About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Monday, August 28, 2017

L is for Logistic Lorry Laager (or 'Leaguer'?)

Back to B-echelon for today's [late!] post; I thought that after Jeeps we might as well go up a class, vehicle-wise and these are mostly of a size that would be ideal for garden or carpet war-gamers.

These are mostly from Peter's Big Bag of Rack Toy loveliness, exceptions being the dark green one (which also came from Peter I think but a year or two ago) and the hard-styrene, vintage push-and-go which was - I think - a Sandown Park purchase at some point.

The six similar ones are the same as the truck sent to the blog by Martin a while ago, and as I think I mused at the time seem to be from the interregnum between 'Hong Kong' marks and the modern 'China' marks, but it may just be that someone forgot to stamp the tool!

The three with loads are ultra-modern mouldings; cheap, but well engineered/finished.

The vehicle park, from the other side and the three new vehicles, there is at least one other body-type (which clip to the load-bed with four ear-flap clips) as I saw a bunch in a mixed lot on evilBay about a week ago, but the shots weren't clear enough to discern, however it looked like a stack of gas-canisters, like an old barrage-balloon lorry.

Close-ups of the truck we looked at last time, passing itself off as a Ford but not looking like one I know (is it a recognisable US Ford-type?), it has features in common with some of the smaller Chinatrucks you find.

Close-ups of the interim boxed-front design, the dark green one has appeared on the Blog with very different accompanying stuff to the stuff the yellow one came with. The two holes in the load-bed suggest plug-ins for these as well as the clip-on bodies.

As the yellow one came in the 'Big Bag' I can't draw conclusions from what may (or may not) have gone with it, but the fact that the green one come with very different stuff (mini-tank; Patton, and jet fighter) suggests that the middle-man was not only ordering different configurations of contents for different sets, but either had possession of all the moulds, or was working with the same factory for all sets, who had a wide range of mould tools to work with.

This lorry also represents something different for Hong Kong/China; the exception that proves the rule! Usually, the quality of these rack-toys drops off as they go through the generations of copies of copies of copies . . .

. . . but in this case the original (smaller, yellow; 1970/80's) is the worst generation and the modern, third-generation (mid-green, printed bonnet; current) is the best with an interim design (sand and jade; 1990's-2000's).

The original looks like an old 70's chromed-up Studebaker or Chevrolet pick-up truck but with a stretched body, the first clean-up makes it look more 'Army Lorry'-like and the recent re-design (blocking the windows, something which happened with later copies of the 1-ton Humber mini-trucks - makes for a simpler tool) has turned it into something more 'future medium-lift replacement logistics vehicle programme' looking!

The Ford and the two same-sized Box-fronts. The new one has decent wheels and a return to the metal axles of the '50/60's toys, rather than the [tend to break, or miss-mould] all-plastic things which came-in in the 1970/80's as a cost reducer; as we saw with the jeep variations yesterday.

A couple of slightly different ones - the larger push-and-go is a copy of a Triang-Mettoy-Minic-Playcraft type (I think?) and hard styrene except for the wheels.

The smaller one is the old 1-ton Humber but in HO-OO gauge compatible size rather than the mini-trucks we looked at back in 2011. Now . . . I've never seen this size of the vehicle in Pyro-Kleeware guise (their bigger scale lorry's cab was more like the push-and-go), so this must be a copy from Dinky (or one of the other copies) or a scale-up from the mini-trucks (it has the same components as the mini-Kleeware's) and is clearly the donor for the lesser NFIC versions. Marx also pirated it but as a cleaned-up and slightly distorted, flatter, almost 'squashed' moulding.

This is clearly off the back of a recent toy, probably from a larger tub/bucket play set, until I've ID'd its carrying-vehicle it remains a UN storage hanger! Can anyone help ID the set or vehicle?

Rocket launchers, for completion really - we've seen two of them on the Blog already and the third is above!

I thought this (left-hand image) was from my old imageshack.com account, but I think it's a scanned photograph, so may have been seen here before, but again, it's 'ere because it's 'ere because it's 'ere! I particularly like the Vostok type rocketry, as both are militarised (with paint) versions of civil 'big rigs' it probably also exists as a very incongruous NASA type in an alternative play set! Small scale.

On the right is a bit of fun; have you seen the Movie Brazil? My dream-house!

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