Drop Top Peeps

Before moving on to some more details from the quickly disappearing layout around Drag City Mk. II, I thought I’d share a little aside about one aspect of building it that I particularly enjoyed: making the convertibles more realistic with drivers and passengers! This can be a bit of a challenge, but I feel that if you are going to represent drop-top cars as “moving” traffic-rather than as parked cars-its important to make it seem realistic by putting people in them. The challenge is in finding figures small enough that they will fit into the cars’ interiors, but not so small that they are obviously out of place. The best set that I found for this is a series of 1:87 scale sitting figures called “Coach Passengers” by SceneMaster, apparently a “budget” imprint of Noch, to look at the logo on the package.

Some of them are indeed too small to use, but most are not, and there’s a lot of variety in this set, with men, women, young, old, some people with children in their laps and by their sides-it even came with a couple of a little detachable accessories like luggage and women’s handbags. Best of all, this set didn’t cost much more than $15, which, when you consider the price of much higher-end figures from companies like Woodland Scenics, Noch (branded) and Preiser, was a helluva deal, I think!

Now of course once in a while I’ll find a figure I really want to use which just won’t fit behind the molded plastic steering wheel of whatever Matchbox or Johnny Lightning I’m trying to fit them into, and when that happens it puts me in the unenviable position of having to play butcher and chop their little legs off (always make me cringe a little doing that, I know they’re just plastic, but still…) Point is, you can make it work; just be careful not to break the steering wheel off your car when trying to squeeze in a driver! I did that one of my JL cars and it pissed me off so much I wound up scrapping the whole car and buying another one.

Bachmann also makes a pretty good set of sitting figures in their “Mini People” series which are also affordable, but are a hair larger. I have used these with success in some of my cars, but most of them were too large; these SceneMaster figures were perfect, and if you are looking to do this with your own 1:64 scale cars, I recommend this set.