Another of the replacement sets for an older version holding the -16 code in the list. They were a late change and well received when they were finally released, still available (unlike the equally waited for, and equally well received when they arrived
Commandos, whose mould-history are a small book by themselves!), these have not aged that well, with some of the 'new' production (that'll read weird in 20-years time!) from
Pegasus and
Imex looking better, but they are still (2015) a really useful set.
Based around the 54mm/1:32nd scale set which had been available for years, new poses were added and the new set paid homage to the old one with a rubber dingy to pootle-about in, at the water's edge.
Artwork on the long boxes (and the later catalogues - here the 1980 issue) was actually a figure from the earlier set, wading, doing KP's or surrendering has never been fully decided, but a sharp knife and re-basing renders him more useful than a surrendering-guy!
1985 and the
Airfix 'brand' owner's get the image reversed! Sums-up this sad period in the
Airfix saga, as the Irish end of an American multinational flogs the golden-egg layer to the French...I'm condensing a lot into a little, but it too, sums-up the period nicely!
Comparison with the
Atlantic set,
Atlantic clearly based theirs on the
Airfix set, but before the
Airfix set had been issued, so must have been using the 54mm set, with the result that only a few are obvious, they too - adding poses of their own.
The blue figures tended to be in French Infantry boxes, but are sometimes found in the
Marine Corps packaging and the set has probably been issued in more colours than I've found, and this photo' is only sample of the ones I have!
Full set on the runners, like the earlier second type
German Infantry, the six re-used poses from the 1:32nd scale range are slightly heavier and even a tad bigger than the 'all-new' poses, compare the kneeling firer and bazooka-man.
The replacement rubber dingy trying to show a slight plastic-colour variation with a drabber green to the left and a yellowish version to the right. This boat is a single-piece which was a vast improvement on the earlier one, but tended to shrinkage marks or slight distortion after leaving the mould-tool.
Comparing the similar poses from
Airfix both sets (older - the underneath of both line-ups), size-wise there's very little in it, but the new poses have much better detailing or definition, you can tell what rifle they're holding (M1 Garands and M1 carbines), webbing, clothing &etc. all better sculpts.
The major difference is in the lack of a second paddler for the dingy, but there was a overall lower pose-count as well.
Fujimi were another team who'd watched the
Airfix rushes and liked what they saw so much they lifted their 54mm set wholesale, but they added some of
Britains 'Deetail' figures to their set, of which the new
Airfix set had equivalents, and above is a side-by-side of the closest matches.
Fujimi set on the
main Blog.
It floats! The older one - as we saw on their post - tended to fill with water through the join-line, without a join-line this one displaces enough water to float in the proper floaty manner!
The
Esci hard plastic 'kit' set also lifted the 1:32nd scale set, again adding a couple more, the mine-detector has more in common with the late
Marx/MPC 54mm or
Monogram 1:35th figures. They cut both prone figures at the waist and swapped legs/bodies to make 'new' poses, further converting the crawling torso to an ammo-feeding No.2 on the MG. They also give it the correct tri-pod, rather than the rather fictional forward-sited bi-pod of the elderly
Airfix sculpt. There was a bi-pod tried with the .30-cal, but it was set back where the barrel meets the working-parts housing. It doesn't look like a BAR, but I guess that's what it must be taken for?
The two guys running and firing a grease-gun have been similarly swapped, while the bazooka-man is converted to a flame-thrower operator.
The biggest omission
Airfix indulged in - with this set - was to not use either of the 54mm sculpts of the officer, leaving this set without an obvious one? Hong Kong though, had copied him a dozen or more times in the preceding two decades or so (in small scale), and with
Esci and
Fujimi copies kicking around as well, there's no actual shortage of them out there!
The chap walking forward has all the look of one of Hollywood's 'Ell Tees' though, so he could fill the boots of a pistol waving papa!
The entry for the 2018 catalogue, a pathetic list of six common sets all from WWII and no Japanese or Russians!
Vietnam 1967
♬ ♫ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♫♫. . . " One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes
you small
And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know
you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call
And call Alice, when she was just small
When the men on the chessboard get up and tell
you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she'll know
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy
dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head" . . . ♬ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
Vietnam 1972
♫ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ . . . "I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours any more - I want them to turn black " . . . ♬ ♫ ♪ ♩ ♪ ♫
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