MPC Ski Patrol is starting off this section of odds and ends. I remembered I got a MPC Ski Patrol for Christmas. I got it beside what whatever Marx playset I got that year.
The MPC Ski Patrol playset contained their ring hand figures in white instead of dark olive green. The set came with a hard plastic tent in white( not show in the picture), beds and foot lockers in white. The unique new item to the set was the skis. Each ski came with two poles attached to the skis for you to break off and nub to put the figure on as he had hole in his base. The picture of the MPC Ski Patrol shows it with a coil of barb wire which I never saw unless my parents took it out. I do not know if they did any bag sets with the skiers. Other companies that did military skiers were Airfix and Starlux.
The next item we are looking at is the Marxville diner. Marx did a series of buildings to compete with Plasticville for the toy train accessory business. Each Marxville set came with figures and accessories beside the building where the Plasticville was usually building only. Marx did a number of set including farm, ranch house, supermarket, church among others. the figures and animals used in the sets were 35mm in size.
As you can see in the photo above we have complete set in the box. The Marxville diner came with ten accessories and five people. None of the people are relate to the Marxville diner as such other than possible the Milkman.
I have had a few of these sets over the years. I have had a hard time selling them. At a train auction last year there was a massive load of buildings both in the box and out. I passed on it as I felt I did not have the customers for it. Looking at Ebay I could only find a few items for sale.
I had those Ski Patrol guys, but I think I got mine in a header bag, I could be wrong as it was long ago and they never exited me enough to burn a permanent vision in my memory. I can only remember getting two MPC sets in boxes, the Blue and Grays and some set that had many WWII vehicles in it, the only reason I remember them somewhat vividly was because of the bitter disappointment that they were not the Marx sets I had requested.
Given the weather in NJ, DE, parts of NY and eastern PA today, this would be a good set of soldiers to be playing with, no?
or shoveling too!!
Erwin and George
It looks like we have at least 18 inches. It is a good time to play with your toy soldiers.
In my opinion.
MPC ring hand concept was good but the poses were non combat action and most or all generic uniform ,so not good x much I guess.(The same issue I ran into Timpo modern/WW2 swap figures-so antiaction and odd anatomic poses) .
The MPC ski were bad done. I did bough many lose figures long ago, them resold after not find use unless extreme conversion and x that I’m not very good as poor in time/else. Ideal ring hand hard to get series but much taller were better action poses.
Some MPC acc such tents are great!!
Plastiville are not sold too much, I have few stores around me with antiques that have them x years and not sold. I acquired some but the scale only serve for far distance image and most too American building that not good for my European scenes.
On eBay you often find them more easy as train building under vintage ,not by the brand itself. They often sale cheap. Too sad as if a bot larger would be perfect 1.32 scale add. Still in interesting series.
Atlantic Alpine Troops have skiers included in the box. And guys on a early snowmobile!!
Yes.Atlantic are nice figures.
About ski poses are one if the best.Starlux,cane and few others too.
The ski troops remind me of a story (I guess I’m getting old because just about everything reminds me of a story nowadays) maybe you guys will find at least a little amusing.
When I was a young soldier in Germany I used to like to go into the town I was stationed in and buy presents for my mother and younger brothers on payday. There was a little hobby shop in town that sold Airfix and Atlantic soldiers. I would buy a box or two for my little brothers (twins, who were about five or six years old at the time) to send home in a package. At that time, there was no place around where they lived that sold Airfix, much less Atlantic, so these toy soldiers were special to them. It also helped there was a cute little blonde who worked at the shop and the visits gave me the opportunity to go in and get to know her to the point she would accept an invitation out one night (old-fashioned German courtship procedures).
Well, Airfix came out with their WW2 German Mountain Troops so I snatched up a box and sent them off in my next package home. It just so happened a few days later the movie “Snow Treasure” came on TV. It’s set in Norway during WW2 and there are all these folks – and Germans – skiing all over the place.
Mom wrote me that at sometime during the movie the kids looked at each other and jumped up, ran to their rooms, and brought out the brand-new German ski troops that had just come in the mail so they could play along with the movie. At one point, one of them stopped and looked at Mom, “How did Wayne know?”
Mom said she didn’t want to spoil the magic for the kids; she just smiled and said, “He just did…”
And the legend grew…
Loved the story. So, what happened with the blonde, or does that take us out of the G Rated realm?
I like the fact that the MPC Ring Hands are so generic and in rather benign poses. They can be turned into a lot of poses of soldiers doing jobs that get neglected. If you have a ring hand kneeling firing, all you can do is change out his weapon. He’ll be a kneeling firing pose. Mostly the benign poses get turned into artillery or medical poses.
