Matchbox 1:72 Percival Provost Mk.I

A Matchbox kit disguised as an AMT kit, very mischievous! Actually Matchbox back in the day sent their kits to the U.S market, these were distributed by AMT. Which is why there are a few very hard to find Matchbox Star Trek kits in the UK. The box art and kit contents were all the same just given an AMT border, and in the this case AMT instructions.

So there are times when I forget I'm looking at and AMT kit and it's actually from Matchbox, one of my top 3 all time favourite kit companies. 

This one was found from someone thinning out their collection. Amazingly it was still in it's shrink wrap. I've had my eye on this one for a few years now and as soon as I find a good identification orange I'll begin this kit. 

RAF Trainer, silver fuselage with bright Orange ID bands.

Matchbox was king of odd ball aircraft. 

This one is from: The Sultan of Muscat of Omans

Still sealed.... awesome!

Yep, that typical multi-colored plastic.

2 Pilot figures included.

Quite a clear canopy.

Back in the days when display stands were the norm.

Wax paper was stuck to the decals, however I'm more

than convinced that these will still work fine.

Warlord Games vs Perry Miniatures 28mm Napoleonic figures

First I'm not actually competing these figures against each other, more making comparisons between the two sets. The first one I bought was from Perry Miniatures. I'm very familiar with the Perry Brothers work when they designed figures for Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings series. 

I need a bunch of figures for a massive diorama my brother and I will be building, and I bought these two sets to see their quality. 

The first set from Perry Miniatures, are French Sailors of the Imperial Guard. The seller shipped them in a small black box, and I was a bit surprised the amount of flash that was on these figures. They are going to need a bit of work to clean up, but their quality is amazing. Exactly what I was hoping from Perry. I also really like the sculpt of the figures, they look very natural in their movements, and the faces are really well detailed.

The second set form Warlord games, is brilliantly molded as well. A lot cleaner as well, I think cleaning up any flash will be much quicker on these figures. You also see that they are mostly headless, I think these might be a bit easier to paint. They are bit thicker than the Perry Figures, but not by much, especially not enough to tell when they are all in formation. 

What's kind of interesting on the Warlord figures is they kinda look like paintings from the Napoleonic era. They've got that old classic style and feel to them, quite unique to whomever sculpted them.

French Sailors of the Imperial Guard

Middle figure holds an Imperial Eagle.

I think the Drummer figure is my favorite from the set.

British line Infantry Command.

A few different parts.

2nd head from the left with his Mighty beard.

Warlord Miniature (Left) Perry Miniature (Right)

On a closer inspection the Perry figure has a brighter more pure white metal. He's shinier and I can tell the metal is a bit stronger. I really like both of these figures, they are both excellently molded, and cast. I can't wait to get my hands on some more and see them all painted up.  I like that the Warlord figures have separate heads, this will allow me to swap multiple faces and have a bit more variety. 

In the end, I'l definitive be buying more from both companies. It's great to see that same style from the Lord of the Rings miniatures from my youth, and I'm glad the Perry Brothers are keeping busy and making figures that they have a devoted interest in. Now I just have to pass these to my younger brother and try to convince him to paint these for me, hopefully he'll give me a deal and they won't cost me that much.

Marivox 1:72 FFVS J-22

A friend of mine got me interested in Swedish aviation a few years ago. It started with a Matchbox Viggen, and I'm slowly adding to the collection all the time. This time I found a really cool fighter from a company I'd never heard of before.

The J-22 was the result of Sweden being cut off from the Allies during WWII. They needed aircraft and they weren't coming anytime soon. So they decided to build their own aircraft the J-22 fighter. Its was mostly a tubular frame covered in wood and actually fared pretty well amongst other aircraft at the time. 

Several examples still survive today, one is able to taxi on the runway. Personally I think it's a beautiful shape and frame. I found it on ebay and showed it to my friend hoping I'd found him a unique piece for his collection. turns out he already had 2 ha ha. I looked at the pictures a bit, and started to really like the kit, so I bought it, and I'm glad I did. 

I'd never heard of Marivox models before. They are a Swedish company who specialize in Swedish aviation, looking through their website, more less common aircraft. Which is great!

The kit comes in light grey plastic, it features recessed panel lines, that unfortunatly on my kit were all blended in. However I was up for a little scribing practice. Some pieces also had a rough texture to them. This was easily fixed with some 1000 grit sand paper, a few passes and nice and smooth. 

There is also a fret of etched metal. It contains parts for the interior and exterior. I left the interior parts off my model since I wasn't going to pose the cockpit opened. 

Lastly a beautiful decal sheet for 5 options. And they are all great options in my opinion. They are printed by Techmod, and were in perfect register, some of the nicest decals I had ever seen.

The long process of rescribing the kit. Thankfully there is an excellent stencil sheet (Pictured behind the plastic) This was the prefect tool to match the lines up. 

It's not a control column, it's actually Thor's mighty

hammer Mjolnir!

Really coming together nicely.

A small bit of sanding on the headrest.

Need to sand down and correct the profile on the tail.

Perfect.

Masking the canopy.

Adding details to the top, including etched

radio antenna.

More etched parts, scissors, and gear doors.

And individual cowl flaps.

I wanted to try a different route with the painting. I began by painting all the panel lines (or rivet lines as seen on the underside wings) a medium brown. I then painted Tamiya XF-21 Sky in between the brown lines. The real J-22 underside looks nearly identical to Tamiya XF-12 J.N Grey. So I lightly painted that on last and blended all the colors together.  Not too sure where my head was but I should have used XF-23 Sky Blue instead of the XF-21 Sky, would have got the blueish tint that Swedish aircraft have. But hey at least I know now so I prepare for that in the future.  

All blended together.

For the upper surface I started the same, painting the brown on the panel lines. I had noticed on vintage wooden aircraft a brownish patina that develops with age. I thought this might be a fun thing to try and replicate. A bit hard to pull off properly at 72nd scale but a unique challenge either way. 

The next color was the Green and Tamiya's XF-81 Dark Green RAF, was once again nearly identical to the pictures I had been studying. I painted inside the browned areas, and then blended the green over the existing green and brown, really pleased with the end result here.

Lastly, and difficult to photograph, I added XF-4 Yellow Green to my RAF Green paint. And painted on simulated highlights on the front top of the wings, and the top of the fuselage. It was just a quick experiment and I think it came out quite well.

The decals were the only thing about the kit I didn't like. They were thin and extremely fragile. I was lucky to get them on. I nearly lost my ind in the process. Thankfully I only lost 2 white stencils, and sadly the right wing marker, as you can see the left on is damaged but intact. I was hoping these Techmod decals would live up to their beauty, but in the end they were the biggest pain. I was thrilled to finally be done, and I covered then in several layer of Future polish. 

I was really happy with how this one turned out, even with my little painting experiments. The kit is quite nice to build, nothing too fussy, and pretty straight forward. Again the only thing was the miserable decals, but that's Techmods problem. Hopefully I'll find another of these for a good price soon cause I can't wait to build another one. Thanks for reading along.