A Mass Of Macross!

 So there I was looking for something totally different, when I saw a lot on eBay which piqued my curiosity. A nice lot of genuine vintage 80s mech kits...

*cue shimmery memory scene*

In the very early 80s I'd been going into Games Workshop for a year or so, when I first teamed up with one of the Sheffield Wargames Society Brat Pack (of which I was a founding member), one Darren 'Flash' Ashmore, who back then was not the prestigious academic he is today, but like me a teen-nerder of particular frothworthy credentials. (See my book for the origin story of our first - and what could have been our last - meeting)

At this time Roger (his loss of course) was moving in elite Wargames Holiday Centre circles as an 'enfant terrible' of Grand Manner 25mm games. 32 man Connoisseur Russian inits? At age 14? In the 80s? ELITISM! Certainly, I'd never met a schoolboy with such refined tastes in minias at that point (other than I of course *coff*) - AND he knew about Miniature Wargames magazine, when I had my head in Military Modelling and White Dwarf.

Well anyway, enough of that prima donna... Dashing though he was in his striped trousers, long hair and Hi-Tec boots (well we all were back then)

Darren and I saw our first Macross kit in Games Workshop, in the figure cabinet, beautifully painted by the late Pete 'Greblord' Armstrong (blessed be his name in perpetuity) and as we were starting to become faces (or as the staff would have had you believe, 'a right pain in the arse') in GW, we bugged Pete about them. Remember, it was not the anime soaked world we live in today, little ones, this was the Dark Time, during the Golden Age!

Pete filled us in (or would have liked to had he had a shovel to hand) and we set about buying and building various kits. We committed some crimes against colour schemes at first, let me tell you, biy then we got the idea of writing some rules and actually playing games with them.This was a time before Battlemechs (latterly Battletech) and so we looked at how we thought each mech could move, how the weapons might function and wrote a 'living' set of rules on A4 paper, which grew as we played more games. 

Darren and I would arrange to meet at Redgates the collossal toy shop in Sheffield city centre (look it up - it's worth the effort) and then try to get there before the other to bag the latest or coolest kit (they never had more than one of a type in stock). Darren bagged a lovely 'Armoured Battroid' that way - SCOUNDREL! 

And both of our families holidayed in Skegness, when it was not yet the cesspit it is today, and both of us found that a little tardis like model shop on the back street, stocked some of the most sought after kits (Skegness had two dedicated toy shops and a model shop within a few hundred yards back then) which we would bring home as trophies with which to antagonise each other. My parents went away one year and I stayed with my Nan, at home. That got me an unexpected Destroid Spartan. I think Darren got a Destroid Monster the same year.

I think the high tide mark for us came when we comandeered around half of the available table pace at The Wellington, the then HQ of SWS, filled it with plastic mecha and spent an evening whooping and shouting as we played an epic game. Shortly after, some strict rules on fantasy and science fiction were introduced, but as we also played WRG by then, we found methods of subverting them, whilst still staying within the letter of the law.

Anyway, Darren's interest in mech led to his becoming a recognised afficianado on the subject and a professor of pop culture/anthropology in the Land Of The Rising Sun.

*cue shimmer back to reality*

So anyway, I found ten kits priced at £35 on eBay today with 3 hours to go, and after a delve, 2 more lots from the same seller at £43 each. I dropped him a line and offered hinm a strong sum, which he refused, and so  after emailing Darren re: market values at present, I bid on them, with high bids which would make the eyes of a gargoyle weep.

And what do you know, I bagged the lot for a combined total of £141.98, making me feel as though I'd taken the seller around the corner and got his trousers around his ankles. Which of course I hadn't because I'd bid fair and square.

As I type the 15 year old me is doing a little jig and punching the air, and the voice of Pete Armstrong is berating me from beyond the veil, such is the excitement my un-asked-for bargain has caused.

Here's what I got:

TTFN