I talked with HAMMER SIX today after his meeting with Ft. Thomas folks and we thought you all would like to have an UPDATE on everything.  Let's get to the big news first. The SHERMAN IS COMING TO FT. THOMAS!!!! The Army is going to be going up and getting it on the Sunday before and it will be there through Sunday afternoon, the 14th. Ft. Thomas will be selling $5 raffle tickets for 3 lucky winners to ride the tank.
I don't know about you guys, but I am pretty jazzed about this news and the Ft. Thomas people are just as excited about it as we are.


Next there are going to be Civil War reenactors  there and probably an encampment. The Civil War doctor will be there with his instrument display as well. I have seen this guy before. This is a cool setup.


The Reserve unit will have additional vehicles there. I'm hoping for an 
M-113 personally.


It's official, there will only be 1,000 kids coming through the exhibit Wednesday through Friday, rather than the 2,000 we feared. And... the 
Ft. Thomas folks are going to print our activity sheet that we made for the kids. There also be a guest speaker each day while the kids are there; the granddaughter of one of the Fort Commanders, who fought in the Civil War and was killed in the Spanish American War. That could be pretty interesting.


Ft. Thomas will have Dog Tags for Sale.


We will have Uniform Displays and Display of WW2 Christmas items


And of course we are expecting Toychest Hobbies and War and Pieces to be there. Toychest has already paid for their tables.


Hammer Six has even more details which he will share with everyone, but these are the highlights and I thought you all would want to hear that both the tank and Toychest are confirmed. It is going to be a great show.


Until next time, have a good one!

Without a doubt, my favorite comic growing up was Sgt. Rock. Some kids had great collections of Spiderman, Superman and Batman; my comic collection consisted of Our Army At War and GI Combat. Of course the man most associated with those two titles was Joe Kubert. The artist had a style that was like no one else's and it was perfect for the war comics that made up a huge part of his career.

When I went to the 1994 Joe Convention on the Intrepid in New York, Joe Kubert was there for the unveiling of Hasbro's new Sgt. Savage line. Kubert had done the artwork.

Joe Kubert on Left with Don Levine of Hasbro

Amazingly enough, Sgt. Savage had an amazingly similar appearance to Easy Co.'s Sgt. Rock (go figure). But what I really liked about that artwork was the way that Kubert's lines had loosened up, giving the art a sort of sketchy Sgt. Rock look. Along with the package artwork, Kubert created some little miniature Sgt. Savage comic books that were available in some of the packages. It was a really clever idea. I wish that Hasbro had done more with it than they did, it could have been a win-win for both them and the artist if it had been developed a little further, but... enough about that, back to Sgt. Rock... and Kubert...

Swiped this picture from Amazon, don't try clicking on it, you can click it all day and nothing will happen. I recently picked up this book and read it. I really enjoyed it, but those not interested in the history of comics in America might find it a little dry. Kubert was around at the beginning, working as early as age 11. He actually did a whole lot more than just Sgt. Rock, Jeb Stuart, Enemy Ace, Unknown Soldier, etc, etc. 

As I said, I found it to be an interesting read, not only because of the Kubert story, but the attention that was paid to how comics were made during the "Golden" and "Silver" ages of American comics. You probably don't know the process, the materials used, the size they are drawn at and the number of comic companies that were competing for business in the 30's, 40's and 50's, but all that information is in the book. Plus the book detailed how war comics came about and sort of gave a history of some of the various ones. But as I said above, it is a subject that I am really interested in, so I pretty much couldn't put the book down. Before I leave the subject of recent books, I want to take a moment to briefly talk about another Kubert project - a graphic novel called...
 DONG XOAI...

This one is written and illustrated by Joe Kubert and it is pretty cool. It is the story of some Green Beret Advisors whose camp, Dong Xoai is overrun by the Viet Cong. Based on actual events, the book is done in a very loose, sketch book style, which really gives it a journalistic feeling. The back part of the book actually has photos and informations contributed by the survivors of the actual attack. Of course I am pretty biased because of my interest in Vietnam, but I think this is one of Kubert's best comics ever. On a side note, how many of you know that he had a syndicated strip in the Newspaper during the sixties called Tales of the Green Beret.

I don't remember the year that this set came out, but I had to have one when they did, bought mine through Cotswold's if I recall. It was a must have, not only did I get an action figure of my favorite comic book character, it also featured art by Kubert and was signed by the artist. To date, it is probably one of my favorite pieces in my collection.

