Box scan promises little but a light tank could
reasonably be expected to star in the contents! The "Over 35 Pieces"
on all three boxes is a funny one, there are in every set 31 figures, one or
two vehicles and a polyethylene play-mat made of carrier-bag material. In the
case of one set (the Battle of Berlin in this post) this
gives an item-count of only 33, count the wheels and turret seperately and you
get 36! The other two sets are a little better, giving 34 items/40 parts!
The contents complete and set-up on the
rather simplistic play-mat; clearly a meeting of two cart-tracks down in the GrΓΌnwald rather than the more iconic urban setting of so much
of the photography of the final, brutal campaign by the 'Red Army' to behead
the Nazi-daemon!
Which makes the sight of two sets of Matchbox US Infantry piracies dukein' it
out in the woods all the more incongruous! Especially as one side gets to call
on a vaguely British armoured-car for fire-support . . . lend-lease to the
Soviet Union!
The figures, no mortar or team but most of
the set is copied (leaning-back Tommy-gunner, bazooka-man, AFV-overalls and
stabbing down are also absent, along with the MG No.2) and you get them in two
colours, a mid-green (close to the Russian summer uniform) and an olive-drab
which sort of passes for field-gray!
The figures are so-so, they're not the
worst copies of Matchbox in these
small sizes, nor are they the best. Unmarked and in a glossy plastic; they is;
what they is, what they is!
The armoured-car is a very basic version of
the big Daimler as modelled in small
scale as a kit by Hasegawa for a long
time now. There are lots of versions of this from Hong Kong (and 'China'), most
probably coming down from the Dinky
die-cast toy original; this is the poorest version I know and is an
umpty-somethingth-generation copy!
However, finish-quality is good; it's a
nice clean, well-defined moulding, just not very accurate to the donor! Marked
"Made in Hong Kong" in the body-cavity.
A scan of the play-mat should anyone need
to print-out a paper replacement, neatly dating the set's issue to 1983 and
suggesting that DFC/Dimensions for
Children might remain with us through the still-busy MTC whose rack-toy products have featured heavily on the
Home-Blog over the last 20-odd months.
Below this post you will find briefer looks
at the other two sets in the series/pack-liner; Battle for Stalingrad and Battle
for the Black Forest.
===============================================================
But is it Giant?
No - date is way off, source-material for
the piracies is way-off, plastic play-matt is not Giant's style, although some of the comic-stuff with Giant figures did have similar play-mats;
they were paper.
