Multiple Toymakers No. 1211 Marine Carryall

Like Multiple's Fort Toter (which I posted just a couple of days ago) this set is based on the same sized case, but with different graphics to suit the theme. Unlike the western playset, this one came with loose figures allowing me to set it up and show what play value there was in it. A kid would have gotten alot of bang for his buck with a small set like this, and he could've taken it to Uncle Al and Aunt Dorothy's house to while away the time, or to his neighbor Mikey's house to wage planet saving battles and make the world safe for crooked politicians!  Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Playset Magazine and My Old 'Marxville and Plateau' Train Layout

I've gotten into the bad habit of setting aside my magazines for reading 'later'. Unfortunately, sometimes 'later' turns out to be months later. Why is that do you s'pose? I do plenty of on-line reading, why don't I set aside time for print reading. Heck, I used to devour magazines and books at one time and now? Wellll, now I.don't. Oh hell, I'll set aside some self-analyses time for - (you guessed it) LATER! LOL

Anywho, my issue of Playset magazine came in and sat on the kitchen table for a couple of weeks when one of my fb buds posted the article in one of the toy groups with a shout-out to me! Boy, was I surprised hahahaha. At one time I was getting upwards of a couple of dozen magazines here in the house every month - and I read all of them. There were hobby mags, home improvement mags, general knowledge mags like The Smithsonian, history mags, all kinds of stuff. Many were subscription and many were simply bought off store magazine racks. I guess it was reading burnout which caused me to just suddenly stop eveything. HOWEVER, I am a charter subscriber to Playset and it was the only mag I've continued with until recently when I re-subscribed to Classic Toy Trains (CTT) after a long hiatus.

The article features my T. Cohn Navy Base as it was set up on The Marxville and Plateau (The MaP). There've been quite a few posts on The MaP here on Toys and Stuff and sadly I felt the need to dismantle the layout back in 2016. A part of me says that was a mistake, but a part of me says that one day there will be a better layout to take its place. We shall see, we shall see. This isn't the first time Playset has featured my photos but this one took me by surprise because I totally forgot these photos were submitted LOL Anywho, Thank You Rusty and Kathy Kern for your interest and more photos of toys and playsets are on their way! BTW, if you don't already, I would highly recommend subscribing to Playset magazine. It is really the only resource playset collector's have left here in the States and it needs our support! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

HAS Marketing Hill Top Alpha Playset

When I first got into toy collecting I was buying just about anything that came my way easily (aka cheaply) and a great place to do that was at the now defunct K*B Toys. They went out of business some years ago, another victim of the Recession, but when they were still up-&-runnin' it was a great place to buy stuff and the Hill Top Alpha set shown here probably only cost about $10 or so. For the past few decades kids didn't really have what us baby boomers did by way of nice, large, action packed playsets and when guys like Marx, MPC, T. Cohn, and others fell by the wayside there was really nothing to fill the void. Also, I believe a whole different mindset in toy buying had evolved. Playsets were so yesterday for kids. With a couple of exceptions, they survived mainly as somewhat pricey adult collectibles. HAS Marketing was one company which attempted to fill the void or re-energize the playset market with a Fort Apache re-make and this take on the old Marx Navarone set. It's an interesting hybrid of the giant Marx mountain fortress from their Navarone set, and remakes of MPCs big ol' clunky tanks in two distinct colors differentiating the two separate armies. There is only one large canon and looks like more of a sci-fi space canon than what was in the original sets. There were about forty figures in two colors but I never took mine out of the bag son there's no accurate count.

This was a nice set, but once I latched on to an original Marx Navarone this one fell out of favor with me and I sold it. The pictures were taken in The Cave in the days before I figured out it was better to move my photography outdoors. And BTW, I ended up selling the Navarone set as well! Enjoy!

Marx Galaxy Command Playset - Pt 5 Conclusion

Today  we're putting the Marx Galaxy Command playset all together. Shown here in all its glory laid out on that puny playmat. Yup, puny. Even as a kid, when I had several playsets, those little playmats just seemed so insubstantial. It was as if your whole fantasy world lived in a 2' x 2' square, after which all the play pieces fell of the Earth. As nicely detailed and beautifully executed the mats were, it was almost better to set the toys up without the distracting mat and rely solely on your imagination. I think had the mats been slightly larger, not huge mind you, just a little larger, that would have been great and they still would have fit nicely into a small bedroom. Maybe something along the lines of 2 1/2' x 4' or thereabouts would have been decent. HOWEVER, that being said, as they are they do make excellent small space dioramas, perfect for the person without a lot of room for large displays. In any case, this playset, like practically everything Marx did, is a great looking set and when all the piece are in place it's an attractive display. Like other playset posts, I've gone ahead and just took a bunch of shots from different angles.Fritz & Bettina Berg Enjoy! :)

The station platform is best displayed hovering above the tower. I simply took a wire coat hangar, cut it down, bent it a little and inserted it in holes already molded into the platform and tower.

See what I mean? Galaxy exploration in a two foot square. But I still love the graphics on the mat.

Soldier Bear Police Action Playset 1

Last Thursday we highlighted a nice little playset available exclusively from Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) outlets. That playset was primarily a Fire and Emergency themed set, today we'll take a quick look at a Police Action themed set, one of two different available at the time (approx 2005). There are many like items in both sets and many of the vehicles are the same, except in blue vs. red for the Fire and Emergency set. This set too is molded all in soft plastic. I no longer have any of these sets and the lone photos were taken in order to sell them. They all bear a resemblance to similar sets sold at Wal-Mart and were quite likely made or distributed by the same company. So, here's the first Police Action playset - Enjoy!

Marx Navarone Giant Playset

You know every now and then we show something from the collection that has since been sold and today we're doing it again. I had this Marx Navarone playset in the collection for many years and one day decided I needed more shelf space because this sucker takes up a big chunk of display real estate. These are the photos taken for the eBay auction so they're not not really so great. 

The playset is of course based on the movie 'The Guns of Navarone' starring Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn an adventure movie about a band of commando's during World War II who's mission it was to incapacitate a mountainside gun battery.  In the movie two massive naval guns were mounted side-by-side in the core of a mountain and giving hell to Allied shipping in the Aegean sea .The small band of commando's infiltrate the mountain fortress, gain access to the inner sanctum and succeed in blowing up the installation.

Marx's version is slightly different but still quite spectacular for a playset. Marx mounts two dissimilar, and not-quite-so-massive, cannons one above the other in this terrific hard plastic mountain centerpiece. The fortress isn't stealthily assaulted from within but rather faces a rather foolish frontal assault by a beach landing! My set had a broken beam upon which the elevator rose up and down and although it was repaired, the photos show it in pre-repair state. I did take photos of the figures but they turned out terrible - the photos are in focus but for some reason they all came out looking TAN - not gray or olive drab! Oh well. Enjoy!