And well...that's about it for tonight. We'll end with this. Anyone remember this? Sgt. Rock action figures and vehicles by REMCO? I've got to say that I honestly do not remember these at all. I have no idea whether they actually made it to the shelves of the Toy Aisle or not. I am sure that if I had seen them, I would have had one. 


Well Campers, that is all for this time. Until next time, have a good one!

Sorry guys, didn't get around to doing the update last night. Mrs. Point Man and I were up in Amish country for a three day weekend and I just didn't feel like doing much of anything when we got back into town late yesterday afternoon. It was a good trip. I always enjoy hitting the three or four decent Antique places that are up there and I came back with some interesting items; a Vietnam Commendation Medal, ribbon and pin, still in the presentation case, a WWII Vintage field telephone and some other little goodies.


Not going to really do a BLOG UPDATE this morning since I can't upload images from this location, but I do want to continue the discussion from Friday if I haven't already exhausted the subject. I thought it worth mentioning that TRU actually has a cheap figure on the shelf right now. Don't rush down there, you would not be interested in it. It is about on the level of the Power Team and perhaps not even that good. But there are four figures that are retailing for about $10 a piece. The only 1:6th figures on TRU's "Military" aisle. I don't know who is producing them and the quality is pretty foul, but there is at least something on the shelf. Unfortunately it is not enough. The space alloted to these figures was two boxes wide on an entire off brand military aisle. That is not going to cut it and more than likely it will fizzle out. Of course, in 1992, Duke had about the same amount of space and we all know what happened with that. So, does it have a chance of coming back full force or not? I don't know. I do know that the Military aisle at my TRU has grown in the last year, but I don't know if that is significant, or if they just needed some filler till Christmas merchandise came in. We all seem to be in agreement though, it would seem to be a smart play if manufacturers wanted to introduce new people to large scale figures that they would get some sort of introductory line into one large retail store like Wal-mart or Target. I really do not think that Hasbro will be a player in the 1:6th market any more. They seem to simply not be interested in going there. Too bad. I know most of us don't really think a whole lot of their product, but they do serve the purpose of creating new business.


Well, that's all for today, until next time, have a good one!

Okay, as promised, tonight's UPDATE is a look back at DML Dragon figures. 
In 1999, Dragon introduced its New Generation Life Action Figure series. The series features fully posable military and licensed 12-inch figures with cloth uniforms, weapons and equipment. The series currently stands at some 600-plus individual releases, with subjects varying from World War II, Modern Special Operations and Law Enforcement, to licensed character figures from movies, sports, electronic games and comics. And it all started with a little guy named HANS.

By today's standards, even Hans seems a little antiquated, but at the time we couldn't believe that anyone could make a figure so totally authentic.

Of course in 1999, Dragon was using elastic for straps like everyone else, but what we all found so amazing was that we finally had a realistic looking German soldier with some really nice accessories. The uniform itself was so far ahead of everything else being offered at the time...well that alone was enough to put it into a class by itself. I remember going into my hobby store one day for some paint and seeing Hans sitting on a shelf up in the front of the store. I bought three of them that day.

Of course it wasn't too long before Hans starting acquiring some comrades to hang around with, like Klaus and Gerhard. Up until the release of Steiner, I think that I would have to save that Gerhard was my favorite. I think he was the first one to have some medals on his tunic and I liked his little five 0'clock shadow. I quickly found a reason to get a couple of these guys too. One I still have dressed in his original uniform. The other is my Lieutenant in my VIETNAM STORY saga.

This was another big favorite early on. I was so jazzed when Dragon finally released a Waffen SS figure. I have always liked the spring side of smocks and zelts better than the fall side, but I was really pretty happy to see Waffen SS finally join the lineup. Plus he had that really cool land mine and a G-43 rifle. How cool was that. The momentum seemed to be building too. Dragon releases were becoming more and more frequent and a sizable number of German figures were becoming available.  Then it happened, one day I walked into the hobby store and there he was, the first WWII American soldier. Anyone remember what his name was? Yes, Dave is right. Yeah, I bought a couple of them too, only one is still in his original uniform (of course).

I don't remember when it was that the first carded uniform and gear sets began to appear, but my hobby store regularly stocked them all. Of course there weren't near the offerings that we saw 21st come out with over the the course of their short reign, but some of the sets were pretty impressive. I was always amazed at the level of accuracy they tried to maintain in everything they did. You couldn't help but compare it against the stuff that we had been getting from Hasbro for several years and realize that you had wasted a lot of money on Hasbro stuff. Well, hindsight is always 20/20.

