Badger

The BADGER is an old Matchbox "rollamatic" vehicle. All the Rollamatic vehicles had some feature which was activated by a a cog as the wheels turned. In this case, the radar dish on top rotates as the vehicle drives along. Matchbox produced several fictional army vehicles, some of which were loosely based on real vehicles (the "Weasel" scout car is a vague approximation of the British Fv700 series "Ferret" scout car). No two vehicles from this series are quite the same scale as each other, but this one looks especially good with 15mm figures.

This was from my childhood toy car collection. It originally came in a metallic brown colour, but had been repainted by my Dad in Humbrol matt brown with WWII allied white star roundels, giving it a more military appearance. It served with distinction alongside my 1/72 scale WWII figures for many years.

The rivets were drilled out, enabling me to disassemble the whole vehicle. The green plastic windows were given a good clean to remove any errant brown paint spots and decades of sticky fingerprints. Large amounts of carpet fluff were cut away from the axles (which were also straightened with a pair of pliers where necessary), and the body shell was cleaned back to the bare metal with paint stripper & an old toothbrush.

Painting used Humbrol matt enamels. All the metal parts received a base/undercoat of 33 Black followed by a very heavy drybrush of 29 Dark Earth. A splotched camo pattern of 27 Sea Grey and 86 Light Olive was drybrushed over this, then the vehicle was reassembled with a spot of araldite epoxy resin and ready for action!

It now acts as a command or patrol vehicle for my NAC Marines.