Wednesday, October 20, 2021

#984 YATMING –PONTIAC TRANS-AM, FORD MUSTANG TURBO COB and PORSCHE 944 (1060, 1067 and 1089) (Around 1989)

These Yatmings are “late” models,two of them made in China and the third one in Thailand. I got them in the late 80s, 1990, at latest, and have been in my collection ever since. They have die-cast metal bases, which was already, back then, becoming unusual in car miniatures. Still all three have practicable doors, which was also becoming rarer then.

So, while many manufacturers were simplifying their models and replacing metal by plastic, other simply moved to China and other far-east Asian countries. Yatming started in Hong-Kong, so didn’t have to move very far its production plant.

The Pontiac Trans-Am is a bit battered, but the other two are in very good condition. Unfortunately, the metal used in the base might not be the best, and it shows that typical roughness and it has an unesay touch. I hope it does not break or deteriorate anymore than that. Interestingly, they are only marked “Yatming”, plus the reference number of each model, but the name of the car is not casted.



I also thing they fit together well.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

  • Name: PONTIAC TRANS-AM, FORD MUSTANG TURBO COB and PORSCHE 944 (1060, 1067 and 1089)
  • Scale: 1:64 (approx.)
  • Year: Around 1989
  • Company: YatMing (Hong-Kong)
  • Size: Around 6 cm

Sunday, October 10, 2021

#983 MIGHTY MAX – CONQUERS THE PALACE OF POISON and TERMINATES WOLFSHIP 7 (1992)

These are two Doomstones I bought some years ago at a very low price. I do not collect this toyline, but I thought they were nice. Although they are copyrighted in 1992, they were for sale in Spain in 1993, and so they appear in Toys R’ Us Catalogue from Christmas 1993/94. They were priced at 1.495 pesetas, which is quite accurately 9 Euro, rather expensive considering its size, but not its quality.


The first of the two sets “Mighty Max Conquers the Palace of Poison” is my personal favorite as it involves an Egyptian pyramid, a mummy, and a giant scorpion, together with snakes, skeletons, tombs and treasures. Unlike many other playsets, this one opens in two halves, but has the head of the snake as some kind of tower, and both sides connect by means of a plastic cord.



The base has a small practicable tomb and lots of snakes and skeletons all over the floor, the tower part shows some stairs until up the mouth of the snake where a treasure is hidden. The other side has three floors: a basement dungeon, a first floor with the tomb of the pharaoh (the mummy is hidden inside) and the upper floor with god Anubis in his Throne.


The mummy is nice looking but the scorpion is much more attractive, as it is several times the size of Mighty Max.

The second set “Mighty Max Terminates Wolfship 7” is in principle very attractive as it involves a spaceship, robots and even a smaller spaceship, but personally I find the desing a bit repetitive and boring.

Note that the base represents the interior of a spaceship. It has two platforms that are the ears of the wolf when closed and can be expanded or closed. The central part with those two orange balls could be some kind of power generator, but I don’t know it for sure since I haven’t seen the cartoons. Another practicable part is the cannon that can aim to both sides.

The vertical part shows three floors, but they are all very similar On the upper one there is a throne.

The tip of the base, representing the fangs of the wolf can be detached and used as a personal spaceship. The robots are cool, but again, they only differ on the position of the arms, so I guess they could have done better here.




When closed, both playsets look great, either as a nested snake of a wolf-spaceship (especially with the ears out).

FACTS AND FIGURES:

  • Name: MIGHTY MAX CONQUERS THE PALACE OF POISON and TERMINATES WOLFSHIP 7 (Doomstones)
  • Toy Line: Mighty Max (wave 1)
  • Year: 1992
  • Company: Bluebird Toys (Great Britain)
  • Size of the Playset: Around 10 cm long
  • Size of the figure (Mighty Max): 1 cm