So what's the point of this UPDATE, well... besides remembering some fun trips to the hobby store and there were a lot of them, I think that it does us good to look at where the hobby has been and where it has come. I hear an awful lot of people badmouth Dragon on various boards about how they keep running the same old tired "retreads", how they just aren't as good as the competition, etc, etc. Some of that is certainly true, but the reality is that 21st Century, Dragon and BBI sort of paved the way and showed us how good figures could be. A lot of little companies have come along since and have offered some rather amazing product, but they are building on the folks that came before them. Today, Dragon still offers a pretty decent product and at a fairly reasonable price compared to some of the $160 to $200 figures that are out there. It has been a while since I have bought a new figure and as the prices climb, I buy less and less of them. Personally, I think it is great that there is still one big player manufacturing figures. I hate to think of what will happen to the hobby if Dragon goes back to just making models. We talked the other night about the void that Hasbro left, Dragon is really the closest thing there is to an entry level in the hobby anymore. Well, I would like to hear everyone else's thoughts, I have flapped my gums long enough. Where do you think the hobby is headed? Will Dragon continue to be there? What do you think will be the next big trend in Action figures?


That's all for tonight, until next time, have a good one!

Tonight, we will jump back thirty years. Realizing that some of you were even born in 1964, it was still a fairly significant moment in time for Action Figures.

Yup! That is when it all started and regardless of what a lot of us think of the HASBRO of the 1990's and first decade of the new century; at that time... they were significant.

1964 saw the release of four toy soldiers that would become a toy legend; Action Soldier, Action Marine, Action Sailor and Action Pilot. Not to mention a whole lot of gear to outfit them with. The initial shipments were sold out in a matter of days. Soon though, GI JOE would have entire aisles in some stores.


1964 was significant for me as well. I was in a place called Guam. My family was stationed there between 1963 and 1965. A few months after we arrived there; President Kennedy was killed and the torch that had been passed to a new generation seemed to fade. I remember that day like it was yesterday. One of my most vivid memories from Guam was watching B-52s take off for Vietnam. 

It would be 1965 before I would have my first GI Joe. We returned to the states from Guam in 1965 and were stationed in Washington DC. It was in DC that I got my first GI Joe - Action Sailor (go figure...Navy Brat). Living in Maryland, close to the DC line, my mother would take me about once a week to a place called GEM (Government Employees Merchandise) and let me get a carded item for my Joe. It was only at Christmas time that I would get a window box set like this one, though I believe mine was the Marine version (Mom was a Marine, go figure!).

I even had one of these at one point, but for a long time, I kept Joe's gear in a cardboard box. Unlike some kids on the block, I had one Joe. We didn't have a whole lot of money, so I really didn't have much gear. Never seemed to mind though. Things were just a lot simpler in 1965.

Never had any vehicles, certainly didn't have one of these, though I would have liked to have had one. $15 is sure a good price compared to the $150 I paid in 1990 to get my hands on a mint one. Now people are paying even more than that for Jeeps that Hasbro released in 2000. It is an amazing thing to me. Someone said in the blog last night that they feared that when they were gone, no one would want this stuff. I don't know. It may be true, but even forty some years later, people are still paying premium prices to get their hands on this original stuff, even when it is in only passible condition. I kind of think that there will be an online market for action figures for sometime to come and it is even possible that if things improve economically, we might see the return of a cheap figure to the retail market. That is kind of a stretch as so many merchandisers follow an "In and out" strategy these days on just about everything. I think the days of GI Joe Aisles may be gone. Though I was surprised to find that there is still a military aisle at the local TRU. It is all little stuff that none of us wants, but it is there all the same. I remember saying to my wife one day in 1992, "you know, if I were a company like Hasbro, I think this would be a good time to put out a 12" soldier and I would give him a Desert Storm outfit." A few weeks later, Duke was sitting on the shelves of my local Target and I bought three of them. Just a coincidence I'm sure and as I was collecting vintage at the time, not a completely left field statement for me to make. It is funny how those things go though sometimes.


I only have one Joe in my collection that I owned when I was a kid and he is not my first, he was one of my last, a fuzz head. But he has been with me now for about forty years. It is hard to tell what will happen in the future as far as the hobby goes. A lot of things cycle. I sort of believe that as long as there is a Hasbro, there will always be a GI Joe in some sort of form. I don't know if we will ever see our 12 inch buddies again though.


