PIRATES: MPC Original Large Pirate Ship - Yellow HP

In a previous post I highlighted a job lot which contained this large MPC pirate ship and all the pieces shown in the photo. After posting to the facebook groups I'm confident that the set is nearly complete. 

-It's only missing the two red soft plastic (SP) oars for the rowboat

-The short yellow gangplank, although the correct piece for the set, should be red as it would have been molded on the same sprue as the rowboat.

-In addition I have three lanterns instead of the usual two - only two lanterns were on the sprue along with the rowboat and oars.

-The wooden dowel masts are correct for this set. MPC started making one-piece plastic masts later in the ships' production.

-The longer 'gangplank' (my guess is that it's a component piece from a bridge) pictured at the bottom is most likely from another playset but is useful for this set.

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

BREWERIANA: Lionel #6-9106 O-gauge Miller Lite Vat Carrier 1984

Let's look at another O-gauge railroad train car for our breweriana series: the Miller Lite Vat Carrier from Lionel's MPC era in 1984. Occasionally I'll pull out all my beer cars, or perhaps cars labeled for various candies or treats, and run 'unit' trains. They're fun to watch and, needless to say, very colorful. As far as I know there's not too many vat cars featuring beer labels out there in the 3-rail world, but I seem to recall a Budweiser vat car (but don't quote me on that). Beer companies tend to show up in refrigerator cars (reefers) much more than they do vat cars. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Battle For Fort Treasure - Pt 2 Final

After looking at the photos of this set-up I'm thinking to myself, "Meh" LOL I enjoyed messing around with the toys but at the same time the photos aren't what I'd hoped. But that's okay - this is the first time ever on the blog that a sea-born battle was waged and photographed. I'm going to need a different base with a bit more realistic looking water (not just a platform painted a flat sky blue) and different backdrops for more effective photography. That being said, here's the remaining pics from the photo shoot of Tim-Mee's Pirate Fortress Playset. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The fort rests on a piece of green poster board simulating an island. Good 'nuff for playing but lousy for photography. I have a bunch of playset forts and castles in the collection as well as random sheets of Styrofoam laying around. I really need to take a look at what I can make for a proper castle/fort base

The smaller 45mm Tim-Mee figures look much better with the MPC boats than the MPC 60mm ringhands which would normally have come with them

The original MPC boats are colorful and toy like, whereas the repop's are brown or rust colored

A bird's eye view of the set-up. This table will be used for my Halloween and then Christmas train layouts in the coming weeks, but it needs more panels for the backdrop. I could also use some more landforms if I'm gonna do set-ups like these.

You can see that a plain, flat sky blue painted 'water' isn't all that great, but it's a step in the right direction.

The fort is about the same size as some of the Marx Fort Apache stockades. The 'island' took up the entire size of the green poster board and appears to be a decent size for it however, some of my castles are a bit wider and will need a larger base if I ever get around to making one.

BREWERIANA: Kapaun AS, GE Kissling NCO Academy Beer Stein 1989

While stationed in Germany, I lucked out when it came my time to attend the NCO academy as it was only about a 30 minute drive up the road from our house at Kapaun AS. Here is the souvenir beer stein from my time there. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Battle For Fort Treasure - Pt 1

It's the dawn of a new day and competing bands of pirates have begun to fight over turf and supremacy in the region! A fleet of ships have pulled up to Fort Treasure and have begun the fight!

This was a fun little set-up and it was up and played with for several days before taking down. I gathered most all of my MPC ships - repo and original - assembled the Tim-Mee Fort Treasure and used only the figures that came in the Tim-Mee playset. And, being smaller than MPC ringhand pirates, they actually look much better in the MPC ships. This was all about playing with toys and taking a few pics showing how you can mix and match toys from different companies and era's in a fun way. A few more pics tomorrow of this little skirmish and then we move on. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

BREWERIANA: 'W' - .5l Freistaat Bayern (Free State Bavaria) Ceramic Bier Krug / Beer Stein

Here's a nice little souvenir from our travels in Bavaria. It's mad by a company who's hallmark is 'W', but I can't find the name of the firm on-line. I had a bad habit when photographing these of not always remembering to take a picture of the bottom which would show any hallmarks. I'm glad I wrote it down at least. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Oak Island Treasure: A New Playing Field and Burying Pirate Booty - Pt 2 B&W

Occasionally, I do like trying to plus-up my photos as best as my meager abilities will allow. So given that, I thought about yesterday's post and came up with this 'what if?' scenario. What if the pirates buried their treasure at night? How would that look? To that end a couple of the color pictures were given a dash of Photoshopping and now the whole scenario plays out at night. Hope you - Enjoy! Opa Fritz