• Product #PAU-35044 with jigs, $21.00
• Product #PAU-35044B without jigs, $7.89

PSP, or pierced/perforated steel planking, was used from shortly before WWII onwards as a means to create a hard surface for military operations where one wasn’t provided by nature. The planks, made of steel or (later) aluminum, were made in several styles, were generally about 10 feet long by 38 inches wide, and weighed about 66 pounds each (steel). The most common hole pattern was 3 wide by 29 long. They are also known as Marston mats after a town in North Carolina where they were manufactured in some quantity. They were used extensively in Vietnam, and are readily available today to civilians as used or new government surplus.

PSP makes the ideal base for a model alone or in a diorama. Several styles of resin bases featuring PSP have been available for years, but this is the first photo etched alternative of which I am aware.

First of all, I would like to state how excited I am to do this review of the Dark Shadows Barnabas vampire model. Dark Shadows has long been an obsession of mine and I jumped at the chance to build my second model. Dark Shadows, developed by Dan Curtis, was a well-loved soap opera with a 5 year run, starting in 1966. The original plot revolved around an orphan girl who came to a small New England town to serve as governess at Collinwood, a large, haunted Victorian manor. The theme included all things spooky, with many story lines borrowed from classic gothic novels of the day: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Grey, the Wolfman, Turn of the Screw, H. P. Lovecraft, and others. Jonathan Frid, a Shakespearean actor, played Barnabas Collins, the “reluctant vampire”. His addition to the cast brought the ratings through the roof, to the delight of the show’s fans.

This kit contains 45 tan styrene parts that will create six British or Commonwealth tank or AFV crewmen. Four wear the late 1944 – early 1945 one-piece “Pixie suit” made from water-repellant canvas with khaki lining and hood. This warm equipment had two zippers and could be converted into a sleeping bag. These four men are illustrated both wearing gloves and bare-handed, so it’s how you paint them. The other two figures are wearing the usual khaki battle dress. Everyone wears a black beret molded onto their heads. Only figures A, D and E have headphones (molded on) and, if you use the box top as a guide, you can add wires.

Included in the box are two identical sprues, molded in hard grey plastic. Each sprue contains 9 parts to build a complete 81mm Mortar and a crew of two with a base, as well as 3 additional parts for use with the Art of Tactic ruleset. Also included are two game data cards for use with the Art of Tactic ruleset and an instruction sheet. Only minor flash was present and was easily cleaned off with a sharp knife.

Assembly is easy and straightforward. The kit is a snap-together kit, and the model builds quite well in this manner with no major gaps are seen. However, I glued my sample together for stability while painting. The plastic base supplied with the kit is superbly detailed with ground texture compared to other figure manufacturers in this scale and price range, and all the alignment pegs in the figure fit perfectly into the alignment holes in the base.

This odd combination of five Allied soldiers meeting up and serving together seems like something dreamed up in Hollywood. Well, it WAS first dreamed up in the 1943 movie Sahara, starring Humphrey Bogart as the American M3 Lee tank commander. A 1995 cable TV remake starred James Belushi in that role. Ukraine’s Master Box Ltd.’s illustrator A. Karaschuk and sculptor A. Gagarin must have seen the Belushi version and “subconsciously” paid homage to the movie. The American figure happens to strongly represent Belushi, and the others certainly suggest others in the movie’s cast. Unfortunately, we didn’t listen to Shakespeare, and our society is drowning in a flood of litigious lawyers and the movie industry has missed out on an opportunity for free publicity as Master Box plays it safe and any similarity between these figures and that movie is purely coincidence...