Action Figures & Their Beers - Take to the Skies!

by Beedo Sookcool
on 2012-01-30, 13:49:56

This was kind of a tricky one to match up. You see, apart from commemorative G.I. Joes and other 12”-scale military figures (which I don’t collect) there are very few World War II toys out there easily and cheaply available to me. Or at least, very few that I know about. Also, with my father watching the History Channel and various British equivalents whenever he wasn’t watching CNN or BBC News 24 repeat the same stories every 15 minutes, I was absolutely burned out on World War II more than 20 years ago.*

* Note to documentary makers: Many things happened before 1933 and after 1945! Focus on some of them for a £*#%ing change! The birth and evolution of Jazz music! The life and times of Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, or Haile Selassie! Bizarre aeronautical engineering experiments throughout the centuries! The Hawley-Smoot Tariff! Anything! Just put a £*#%ing moratorium on the £*#%ing Nazis for a £*#%ing decade or so! Yeesh!

Now, as stonkingly cool as the idea is, there was only one WWII-era TransFormer available in recent years (“Reveal The Shield” Highbrow), and he’s neither a Supermarine Spitfire nor a Hawker Hurricane in vehicle mode. So I went with the descendant of the Hurricane, the Hawker Harrier. Which meant digging out a GoBot nearly 30 years old: Royal-T.

Okay, he’s missing the R.A.F. roundels on his shoulders from years of wear, the tab on his front landing gear broke off decades ago, and he’s starting to show stress lines on one of his tailfin hinges, but he’s still one of my favourite robot/vehicle toys of all time. TransFormers snobs can go take a running jump. This guy rules.

As mentioned in last year’s Seafarers review, Battle of Britain is one of the ever-increasing crowd of charity beers. This ale was brewed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of said battle, when thousands of pilots from Britain and other allied or occupied nations took to the air to defeat incoming Nazi planes. For each bottle of Battle of Britain purchased, the brewers donate 10 pence (14 - 18 U.S. cents, depending on the exchange rate at the moment) to the RAF Association’s Wings Appeal, to help retired or injured airmen and their families.

Oh, yeah: this is also a pretty darn good beer in its own right! Even though it's a low-end 3.9% ABV, it’s still got a rich, warming, malty flavour to it that’s followed by a bit of a bitter aftertaste, but not overly so.

Drink this if you also like: Any other good ale, knowing part of the money you spent is going to a good cause.