Monthly Archives: January 2012

Plastic Soldier Review website

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The Plastic Soldier Review website is proving very useful to me as I get into wargaming again (I’m starting with Two Hour Wargames stuff).

For such a quality resource, I am surprised there is so little in the way of credits on the site.

So far I have purchased the following kits from my local hobby shop:

As you can see, the two Vietnam War ones are much higher quality than the mobsters. Good to know as I bought the mobsters first and really struggled to tidy them up. I’m amazed at how much cleaner and shaper the Vietnam figures are.

(For the Vietnam figures I actually got the Italeri-branded re-issued version but the figures are identical.)

The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu

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I just read my first pulp novel called The Mystery of Dr Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer. It is available free on Project Gutenberg. You can get the summary at Wikipedia.

Basically the book is a casually racist Sherlock Holmes or James Bond adventure, and a lot of fun if you ignore the racism. The book follows two loyal servants of the British Empire trying to stop a super-villain agent (Dr Fu) of the impending ‘Yellow Peril‘. What amused me about the whole ‘fearing the mysterious East’ thing is Germany is described as an ally against the East for its involvement in the Boxer Rebellion. Too bad the book was published in 1913, a year before Germany starts the First World War. Talk about misplaced fears!

There are several sequels, starting with The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, which I’m starting on now.