Where do these bits come from

Eric

Administrator
Seeking those of you with more encyclopaedic knowledge or the patience to look something up ... an auction I decided not to bid on in the end had some interesting bit in it:

s-l960-6.jpg

Now most of that fine, bikes, sidecars and a couple of bits of Dreadnought. However I don't think I've ever seen those metal arms top left before - they look rather in the flavour of RTB01 style arms, but with the hand evidently designed for gripping handlebars. So I would assume they were designed for the plastic marines to make them into "bikers"? Also those legs in the middle (the metal ones). I'm not sure I've seen them either. Too narrow for the bikes (or jet bikes) and the marines for the Landspeeder are one piece castings. Are they simply squashed biker legs or were they for the sidecar riders and I've just never had some like that? I've some more narrow later random marine legs in my bit box, but these clearly look like MkVI armour.

Anyhow anyone with any knowledge to fill in my supposition?
 
first thought: are they metal or painted plastic? (look to be metal)
second thought: are they home casts? (don't think so but possible)
third though: What about the Rhino troop kit? I don't think I've ever seen the figures in person or pictures of them unpainted and assembled, but, didn't they release that pack of metal marines for lounging about on a rhino?

they aren't biker legs cause they had extra gear.

Then I noticed something. I know them legs.. Vincent Black Shadow had one of them for the Gunner. That needed 2 plastic marines, but came with new arms, legs etc for them..

EDIT
still for sale? what's the asking price?
Editing reason:
 
still for sale? what's the asking price?
Nope, went for about £45 in the end. Which given I was off two minds - I could have used plastic marines on the bikes, but I didn't really want the sidecars made it a little too much for me. Although I do like having the old metal backpacks.

Are the legs not for a sidecar rider?

EDIT
Check out White Dwarf 149, page 35
Editing reason:
Well they look like they could be, but they are not one of the options listed in the catalogue.

That does however look like it's probably the arm on a RTB01 beakie however in the picture (WD 149 p.35)
bike.jpg

However it's not listed as a part in the catalogue pages at the end of that WD. So it looks like my guess was probably right about that piece, but I wonder if it ever way released?
 
Then I noticed something. I know them legs.. Vincent Black Shadow had one of them for the Gunner. That needed 2 plastic marines, but came with new arms, legs etc for them..
Yep, that seems to be it.

vincent.jpg
Mentions the extra arm and new legs to convert the plastic marines.

Well done both! Thank you!
 
looks like mostly two complete sets.. £45 would be border line for me.. I think I only got one bike (though I do have a couple of 'junk' spurs for 3rd maybe 4th edition Raven wing which have bike and half a terminator on them.. so doesn't take much work to make a couple of bikes up).

The only game I remember using a bike ended up with the bike running head long into a wall.. Funny, I appear to have a thing with vehicles. Last year I had a chariot at tWitWU... one game it crashed into a wall, another game it got picked up, turned around and ran off the edge of the board ^_^
 
Yep it was a touch borderline and I decided to let it go. Instead I have some Ninjas. crossbow orcs, Blood Bowl dwarfs, 11x chaos squats, and another Gargant along with a few orc arms coming my way. Alas some of the other auctions got away and I was outbid, but such is life.
 
There were a bunch of chapter specific arms for the Vincent blackshadow bike set, and those legs are for the sidecar passenger. You needed 2 rtb01 beakies to make up the set.
 
People wanted a complete model in a blister.
I get that. From GW's POV however the odd thing is that unless my memory fails me each RTB01 sprue had two marines on it, so it'd not have been impossible to have those in the "kit", ie metal bits and one RTB01 sprue. The only thing stopping that I guess would be blister size and I suspect the sprues were too large for the larger hard plastic "blisters", so maybe it was simply packaging that prevented it being an option?
 
when you think about it, alot of the early extras for plastics were on there own. I think... I can't find anything right now but could have sworn they released things like the Whirlwind or Razor back as a metal add-on pack without the plastic rhino parts at one point.. but all I can remember (and have) is the all in one releases... maybe later on they did that?.... getting confused ^_^;
 
The only thing stopping that I guess would be blister size and I suspect the sprues were too large for the larger hard plastic "blisters", so maybe it was simply packaging that prevented it being an option?
Yeah, they'd have had to have done a card box with polystyrene insert for it, and i imagine there just wasn't the demand. Back then box production was expensive, whereas a blister was far cheaper.
 
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