Happy New Year With A Lucky Pig For Your Model Railroad

 
Happy New Year from all of us at Retro Thing! Thanks for another great year, everybody. If we could give each of you a present, it would be wonderful to follow the old German custom of giving a pig-shaped marzipan candy (if you haven't had marzipan you're missing out, I grew up on the stuff) called a Glückschwein, or "lucky pig". If we started right now, it would take a year to give all of our readers a bite of lucky pig, so instead we're sharing this mechanical version made by Märklin.

You may recall my fondness for Märklin Mini-Club trains, better known as Z-scale. Marklin has produced many limited edition collectible trains, but few as novel (and downright odd) as this one. Even at barely over an inch long, this lucky pig is a plucky motorized model train engine. It even has couplers so it can pull freight along the pike (alarming all those centimeter high people who live in your plastic town). It goes without saying that it's not based on any actual prototype of a pig-shaped train, but is an endearing little model nonetheless.

So if you were here right now, I'd give you a bit of marzipan and let you have a turn running this little model pig engine. Until then James & I wish you the best for the coming year, and our profound thanks for joining us on the adventure that is Retro Thing. Stay tuned for lots more great things to come in 2010! Oink!