Atherton Scenics Destroyed American Farmhouse

Yesterday I posted a foam building made by Formtech. Today's building was probably made by Atherton Scenics. Here's the kicker: I don't know anything about Formtech, and know only a little bit about Atherton. Formtech was big in the '90s and early 2000's when I was really active in collecting 1/32 scale military toys, but I believe Formtech has since gone out of business. What I don't know is: 

-was Formtech the precursor to Atherton?

-did Atherton produce toys under the Formtech banner, then change it's name from Formtech to Atherton?

-did Formtech go out of business and sell it's product line to Atherton?  or

-did Formtech just go belly-up and none of it's old product line is still being made by anybody?

As for Atherton Scenics, I found this write-up on one of my favorite train hobby shop websites, MrMuffins Trains:

"John Atherton started producing foam scenery items for his family's hobbies in September, 1994. Over time, he has become the largest and most creative producer of painted foam scenery material to enhance the realism of your models. We met John years ago as he made O gauge stone walls, tunnel portals and other scenery material we use on our layout. We are proud to represent his line of creative scenery pieces."

I am familiar with their line of model railroad scenery supplies having a bunch of pieces made by them. I also know that model railroad scenery items are not the only thing they produce, and their line of destroyed European buildings and military related scenery pieces can be found on most reputable military hobby shop websites. However, while I'm not 100% certain they made this house (because I never saved the information from the original purchase), my guess is that they did. Why? No one else out there is doing these type of buildings in 54mm / 1/32 scale that I'm aware of.

The house itself is definitely American, not European. Looking at the gorgeous detailing, you can clearly see the walls are the stud framework style of construction we follow here in the States (what I call 'disposable matchstick' houses) vs. the more solid wall construction of European houses (what I call real houses!). As I said before, the detailing on this is awesome for a building that's just supposed to be destroyed.

Ed

NEW SERIES: Marx Battleground and Training Center Playset Pieces - Destroyed House

This has been a l-o-n-g overdue series. There's sooo much Marx military toys sitting out in The Cave and I just recently got serious about photographing them. There's more than enough to start a new series, however, I am not going to break the series down into 'parts', like Pt 1, Pt 2, etc. because there'll be like 5000 parts when all is said and done!

As a kid I never had a Marx Battleground or Training Center playset, yet I still remember them, most likely the result of my folks buying smaller header bag, or carded sets vs. the larger boxed ones (although I did actually get several large Marx playsets as a kid). As an adult collector I always shied away from them because of costs and I only have one boxed Training Center playset. But I do have a multitude of the individual pieces that came in the playsets! A few pieces have already been posted on the blog like the three airplanes that Marx included in their big boxes. Those were posted back in 2023. Then, just yesterday I posted the CH-37 Mojave helicopter which appeared in some of their very first big box offerings

This extract from the 1958 Sears Wishbook is the first reference I could find of a Marx Battleground playset. You can clearly see the Mojave helicopter as well as the destroyed house which is featured here today. The write-up calls it a 'bombed out building' although I've seen it referred to variously as destroyed building or house, or mansion. Call it whatever you want I s'pose!.

My memories of this piece comes from the Civil War Centennial playset I got in 1961, but little did I know at the time that it was already a three year old accessory.

The house measures: 6" (15.24cm) W x 2.5" (6.35cm) D x 3.25" (8.25cm) H