Introduction

The advertising kiosk is a very common sight in pretty much all of Europe. They can be found mostly in the cities and the bigger urban areas where traffic passed or where lots of people walk by. They were placed for several reasons one of which (and certainly not the lesser important) was to try to prevent the amount of posters and announcements which were placed among the walls of city centers (city councils would rather see a poster-free city). Another reason was to place them in such strategic points that the information got an exposure as big as possible. Everybody who had something important to tell would place it on a column like this. Theatres made announcements on the columns, butchers did their advertisements on the nearest column to their shop, or governments and unions who wanted to tell something to the masses, etc. Everything was placed and read on the columns. The new manufacturer aRTi-Crea from Holland enriches the market with a nice example of the concrete type of advertising kiosk with a metal roof

Review

The advertising kiosk comes in a box approximately 6.5 cm high, 10 cm wide and 8 cm deep on which is a sticker showing a painted example of the kiosk and the product name and product number. Inside the box you will find 2 pieces of which the kiosk is constructed neatly packed in bubble wrap. The column itself is approximately 7.8 cm high, 3.2 cm diameter on top and 4.1 cm diameter at the bottom. The roof is 1.9 cm high complete with roof ornament and 3.9 cm in diameter at the lowest and widest point. Both parts are cast in milky white resin.

Together with the kiosk comes a Ziploc bag with a sheet containing 23 (Dutch) posters varying from announcements of theatre plays to commercials for cars and cocoa and announcements to the people from the German command in those days as the occupation “government”.

The pieces of resin are nicely molded and have very crisp detail on both the column as well as the roof and the ornament on top. Nice detail of a concrete foot which shows some damage. A few air bubbles to fill but nothing really hard to do. The posters are nicely printed and will look very good on the column.

Construction did not present any real problems. I did some extra sanding on both halves to make sure that they fit neatly on top of each other without a seam showing up. Added are two pics of work in progress on the column to give an idea how it could end up when painted.

Conclusion

My point of view is that this is a really neat piece of work delivered by aRTi-Crea. A very versatile piece that can be used in any urban setting or city scene and will be a nice addition in combination with buildings from Verlinden or Miniart to name a few. Also it will be a nice centrepiece for vignettes playing in urban scenes and will serve as a very nice eye-catcher. A recommendation for any diorama builder looking to add this detail to their setting.