I think that Ed is correct. Many MPC ringhand sets came in header carded bags. We called them “Weapon men”. Although they were/are ugly in many ways, I have a place in my heart for them. When I was a kid you could go to the drugstore and get MPC bags of 25-30 figures, plus weapons, for 99 cents. It was a great way to ‘bulk up’ your armies that, for me, included Marx, Timpo, Hilco, Auburn, Herald etc. Although I am Canadian, I lived in Denver and Houston during the AWC centennial years of 1961-1965 and my brother and I bought many of the ACW versions of MPC figures. As an adult collector I have about 10 large playsets in boxes (WWII, Jungle Front, ACW, Western, Space command, etc. ). I did like the fact that the vehicles were in pretty good scale to the figures, not the case with Auburn and many others. As a kid, I could not figure out the clothing on some figures, jumpsuits, overcoats etc. Also some of the guys with slots rather than ringhands were anatomivcally weird, to put it mildly. They could be made to do nothing useful as far as fighting was concerned.
We used to throw some under the lawnmowr to get some wounded guys. Some lost an arm, a hand or a leg and were great as wounded. Others, less fortunate, emerged cut in half or decapitated, and were less useful to us.
Still, all in all, I have fond memories of them, and still have a few thousand I am sure!
Brian.
You make a good point on the MPC vehicles. I only had the tank as child. My MPC figures ended up secondary figures I had lost most of the weapons and had to put toothpicks in many of them to be spears. I used two of them as super heroes after I painted them. Also somehow one of the ring hand figures got paint on his one eye and I made him the Patch a master criminal. One other ring hand figure a Redcoat walking with right hand out I put the machine gun from the police set in his hand as it look neat to me. (I had a mix of figures in my toy box so one side could have army, pioneers, cowboys etc.) I used him as bad guy.
I think most of us Stateside baby boomers had some of those MPC ring hand guys in our armies; they were the cheaper step-cousins to the Marx sets. I didn’t get a Ft Apache until they came out with the “Carry-all” version. It was okay, but I always liked the “genuine article” – if you know what I mean (I finally got one or two when I was able to earn my own money, though my mother never figured out why as she thought I was “too old” for toy soldiers. But I did get the MPC Daniel Boone playset when I was eight or nine. Kind of a disappointment but the fort was okay.
I always thought it was funny how MPC would mix their guys. I think the Boone set had ringhand pioneers and their 45mm Indians while a few years later I got an MPC WW2 set that had ringhand GIs fighting their Germans. Well, we played on and when the weapons got lost (as they usually did) the ringhand guys became artillerymen, medics and POWs…
Greg, I finally got that girl to go out with me and we were getting pretty serious in spite of the language barrier – she didn’t speak any English, her language in gymnasium (the German high school) had been Spanish, which seemed strange. But my stepdad’s last name is Schwartzkopf and our part of Illinois and the St Louis area used to be called “Little Germany” so I always had an interest in German and spoke some. Eventually I became fairly fluent in conversational German and some Germans told me I had barely an accent. So we got by.
We were dating a few months before she took me home to meet her folks. She lived in a small village out of town. She would stay in Hanau on nights at her friend’s house when we had a date. Usually, would pick her up from work, we would go out and I would drop her off.
She was nervous when the time came to meet Mama and Papa. She explained to me her father had fought in the war on the Western front (a rarity, I’ve only met two Germans in my five-plus years over there who admitted fighting in the West, which brings up another story (as I said, I’m getting oooooold) kind of related to this, but…). She said Papa was still bitter. He had been in the Waffen SS.
Swell.
So I picked Jutta (her name) and we rode the train to her village. I was expecting a cool reception but nothing like the evening we had. Kind of funny now. When they met us at the door the guy ignored my hand when I put it out to shake it.
Then he turned to Jutta and said “An American, I would have preferred you brought home a Turk.”
Considering his background, that was quite an insult. Jutta rolled her big brown eyes over at me warily, because she knew I pretty much understood what he was saying. But I disposed of my proffered hand somehow and smiled stupidly. I was kind of prepared, I guess and decided to play it cool – after all, I was crazy about his daughter.
So, all through dinner the guy was throwing insults at me, not aware I was understanding about everything he said. He was having a great time. I’m wondering to myself, doesn’t he realize his daughter and I had to be communicating some way? At one point when he made a crack about watching me with sharp instruments like knives and forks, Mama even nudged him under the table. She may not have been happy about me, but I was still a guest.
So, finally, the meal was over and Jutta and I were preparing to go back into town, by this time, she had moved in with her roommate and we were considering tying the knot – I guess that’s one of the reasons she finally figured it was time to introduce me to the family.
At the door, I turned to the guy and said, (as I said, I had very little accent back then and I HAD been practicing in case) “Herr Muller, Es Freut mich dich kennen zu lernen. Es tut mir dass Sie mich mit der Zeit nicht wie vielleicht lernst du mir besser gefallen.” (I think I’m remembering that right). Basically, “Mr Muller, I am very pleased to meet you. I’m sorry you don’t like me, maybe as you get to know me better you will like me better.”
