Happy Geek Pride Day and it’s my 3rd Blogaversary 25th May 2019

Distractions of my 1970s childhood, my first Star Wars figures, still with me!

May 25 2019 Geek Pride Day – time to get your Geek On!

We’re almost half the way through an irresolute year and its my 3rd Blogaversary, so time to say thanks to all my readers and commenters.

Celebrating my third happy year of random flibbertigibbet flitting from  subject to subject this year ranging from repairing  Broken Britain’s and lots of 54mm toy soldiers, the joy of the Job-lot, through cheap plastics, FEMbruary Land Girls, 15mm Mounties and on to my current project reproducing Scout Wide Games:

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/01/new-gaming-year-irresolutions-2019/

May 25 2018 last year my 2nd Blogaversary!

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/happy-2nd-blogaversary-from-the-man-of-tin/

May 25 2017 was my 1st Blogaversary!

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/25/may-25th-2017-my-1st-blogaversary/

Geek Pride Day is another excuse for another Star Wars Day, being the first showing date in 1977 in the USA.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/farewell-chewbacca-may-the-4th-be-with-you/

Alan of the Duchy of Tradgardland blog, the  Tradgardmastre, my Scouting Wide Games co-conspirator, has sent me a bag more USA Tim Mee Galaxy Laser Team figures over on a International / intergalactic Scouting exchange – thanks Alan!

He also mentioned what Games Workshop does for Scouting with a sponsored Warhammer craft badge: encouraging the next Geek generation to use fingers and thumbs for more than swiping and clicking. I wonder if any historical miniatures companies will follow suit? https://fundraising.scouts.org.uk/warhammer

However you spend you Geek Pride Day, whatever your Geek is, enjoy the day!

Genuine 1980 Geek Pride? check out great little D and D BBC Archive clip from 1980 with 80s hair at  https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/geek-pride-day-25th-may/

Blog Posted by Mark Man of TIN 25 May 2019.

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Pound Store and Homecast Boy Scouts on the Painting Table

Not reliable casting weather to cast a few more  scouts to complete the Duchy of Tradgardland’s patrol

https://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2019/05/scouts-for-wide-games.html

but a chance to get some more Scout painting done in between scribbling down more character card and Wide Games rules ideas.  I have found a treasure trove of vintage scout manuals free here http://www.thedump.scoutscan.com/games.html

All twenty Shiny Toy Soldiers Little Britons 42mm Range LBB30 Boy Scouts on the painting table – four of them are now full skirted Girl Scouts! Still fiddly faces and gloss varnish to do.

Alan as Chief Scout of the Duchy of Tradgardland Scouts  has kindly sent my Boy Scouts the gift of a spare bicycle that he had in his Scout Troop stores.

A three part resin bicycle gifted to my scouts from Alan at the Duchy of Tradgardland. Two paper clip – Sass and Belle bicycle paper clips – male and female bicycles for comparison.

Toot toot! One of my homecast 60mm scout buglers  painted up and released (like the Duchy of Tradgardland’s versions) into the big outdoors.

I was hoping there was also a fun Pound Store Plastic alternative to buying or casting metal scout figures and the Wargaming Pastor had a good suggestion.

Two of my Pound Land “Penny Dreadful” figures converted into quick cheap scout figures. Still some painting to finish.

The Wargaming Pastor on Death Zap suggested that my floppy bush hatted Boer type figure conversions from Pound store tubs might convert well enough: “I’m tempted to collect a few scouts now, I’m wondering how easy it would be to modify some Airfix WW1 Americans or some of those Poundland chaps? Your Boer conversions would go a long way, then all I have to do is chop off the gun.”

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/pound-store-plastic-colonial-infantry-on-the-painting-table/

I have quickly paint-bashed these two 32mm examples up to see how this might go.  The Wargaming Pastor’s clever suggestion does work!

The original ‘penny dreadful’ pound store figures and first paint draft of pound store Boy Scouts. A simple hole punched card rim  or page reinforcer trimmed to size makes the bush hat.

From pound store figures to more expensive pewter figures.

Looking for a Scout Trek or Treck Cart,  before I started converting home cast gun carriages  for their wheels, I came across the Phoenix 43 series by S&D / Phoenix which featured a trek cart, two separate scouts pushing and a Scoutmaster and Patrol Leader.

https://www.sanddmodels.co.uk/products_43_figures.htm

Designed for model railways, I bought a sample of each, not quite sure of size at the time.  They are not cheap at around £3 each figure but they are beautifully and crisply cast. They also have very speedy delivery.

Fortunately they do match with my Little Britons 42mm boys and will form a few character pieces such as a Patrol Leader and a Scoutmaster. The Treck Cart should form an interesting scenario focus for  Wide Games.

OF203 Scoutmaster next to one of my painted 42mm Little Britons range scouts and OF204 Boy Scout with pole. OF238 and OF239 form the trek cart crew.

So there we are … my Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts now have wheels in the form of bicycles and a trek cart.

The 20 scouts are closer to completed painting, mainly just touch ups and faces before a gloss varnish to match the toy soldier style.

