spending quite some time trying to - very quietly - separate the wall from the base, using all manner of tools and succeeding only in devaluing my investment* with lots of little scratches, I was forced to accept the inevitable.

It wasn't coming apart. It wasn't going back in the box again.

So I put it all together, and added the stickers.

Oh well.

My tears will probably dry, over time.

And it is nice. Especially when Friday's market finds are opened and added to the diorama.

I know I would have loved this when I was a kid.

There's a lever on the side that raises the hoist, and also moves the mechanic with the tyre round the back end of the lift.

Similarly, there's a lever on the other (non-functional) lift which moves the mechanic with the engine block along a track too.

There's a reception with a seating area...

And a tiny ad for Matchbox Action Drivers playsets - which combine with similar Hot Wheels sets (plug, plug).

There's an air dispenser unit round the back, too, with movable air hose.

And parking at the front.

It really is a great toy. Much more detailed and finely rendered than the chunky (but still appealing) 1980s Motor City sets.

Certainly didn't have me surreptitiously looking up the Mattel website to see what other sets are available in the Action Drivers range...

Why am I still such a child?

Ah now.

40,654 · February 14, 2023

Next time I go in Home Bargains I’m going to get that. It looks awesome.

25,869 · February 14, 2023

I've seen that set,but managed to resist temptation.

Smoll Eddy would kill me if he knew!🤣

42,529 · February 14, 2023

21 minutes ago, sierraman said:

It looks awesome.

It is!

Let us know if you find any - there's a tiny smudgy picture of other sets available on the instruction leaflet, but they don't seem to resemble any of those listed on the Mattel products website.

25,869 · February 14, 2023

The two I saw were that garage and a fire station.

59,813 · February 14, 2023

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

I can see how these could still be great fun if you're a kid who's into Hot Wheels cars and realism's not that high on your agenda

Even as a little kid, there was a definite disappointment when auntie Sue bought you a set of those wanky Hong Kong cars that didn't even begin to look like a real car.

Funny thing is I now can't help buying some of the less illustrious brands - but they still have a bit of effort put into them being somewhat realistic