Introduction

Reality in Scale is a Dutch company aiming for the Diorama and Vignette builder in the scales 1:35, 1:32 and 1:48 providing nice diorama items. In both print and resin they have quite a big and still growing assortment consisting of high quality diorama products which will be very usefull for the diorama and vignette builders. Thanks to their high quality Reality in Scale have managed to climb up in between the big players of the scalemodel market. This product deals with posters commonly used in The Netherlands during WW2.

In the first half of the twentieth century the means to get messages and news accross to the people were limited. Nobody had TV, although pretty much everybody had a radio of sorts, for newsbroadcasts you could go to the local cinema. Problem was that during the war years everybody at some point needed to give their radios to the German occupier to prevent the people from listening to the "Illegal" resistance broadcasts or the boradcasts of the BBC. This meant resorting to one of the oldest forms of advertising.... printwork. No matter if the subject was the anouncement of a big concert, cabaret, manufacturers bringing out news of their latest products, or the state (or current occupational regime), it all ended up on posters of some sort.

Review

Reality In Scale has produced a really nice set of posters. The sheet is neatly packed in a ziploc bag with dimensions 12 cm wide and around 14,8 cm high (half A4) and is nice thin paper. On the sheet you will find a grand total of 79 posters which, as the set already tells you, consists of commercial and political posters all of Dutch origin. Of the 79 posters, 40 are of the commercial type and show a wide variety of subjects. Boxing matches, Cabaret, Sports, acitivity days and events, travelling adverts, etc. but also a great variation in adverts aimed for consumption and hygiene. The political half of the sheet contains 39 posters which are split up in Dutch propaganda posters and anouncements and proclamations to the people from the German occupying forces.

conclusion

The printing is of an extremely high quality and that really shows. Details like headers of the posters and often the smaller script are for most of the posters readable. Next to that the choice to print it on nice thin paper was a good one. Often manufacturers choose paper which is too thick. When you start calculating the thickness back to 1:1 you end up with a poster the thickness of a sheet of plywood! Luckily this is not the case with the Reality in Scale posters. This, combined with the excellent and wide choice Reality in Scale offers you makes this the perfect set to spice up your Dutch WW2 diorama or vignette. It would be the perfect thing for a bare wall or to populate an advertising column. These posters add that extra colour to your work and it could very well be the finishing touch.