R is for Ro-Ro - Roll-on, Roll-off

So; a return to another perennial favourite! Why do I keep coming back to this little car?

Well firstly it keeps turning up in new versions/configurations, second it looks a bit like a Morris Minor, of which we had two when I was a kid, a small powder-blue/grey hardtop...very boring, and a darker 'morris-green' soft-top which my brother and I would stand-up in the back of, as if riding a chariot (or reviewing the troops?), until some idiot pulled-out in front of us one day on the A30 duel-carriageway between Hook and Hartley Wintney and we both nearly went airborne over the windscreen as Mum jammed the anchors on! After which is was sitting only!

One of about five 'best purchases of the day' at the recent Plastic Warrior show (I'm like a kid...running back to the stall every now and again "Best of the day" I go, 20 minutes later...."Could be best purchase today!"), this is the marked Kleeware version of the Pyro Ferryboat, issued in the military green, it's more commonly found in the bright primary colours of the 'infant' / dime-store toy it was.

There are four of the little cars we have now looked-at about three times already (and will doubtless return to!), and the design is the sort of - non ocean-going - ferry you find running river or lake routes the world over. I have photographs of similar ferries on the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz/Constance) from our holiday in 1969 and they were still there in the late-1970's when Dad was stationed down there.

When I gave it a clean, the previously invisible residue of the 50+ year old sticky-tape that held the cars in on display suddenly made itself known, fortunately it came off with a dry cloth!

I've taken the right-hand photograph three times but the shiny plastic just won't allow the focus to er...focus! But you can just about make out the Kleeware mark about the sprue-scar. This also highlights the carpet-wheels. The cars do have differences in internal roof-marking, but we'll look at these another day when I marry the ones I've picked-up in the last few years with the ones in storage (and any others I pick up!).

There was also a military version of the petrol station, this has been seen with the little Humber trucks from Kleeware, but I bet they did a version with the cars as well? There would only have been three in that set. These have some minor damage (a windscreen spar and tow-hook missing) so I will have to replace them with the spares.

The other brilliant thing about this - for the inner-child in all true toy collectors, is the simple fact that...IT FLOATS!

"Your mission Captain Willard; is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy Ferryboat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it, and deliver four new staff-cars."