Hitting the Dollar Store - Part 2

In part one of Hitting The Dollar Store, I looked at how grass mats and ceramic trees could give background interest to my dioramas for my die-cast car displays.  This post will look at some of the buildings that I found in the toy aisle of Dollarama, the main dollar store in my town.  As the box shows, they are called Connect City and cost two dollars each.  There are a series of six different buildings or displays which are made out of plastic, and have two folding cases that when open, form a base for the dioramas.  The six displays are:  a Toll booth, a playground, a fire station, a police station, a gas station and lastly a construction site.  Of the six setups, the only one that I did not buy was the construction site, which I felt wasn't really that interesting.

I ended up removing and separating the black folding cases from the dioramas for later use.  As you can see the toll booth has some good detailing and working lift gates.  The police station had these out of scale yellow pylons which i subsequently removed.  I got a couple of the fire station, because I liked the look of the building and the little fire hydrants,  and ended up repainting one and making a bus stop out of the other.  I also picked up two of the gas stations but repainted and added some pumps to one of them.  I later ended up taking it apart to make a little tire depot out of it.  And finally there's the little playground which has a little merry go round, slide and park bench.  For each of these little dios, I added some foliage and figures to complete the look.

I want to point out that dioramas for my die-cast don't have to be 100% realistic.  They are there to serve merely as backdrops for the main focus which is the die-cast car or truck I happen to be displaying.  The last part of this three part series will look at some dollar houses (!) that I also found at the dollar store and how I use them for my backdrops also.  Stay tuned for that upcoming post, and thanks for dropping by!