Well, next time we will look back at  DML and some of the early Dragon stuff, which will conclude my "Look Back" week. Until then, have a good one!

Well, it has been a busy weekend and it has gone way too fast. I spent a portion of it working on stuff for Ft. Thomas and I spent part of it just relaxing. I hope everyone has had a good one (short as it might have been). I am going to spend this week doing some looking back I am going to start with an event that took place in 1994 and then we will jump even further back to 1964. I recently found some pictures from the 1994 Joe Convention that took place on the USS Intrepid in New York City. I was there and though there had been Joe Conventions a plenty by 1994, there had never been one like the one in 1994 - The Thirty Year Anniversary of GI Joe.

Two years earlier, Hasbro had returned to the 12" market with the special TARGET figure Duke. They were sold out in a matter of days. As we all remember, those of us who were in the G.I. Joe hobby at the time, he wasn't much of an action figure really, but we ate it up like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think even Hasbro was surprised at his success and it wasn't long before a whole line of REAL AMERICAN HERO figures were lining the shelves at TRU, TARGET and WAL-MART.

Yes, they were really this bad and I was buying them right along with everyone else. Two years later I was standing on the deck of the Intrepid and it had been thirty-three years since I had last stood on that deck.

The 1994 convention was special for a couple of reasons; first it was the only place to get the Anniversary collection as it was not in the stores yet, it would soon be, but for the Joe crazed faithful, it was a magical moment when we had something that no one else had. Secondly, the convention was the place where Hasbro unveiled it's newest product, Sgt. Savage and the Screaming Eagles. That of course was to have greater significance for me later on when 21st released something called a Stuart Tank, but it was fairly significant for me the night of the banquet when we saw the new product and got to meet the product artist - Joe Kubert (the man behind Sgt. Rock). We also got to hold the original Concept GI Joe, which wasn't much to look at up close and personal, but it was carefully passed from one attendee to the next. And as exciting as all that was for me, nothing compared with being on the Intrepid. The last time I had stood on the deck of that ship was 1962, when my father had set me in the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk.


Well, I realize that this might not be an exciting blog for most, but I felt like a walk down memory lane this week and this seemed like as good a place as any to start.
Until next time, have a good one!

Tonight's UPDATE is going to be mostly pictures. You know I've said many times that a picture is worth a thousand words and I think it is really true in this case. I showed a couple of pictures of Hammer Six's kitchen wagons the other night when I did an Update on our monthly meeting. Tonight you are going to get to see the rest of those pictures and I am going to let them talk for themselves.

Nice, huh? Even if I had a thousand words in my vocabulary, I couldn't have described it any better than these photos. This is just one really sharp setup and Hammer Six has really done it up right with lots of extras. There is just so much eye candy with all those containers and food, etc. It is too cool. 
Well, that is all for this week. Hope you found something in the UPDATE that you could use this week (I know I could use a couple of these kitchen wagons). Until next time, have a good one!

The 15 cwt CS8 Morris-Commercial was first developed in 1934. Great Britain’s War Department had the need for a general purpose vehicle. Using the specs outlined by the War Department, the Morris Car Company designed a truck using many of the components from their 1933 civilian ‘C series’ range. The newly designed truck was designated CS8, (S denoting 6 cylinder and 8 denoting an approximate 8’ wheel base) it had a short stubby appearance with a high ground clearance. It became the workhorse of the British Army. The original design CS8 evolved into three Series, the Mark I, II & III. The CS8 continued development and production through 1942, being produced under contract by various British manufacturers. The CS8 was replaced in 1942 by a 4 cylinder variant designated the C4. The early CS8 has a small windscreen and canvas doors. These were replaced by a full windscreen and metal skinned half doors in 1941. The CS8 was powered by a 6 cylinder 25 HP side valve engine. The CS8 was adapted to many different uses during it’s life. Examples include a water tanker, petrol hauler, compressor truck, office truck and wireless truck. There was even a production of 100 armored cars designated CS9 based on the lengthened chassis of the CS8.

It is a project that I have thought about for years. I read a book about the British Army in North Africa many years ago and the soldiers in the book were radio men. Their vehicle was a Morris like the ones that are pictured here. I have always admired the unusual lines of the truck and thought it would be an interesting project.