I had a straight face. Jutta stifled a giggle and I think even Frau Muller smiled a bit. He looked at me a moment, flushed red, and then stuck out his hand. He may not have liked me, but I at least earned his respect.
Eventually, he warmed up and even shared a few war stories with me. I was honored at that.
Jutta and I tried to get the paperwork together to get married but her daddy’s war record complicated things somewhat – even in 1977. I didn’t know until it was too late we could have run off on a weekend and gotten married in Denmark – I was trying to go through channels. Finally, we decided the best bet was for me to rotate home to the States where we could get married much more easily. The thought was I could always re-enlist back in the States if I had to (it really wouldn’t have bothered me at all).
So I went home Stateside and got busy getting ready. I sent her several letters but never got an answer. About a year later my best buddy went back to Hanau and looked her up for me. She had never gotten any of my letters and was seeing a nice German guy. I figure Daddy intercepted the mail as the only address I had for her was her home address. Oh well…
Stuff happens.
Can’t complain, I ended up with a real keeper; just hope she’s as happy as I am now.
Ganz gut geschichte. (I may not be using geschichte correctly, been a long time since I spoke any German. My son – who has been there twice – tells me I don’t speak German, I just know a few German words.)
Das Wort ,Geschichte’ passt in diesem Fall. (The word ‘Geschichte’ fits in this case. ‘Gut’ requires the adjective ending of ‘e’ since it’s feminine. Deswegen soll Es, Ganz gute Geschichte’ sein. Gel Mensch? Where was Erwin in all of this? I’ve spoken German with him. Leaving it all to the Ami to point out.
Greg ,I think you are correct in correction and seen your memory is great. I’m not expert either. But better/rather have the expertise from a true German. Markus Lecksheid
Markus from Germany often write here ,he may correct us better.
Hallo Markus Lecksheid!!.Wo sind Sie Freund Wir brauchen Sie !?
I was too busy in other part of forum with paragon. Sorry guys..
Wayne
When I first met Peter Bergner in Germany, he had me up to his parent’s apartment for a meal. His parents did not speak any English but they could understand me because I am from the area were the Germans settle in Pennsylvania so I have a German inflection in my English. If I speak German which I know a little I sound like a German not a foreigner.
I hear you there, Paul. When I was a kid there were towns like Millstadt, Baden, and Columbia where you would go into a store and the folks who owned the store spoke with an accent to the point you’d think they’d just stepped off the boat, where in reality their families had been in the States since the Civil War and many had fought in it. It’s not so much these days when I go back to visit, though the family names, Gumesheimer, Althoff, and my dad’s family Schwartzkopf are still there.
Oh yeah, I think the “Es tut mir” should be “Es tut mir leid.” I left it out trying to type fast.
Sorry for the long story. I know it’s not directly toy soldier related but hope y’all enjoyed it anyway.
Ok, we got the bonus plan for an answer! I’m sorry that it went like that for you, but life goes on. Seems like you did well. I should have married a German. She probably would have not turned traitor like my ‘Evil X’ did while I was in Iraq. I’m a government tested 3/3 in German. When I lived there I probably could have passed the level 4 test, but I didn’t take it. On my last overseas deployment I was working at the CJPOTF (the PSYOP guys, if that clears anything up) and the Germans were very tight-hold on their activities. They wanted to do things their way and didn’t want any idiotic criticism which would surely evoke some claim of being ‘Nazi’. I went up there (they control the North at Mazaree Sharif) and I decided to practice the brief in German. I pulled it off. They warmed up to me, and were receptive to my ‘product’. It was a nice breakthrough. Hey, for someone who hasn’t messed with German in, what? 30 years? You did fine. You were mixing informal ‘you’ (Du) and formal ‘you’ (Sie), though. Just not done. Correct about ”Es tut mir Leid”, meaning literally; ‘It does me sorrow’ but of course is just ‘I’m sorry’.
Thanks Greg, it’s been a looong time. And you know, use it or lose it. We did some joint training with our sister Artillery unit in the Bundeswehr. Back in the 70s they tended to be a bit more laid back than we were but were good at their jobs – which is what counted.
I found most Germans to be great when you at least attempted to speak German. I don’t know how many times I would have a little old lady compliment my on my German just for saying “Guten Morgen.” We were in Belgium during my 8th and 9th Grade years and where we were at they primarily spoke French. I learned enough of that to get dirty looks and chided when I mangled a word. My sister-in-law is from Bordeaux and we laugh about that. Sadly, I’ve lost more French than my German – not that I had that much to begin with.
I’m half German, but mt German language skills are limited to calling someone a little poop head.
Ed, in all my travels I’ve learned the most important thing to learn language wise is the cuss words so you know if the guy smiling at you is insulting you or not.
So you’ve got your priorities right.