Well, in the end there had to be a 'Yes!'
to the "But is it Giant?"
question, and this is the first of what will be many, as we are looking at 100%
Giant output, which, as far as I
know, has never been associated with non-Giant
production or sets.
The Giant
landing craft, one of their bigger pieces and therefore - like the Viking
longship or knight's catapults - quite rare as it only featured in a few of the
larger carded sets.
The photographic equivalent of a
multiple-view drawing! I think it's a loose rendition of a Higgin's Boat, although Giant's
is made to take armour while a true Higgin's was a troop carrier with provision
for a jeep and trailer.
The clip-in front ramp/door is joined by
two slip-on pom-pom guns based loosely on a .50cal Browning heavy-machinegun. Three crew are provided; the same
pose, in two iterations and they slip into the three 'pulpits' of the two gun
stations and a wheelhouse.
The wheelhouse guy ('helmsman') gets a
larger base and plug-in ships-wheel on a long steering-rod, and all three are
just wedged into the pulpits resting against the inner/lower-ledges visible in the
left hand shot.
The figures don't sit easily in their
positions, and at some point Giant redesigned the two gunners, taking their
'penny' bases (left figure) away and reducing them to small buttons (right
figure) which allowed them to drop in with ease. The smaller version seems to
be commoner, but that maybe only in my collection and is not to be taken as
empirical of anything.
The AFV's, there are four main bodies for
the tank (a loose M46/47 hull), of
which I don't yet have the quad-AA version (guns based on Roco-Minitanks Flak-38),
but from the left we have a vague Sherman
turret with 'ray-gun' (space-tank, yeay!), a shorter barreled turret which
seems to be based on the M44/M53/55
family of SPG/Howitzer's superstructures and, finally, a crude copy of Airfix's M40/43 SPG with M12
cradle?
There is also a jeep, usually fitted with a
trailer and a sub-scale half-track with twin-mg mount, usually fitted with a
gun, which is a copy of Marx's
standard play-set piece.
The hull and running gear are the same on
all four vehicles and consist of five Christie-style
full height road wheels and nothing resembling a drive sprocket. Plastic colour
can vary from yellow-olive to a dark olive-drab. Warping of the hull (probably
at the factory, rather than through age), in a banana-fashion, tends to leave
the middle three wheels proud of the road!
The 'ray-gun' of the Sherman-alike is usually found bent, again this seems to be factory
shrinkage, rather than any later deformation through age, and while it's never
severe, it does tend to droop slightly, which lead to a redesign with a heaver
barrel which is also slightly shorter, but stays straight! It (right hand of
the close-up) retains some of the features of the ray-gun look! Unlike the small-based gunners, this variety seems less common, but again; from a sample of a dozen or so tracked AFV's, it's not to be seen as empirical of anything.
As I say, I don't have the quadruple Flak
version, but it can been seen in Arlin's excellent article here at HäT's archive.
The generic US SPG I do have (above) seems to have
a cradle similar to the ones we looked at here (not
Giant) and both could be taken from
the Esci M12, but I don't think it's old enough, so they may be harking back
to an earlier kit from Monogram, Pyro or Renwall in a larger scale?
You can see it also traverses both from the
gun and the fighting-compartment in a very un-SPG sort of way!
Although the jeep usually gets a trailer
and the half-track a small field-gun, they can both tow each-other's preferred
hitch. And the sublime sculpting of the jeep (by far the best item in the range
and one of the better 'HO/OO' jeeps overall) is offset by the half-track being
really quite comical, short, inaccurate, sub-scale and equipped with twin
ray-guns and Marx's 'ladder-racks'!
But then they were only pocket-money
rack-toys!
Another Japanese-held Pacific island falls
back into US hands due to the timely intervention of the Giant Plastic Corp's 'Carlos Fandango' extra-wide Higgins Boat and ray-gun
space-tank - those Jap-chaps never stood a chance!
===============================================================
But is it Giant?
Yes, all of it!
