B is for Bought Yesterday

Or two days ago by the time this publishes. Tuesday's visit to the charity shops produced this curiosity for one of your earth-pounds; winging its way to Scope's accountants!

It was clear - even as I walked over to the till - that it was too clean to be an original, and sure enough it turned-out to be a Mattel/Atlas Editions thing from 2014, however, apart from the new consumer information panel on one side and one other change (below) I think it's otherwise a facsimile 're-issue' of an original piece of French Dinky merchandise from the 1950/60's and was still sealed.

Before opening and after sorting.

I've seen other Atlas Editions, they seem to be semi- 'part work', semi-subscription, mail-order ventures of some kind; there was a rather nice offer of a 'little grey' Ferguson tractor, and an original Mini Cooper or Morris Traveller, both advertised via flyers in Sunday supplements and the like, but I had no idea they were tied-in with Mattel? I guess they got the Dinky brand-mark along with Matchbox's when they bought off Universal?

It isn't clear if it's an all-French thing (that is to say both the original - which was - and the re-issue), the bulk of the text is 'foreign' (up to four languages) but the additional consumer panel is Anglo-French and the handler is given as Éditions Atlas, while the bases are all-English, and the whole seems to have been made in China.

Modern or not, it's a lovely little thing and for a quid you can't moan. A close-up of the base reveals that not everything is a full copy of the original, I have some British ones somewhere, so one day I'll do a comparison. If I can find an answer/more on Google while posting this (Wednesday) I'll place the link right here - no I won't - they are common as muck and all over evilBay @ £1.99, still a nice thing though!

And the signs themselves are just as nice as the originals, with a fine finish to the plastic poles/signs, and the same heavy, die-cast Mazac bases. I don't know if the French Dinky signs were always plastic, the UK versions - back in the day - were slightly chunkier, all die-cast, single mouldings.