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Friday, September 28, 2012

W is for Brimtoy - Wells-Brimtoy

Brimtoy were an early British tin-plate toy manufacturer, who used to work with  Bing, the famous German tin-plate Toy specialists. Founded in 1910, they were absorbed by another UK toy company - A Wells and Co. and became Wells-Brimtoy, whence came these half plastic half metal trucks, in the years immediately before they folded (1965)

There are several military vehicles in the range, a bit bigger than 1:72 they go best with the larger figures of someone like Spencer-Smith.

And the 'military' green chassis of both the push-and-go and free-running versions are used with other bodies, to give a wider range of transport that could be used in a war game in the 1960's, when vehicles for the purpose were thin on the ground. I have the canteen lorry with a green body and it looks very much the part of a YMCA or NAFFI-wagon.

The standard 'box body' came litho'd in a variety of types, these all being the push-and-go version. I got talking to a chap back in the Spring at the early-year Sandown Park toy fair who is publishing (or hoping to publish) a book on these little trucks and he did tell me how many variants there are (excluding body-colour variations) but I've forgotten how many he said...50-something I think.

These were mostly shot at Sandown a couple of weeks ago, with two recent additions (but older purchases) to my collection at the top, and one from the main collection (on the Jean transporter) which used to be on Imageshack and has lost some resolution. I also have the street-lamp mender/cherry-picker, and a cement lorry. There was also - I think I'm right in saying - an articulated version with a low-loader attached to an blank chassis/cab unit

The free-runner has a generic cab design and a smaller bed than the push-and-go design which is larger to accommodate the fly-wheel mechanism and gear-cog. It also resembles my favourite; the Bedford RL or 'Big Bedford'.

The smaller un-motored versions also seem to have the closed bodies, Ambulance, Horse-box, Cafeteria etc...While the motorised ones often have the open back (albeit with nicely turned-back edges to protect little fingers), this may point to the two ranges running contiguously rather than together/side-by-side? If so I wouldn't know which came first, but they were probably quite close together, time-wise.

I knew I'd find a use for 'Contiguous' one day, once I'd met it on my old fragmenting graphic!! We will come back to these one day, as I have quite a few somewhere, and I do like them.

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