I have also spent  £3 on a single metal scout and made one from a penny plastic figure.

Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN (1970s Cub Scout, Bronze Arrow, retired) on 19 May 2019.

 

1p and 2p Copper Coins to stay in UK circulation

Some of my Prince August 32mm eleven home casts alongside Pound Store ‘Penny Dreadful’ conversion figures, all cheaply  based on penny bases.

Good news for many gamers that those lovely magnetic (post 1992) 1p and 2p coins are staying in UK circulation after a recent consultation https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/penny-coins-1p-2p-access-save-hm-treasury-a8897936.html

1p and 2p coins are so useful for basing gaming figures, especially giving that little bit of weight and magnetic bases to plastic figures. I have been using this penny basing method for Airfix figures since about 2001.

Credit where credit is due (we are talking money after all) I learnt about this magnetic aspect from Bob Cordery’s blog http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2010/01/single-figure-bases-cheap-bases.html

42mm range Little Britons LBB30 Boy Scout based on a penny

So it is still possible to keep asking for bags of penny and Tuppence coins, if ever in my local bank branch. Trips to the seaside also have those fabulous seaside amusements with the 2p change machines – I sometimes get a couple of pounds of these, quickly and discreetly select through them. I then use the pre-1992 non magnetic ones in the copper waterfall and tuppenny flipper machines, at which I rarely win anything back . So the amusements people can’t complain too much!

Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN 9 May 2019 – The third anniversary of creating the Man of TIN blog.

However my blog birthday remains the date of my first tentative Man of TIN post on the 25th May, which is  coincidentally Geek Pride Day, Towel Day, a Discworkd / Pratchett day  and a Star Wars anniversary too!

 

Farewell Chewbacca – May the 4th Be With You!

 

Some of my playworn original Star Wars figures from the 1970s …

Sad news that another of the original Star Wars cast has passed away, Peter Mayhew the very tall actor who played Chewbacca, announced on the eve of International Star Wars Day (May the 4th – be with you!)

In honour of the day  and Peter Mayhew’s memory, here is  a small parade of some my childhood Star Wars figures from the early films. Each represents a part of my mis-spent youth, literally, as if I spent no other pocket money I could scratch together in 1978 about one pound a month. That was what each Star Wars figure cost in the shops. Birthdays and Christmas might stretch to a spaceship or a playset.

More pocket money gone (each figure a month’s pocket money) as the Rebel Forces build up on ice planet Hoth for the Empire Strikes Back. The TaunTaun creature must have been Christmas or Birthday funds.

By hiding the fiddly bits like guns away in a tin, I still have a few of them left, surprisingly  as they have now been played with by several generations of the family over the last forty years.

The bases stopped them being quite as tippy, although lining them up for a photo, they were still fairly unbalanced. On their own they could not stand up well at all which made play a problem, but with no bases they could fit into vehicles  or onto lugs on playset bases.

My investment in Darth Vader and the Dark Side – a motley squad of Stormtroopers, snow troopers, pilots and Death Star technicians. Over a year’s worth of pocket money here!

Star Wars remains one of my favourite films, one of the few films I have seen twice in the cinema as a child. It enlarged the scope of my imaginative games beyond soldiers, knights, cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Suddenly everything was space crazy again.

Collecting these figures put a serious dent in my pocket money, so the Airfix figures came second place for several years. Star Wars and action figures must have been a serious challenge for toy and model firms like Airfix and Britain’s.

I haven’t used these large Action figures in any space gaming scenarios since the 1980s. However I do have some smaller 54mm figures that I still use: https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/close-little-space-wars/

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/in-a-garden-far-far-away/

Star Wars formed part of my childhood reading too!

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/march-reading-minor-galactic-epic-fail/

However you spend today, have a Happy International Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you!

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on May the 4th 2019. Another new film due this year …

 

 

 

 

 

Unboxing Box No. 4

An EBay glimpse and hunch that paid off? 

Join me in a virtual rummage  through (Christmas 2018)  Box No. 4. Who knows what you’ll find!

Crossposted from my other blog Pound Store Plastic Warriors https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/unboxing-box-no-4/

If you enjoyed this cross-post, you might also enjoy this recent rummage of a blog post https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/my-plastic-warrior-show-in-a-box/

Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN, April 22 2019.

Le Toy Van classic space rocket and pound store space figures

Little green men have stylishly landed … Le Toy Van Space rocket 

A classic space rocket to match my Pound Store Plastic figure space conversions. More pictures at – Crossposted from Pound Store Plastic Warriors https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/le-toy-van-space-rocket

Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN 16 April 2019

Girl with Attack Helicopter or Pound Store Block Figures

Wilko Wilkoblox UK website screen shot 2019

Crossposted for the sheer love of budget pocket money plastic toys  from my Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog –  see the blog post in full at:

https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/the-joy-of-pound-store-block-figures/

Inspiring the next generation of helicopter pilots or engineers? Good STEM / STEMette role Models? Screen shot from the Wilko / Wilkoblox website April 2019 

Blog posted / crossposted by Mark Man of TIN, 12 April 2019