8404 Diorama Studios

The waiting of course is for our illustrious postal service to get around to moving and delivering the stuff I need to progress further with my helos. I realize that my stuff is swimming in a veritable ocean of mail; some of it is coming from overseas and is at the mercy of decreased flight schedules. But (and it’s a huge but) once it arrives in the United States, it all falls on USPS – and from where I sit they’re not delivering much beyond frustration (since summer it’s about the only thing they’ve managed to deliver with any real consistency). We’ll just say typical government entity and leave it at that, because I don’t want this to devolve into a bash the postal service fest. They’ve provided me with an opportunity to broaden my horizons while I wait for stuff to show up.

Given the opportunity to work on other things while I wait, I pulled out the teeny-tiny Bronco quad ATV with trailer and accompanying British squaddies and the Gecko models figure sets I bought to go along with it. The miniscule vehicle is well detailed and amazingly for a Bronco vehicle kit it’s not over engineered! Its’ part count is almost as small as its’ size and it assembles fairly easily. I actually enjoyed building it, used virtually no colorful language about the designer’s lineage or their mother’s propensity for intimate relationships with large hairy animals…not that I would ever do anything like that while building a kit. Feel free to roll your eyes now if you wish.

Accompanying the ATV are a rider and 3 squaddies. Each figure comes with a choice of torso wearing early or late pattern body armor and early or late pattern helmets. I opted for the later pattern items since the Gecko squaddies are all wearing the later issue body armor vests/helmets. Proportionally the figures look good together, their gear is identical in size as are the weapons. This can be a concern when mixing figures from different manufacturers, it is possible to mix figures of different sizes so long as the gear and weapons remain a consistent size; people may come in a variety of sizes and shapes, their service rifle doesn’t. Fortunately the weapons are visually interchangeable, they’re the same size which is convenient should it be necessary to swap weapons between companies’ figures (or in a pinch if something bad happens).

My biggest concern with our interlude is the MTP camouflage, I honestly believe the only way to keep my sanity will be to go with decals where possible. So, that being said let’s get cutting and building!