After Lanny made my Marmon Herrington armored car and I did my SAS Jeep, I began to think even more about the Morris project. I really wanted to create one of the radio vehicles from that book. It would look much like the one at left.

As the background paragraph above alludes to, there were a lot of variants of this vehicle and you could probably spend a lifetime modeling them all. The thing that will probably keep this project on the drawing board is the wheels. I simply don't have anything suitable. If anyone sees a busted Hasbro M8 lying around at a garage sale or something (and it still has the wheels) grab it for me, they would be perfect.

Here's the same vehicle as above in model form. I think this is 1/35th, but I am not sure. I know one thing though, I am going to make one of these one day. I have some Brits that need a ride like this. Well, guys...that's all for tonight. Hope these shots got someone enthusiastic about a project they have been thinking about for a long time. Until next time, have a good one!

Thursday, about 4:30 pm, my office phone rang and it was my good friend TC. I hadn't heard from TC in a while, and it was a surprise to hear his voice. Unfortunately I had a meeting I was running to and we were only able to talk about five minutes. We hung up however with the promise that we would connect the next day. It didn't happen though. Friday passed and I didn't talk to TC again. Saturday afternoon Hammer Six called me and gave me the news that TC was dead, He had died on Friday from a heart attack. I don't know if I was the last of TC friends to talk to him or not, I certainly hope not. Sunday night I wrote something on GL's forum about TC, but I decided that I wanted to do something on our site as well. You know they say a picture says a thousand words and so I thought I would share just a few pictures that Tim shared with me over the years. His last great project was his MARS saga. It was more art than it was 1:6th, but so much of Tim's stuff was art. Tim was a storyteller and an artist and that is how I will always remember him.

I would write Tim long emails like I do everyone else. I would rather write than talk on the phone, alway have been that way. Tim, however could out write me any day of the week and then he would call me as well and we would sit on the phone and talk for a couple of hours at a time, mostly him talking and me listening. We would talk about fine art, mixing 1:6th and art, comics, animation and commercial art projects that we were working on. He was always encouraging me to achieve some new lofty goal with my 1:6th comics.

I was in awe of his talent. He had done some rather neat effects over a period of time, but this new project that he was working on, the MARS thing, it went way beyond standing figures up and taking pictures. What he was doing was art. The figures were really just the starting part for a world that he was illustrating and his techniques were so far beyond anything anyone else had even tried. He would talk about the things he was trying, the challenges, the successes and the failures and  I just couldn't believe the  new territory he was exploring. It was all pretty amazing stuff.  The other night GL put up a bunch of Tim's stuff on the site so if you go over there you can check it out if you have not seen it before.

If you haven't seen his work, I highly recommend that you do take a look. You may not like it, but it is really pretty amazing artwork. Tim and my approach to telling a story is very different. I know that people think I lean pretty heavily on photoshop and I do, but essentially I use photoshop for effects and backgrounds, leaving the figures unchanged. Tim felt like nothing in the photo was beyond his brush. He would redo eyes, mouths and even add individual strands of hair. If he didn't like the way the clothes fit on the figure, he would simply repaint them. He was a tremendous artist, pure and simple.

He knew that nothing on earth was going to look like what he envisioned Mars to look like, so he simply painted his backgrounds in, rather than trying to find something suitable from real life. His imagination was boundless.

For one of GL's contests he even created a box for his MARS troopers figures. That was a while back and you could still find 21st product on the toy shelf. This box artwork of Tim's really captured the look and feel of the type of boxes that 21st was doing at the time. Yes, there is a 1/6th figure there, but it had been heavily repainted to create a very artsy illustration for his box cover. It is beautiful work.
Every time I felt like I had reached a new plateau with some experiment in one of my stories, Tim would totally blow me away with something new he had tried. Yet, even though I knew I could never be in the same league as he, he never made me feel that way. He could always see past the flaws and find something creative in what I was doing. I appreciated his humbleness and his spirit. I will miss Tim a lot. I will miss those long conversations that we would have about art and the hobby. I will miss his sense of humor and his insight. He was one of the most talented people I have ever known and I counted him as a brother. Tim, you will be missed.


TC did a tutorial a number of years that really demonstrated all the different techniques he used and explained the rational behind them. It was really good and I would like to put it on the site eventually, maybe as a TC Gallery. Even though most folks here never met him face to face, he was still a member of the SSCC and I would like to do something to remember him. His own art seems the best way to do that.


Well, that is all for tonight guys, until next time, have a good one!