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Building Your Own “Lackies”
Tinplate-Inspired Cardboard Houses
When Ted Althof and other collectors started seriously cataloging cardboard Christmas houses, they came across houses that were built in the same factories as the glittered putz houses, but which had glossy painted finishes and no snow.
Eventually, the collectors realized that the Japanese putz house manufacturers had also made houses for the toy train market. Many of these deliberately imitated buildings made by Lionel, Ives, Marx, and others to go with their toy trains.
Putz house collectors labeled these houses “lackies,” because of the heavy laquer coatings that were applied to give them a metallic appearance.
In 2008, Howard Lamey, with help from Paul Race, began writing project articles for building your own “lackies.” In a sense, the “Tribute to Tinplate” projects are both a tribute to the original tinplate buildings and a tribute to their cardboard imitators.
The photo to the right shows one of Howard’s favorite projects, a new “lackie” based on a Lionel prototype, with free plans and graphic for several scales.
Don’t feel bad about mixing these with traditional glittered houses in your own Christmas displays - many old photographs show that combining toy houses from different sources was a very common practice.
The most popular “Tribute to Tinplate” articles are listed below, with links to the Howards’ How-To project pages. Each has free downloadable plans, instructions, and when required, graphics. Many include plans and graphics for multiple scales, so you can build a structure designed to look right with the rest of your collection.
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