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 12, 2019

B is for Blue Box; Long Sets

To a certain extent these are the 'next size up; from the Mobile Combat Team sets we've looked at recently (and in the past, when we probably looked at these too . . . doh!), while there were stand alone and bagged carded sets, Blue Box adopted a tier system for their boxed sets with one, two, three or four tiers, however - if the Mobile Combat Team are to be considered 'standard' single tier; "These are double-plus good Citizen Smith!"

77647; 8 Pcs. Army Set; Artillery Gun; Artillery Piece; Bedford Army Lorry; Bedford RL; Bedford Truck; Blue Box; Blue Box 7406; Blue Box Toy; Blue Box Toys; Boxed Army Toy; Boxed Toy; Complete With Shells For Field Gun; It Really Shoots; Made in Hong Kong; Military Vehicle Toys; Modern-Equipment Combat Team; Patton Tank; Plastic Toys Series; Radar Truck Radar Operator Ambulance Toy Helicopter Toy; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Vintage Army Toys; Vintage Plastic Soldiers;
Different contents same box, just as with the Combat Team's, but here the contents include at least two vehicles and a bunch of scenic accessories, the scenic accessories are the same in both sets - one each of both blow-mould copies of the Crescent sandbag walls/entrenchments (also pirated in hard plastic by Marx in their Miniature Masterpiece range) and two sections of barbed-wire fence, held to the card with the same plastic piece used to glue in the vehicles.

However the lower set having a smaller second 'vehicle' (a small helicopter) also gets the motorcycle, a late one with the block underneath (where the glue goes!). Figures are a mix or British (ex-Britains), US and medics (both Blue Box original sculpts).

77647; 8 Pcs. Army Set; Artillery Gun; Artillery Piece; Bedford Army Lorry; Bedford RL; Bedford Truck; Blue Box; Blue Box 7406; Blue Box Toy; Blue Box Toys; Boxed Army Toy; Boxed Toy; Complete With Shells For Field Gun; It Really Shoots; Made in Hong Kong; Military Vehicle Toys; Modern-Equipment Combat Team; Patton Tank; Plastic Toys Series; Radar Truck Radar Operator Ambulance Toy Helicopter Toy; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Vintage Army Toys; Vintage Plastic Soldiers;
This is an earlier version of the same retail 'package', this time with three vehicles, no scenery and less figures. The lid folds up into a display card (with odd scaling!), there were probably a bunch of these in an 'outer' or liner; a shop-stock box, and one of the sets would be so displayed at the back of the box, to show the contents, with the customer taking a sealed one. Sometimes this one would be sold at a discount - once the rest of the stock had sold-out.

77647; 8 Pcs. Army Set; Artillery Gun; Artillery Piece; Bedford Army Lorry; Bedford RL; Bedford Truck; Blue Box; Blue Box 7406; Blue Box Toy; Blue Box Toys; Boxed Army Toy; Boxed Toy; Complete With Shells For Field Gun; It Really Shoots; Made in Hong Kong; Military Vehicle Toys; Modern-Equipment Combat Team; Patton Tank; Plastic Toys Series; Radar Truck Radar Operator Ambulance Toy Helicopter Toy; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Vintage Army Toys; Vintage Plastic Soldiers;
The contents of the earlier set from a better angle, I've seen several of these over the years, so it was probably quite a common one at the time. Mine's a bit tatty now but I saw a much nicer one go through Vectis a few years ago, very clean.

77647; 8 Pcs. Army Set; Artillery Gun; Artillery Piece; Bedford Army Lorry; Bedford RL; Bedford Truck; Blue Box; Blue Box 7406; Blue Box Toy; Blue Box Toys; Boxed Army Toy; Boxed Toy; Complete With Shells For Field Gun; It Really Shoots; Made in Hong Kong; Military Vehicle Toys; Modern-Equipment Combat Team; Patton Tank; Plastic Toys Series; Radar Truck Radar Operator Ambulance Toy Helicopter Toy; Small Scale World; smallscaleworld.blogspot.com; Vintage Army Toys; Vintage Plastic Soldiers;
Box ends, the later set (77547) was sold in 1968, the older one (7406) might date from the late 1950's but is probably from the early 1960's.

Thanks to James Opie for the rocket-lorry set - and the date!

2 comments:

Gisby said...

OMG I remember the Blue-Box vehicles as having a very strong and peculiar odour to them. Open the box, and whew! What a stink!

Hugh Walter said...

It might have been the glue they used? To hold everything to the card; it looks like Evostick double-plus-shite!

H