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Monday, August 17, 2026

New Moonscape Diorama / Display Board - Pt 1 Inspiration

Way back in 2012 I blogged the building of this bookshelf display to use for my space toys. It's gotten a lot of mileage over the years and I really enjoy photographing toys on it. 


However, I wanted a larger diorama base that looked more like the moon than Mars. It's great having different colored diorama bases but a gray-tone Moonscape is more in keeping with a lot of my space toys. To that end I had been saving artwork of the Moon for years now, much of which was conceptual art showing what exploring and colonizing that little gray ball in space might be like.

Over the next ten(ish) installments I'll be covering the building of my new Moonscape diorama base.

Ed

All photos culled from the Internet






Forces of Valor (FOV) / Unimax Deep Dive: Pt 101 My Stash

This past 100 posts have been both a lot of work and a bit of a challenge. While trying to sort out the various figure sets offered by Forces of Valor / Unimax, they always seemed to throw me a curve ball. New sets - ones which are not listed in any of their literature - kept popping up out of the blue. Case-in-point is the set I now have on order and am waiting for. After looking at the photos in fleaBay it appears to have a piece - yup just one itsy bitsy detail piece - that hasn't appeared in any other set I know of! Had to order it! In addition was their chaotic, off-the-wall, haphazard packaging and set numbering decisions, making it difficult at times to sort out what it is they made and when they made it.

Overall though, the products inside the packing were pretty good. The biggest discrepancy people seem to point out are the hands. If you look at the figures, those guys have some big hands!! Other than that, what you got for the price when bought brand new back in the day, was a quality set at a great price. 

So far, the series has covered 20 figure sets over 100 posts. Of that, seven sets were ones that I had unopened out in The Cave or bought new off of fleaBay. The remainder were ascertained from fleaBay sales, FOV flyers, and the back panel of the set boxes. Those are the ones I had to pull figures and accessories from my tote bins. Back in the day I had already bought nearly every set they made, tossed the boxes (no photos), and threw the pieces in several tote bins. 

Ed

Here's a couple of the bins I used. The top one held all of the loose figures and bases while the bottom held some of the detail and terrain pieces - there originally was a third tote bin with more detail pieces. 

I relied on fleaBay for pictures of the set packaging and contents. Whenever I determined what went into a set, I would pull from these bins and photograph the contents. Unfortunately, box photos usually aren't able to show the 'smalls' - the tiny detail pieces every set contained - so those were omitted from many of the posts.

 As you can see there are still a bunch of left over figures and accessories from when I bought two or more of the same set to flesh out the army (plus a few job lots purchased when I was short a figure or accessory).



Here are the twenty sets covered in this series, all bagged and ready for...???
Ya know, I may just empty these out again into the bins and use 'em for their intended purpose - playing with Little Green Army Men!

Sunday, August 16, 2026

MPC Royal Canadian Mounted Police Set UNK YR (No Box) - Pt 6 (Final) MPC 60mm MP125 Ring Hand

Here's the last of the figures that came with my MPC Royal Canadian Mounted Police 'set' and the last post for this mini-series. MPC had also made winter-themed playsets that included these older style figures along with skis and poles that would look great when paired with these figures. That would make a great Yukon Territory fantasy playset. Add to that the Ideal tin-litho RCMP streetfront and you'd have one heckuva setup!

Ed

MP125 Ringhand Without Gear












MP125 Ringhand With Gear












Forces of Valor (FOV) / Unimax Deep Dive: Pt 100 Set #93804 U.S. 82nd Airborne Division - Carded

Here's another set that I'm not sure had a corresponding set number of 83804, but the photos do show that 93804 was issued. As in yesterday's post, I used photos I had already taken of other sets to show what would be in this set. Again, it's because I ran out of enough figures and accessories in my tote bin to do a proper photo shoot. 

I have one more set on order and it may take a couple of weeks before I get it and take photos of it, so technically this is not the last post for this Forces of Valor figure set series! Soooo, what's next? I guess in the meantime I can start posting FOV vehicles - I don't have them all, but I can squeeze a few posts out of them. The problem is, there's still several that need to be photographed and The Cave is still a bit uncomfortable for taking pictures.

Stay tuned to this station for further updates, I'll do what I can.

Ed

Set #93804 - Carded

(Photos culled from fleaBay)


Contents

-5 figures
-Log and sandbag obstacle
-Straight sandbag pile
-Small ruined wall
-Dragon's tooth tank obstacle
-Small cart
-2 barrels (1 large, 1 small)
-2 crates (1 large w/separate cover, 1 small)
-Cat
-Pile of miscellany
-4 OD ammo cans















Ammo Cans x4