F is for Favourite Trucks

We've seen these before (several times!), we'll see them again when I do a 'definitive' sometime in the future, but we're going to have a quick re-cap now, looking specifically at the civil versions of Blue Box's Bedford trucks!

The pictures are actually not brilliant, I took them outside  in that summer session and the sunlight actually seems to have worked against the camera, but they'll do! These are the Blue Box civilian versions of the Bedford RL they also used in the military range, based on the Britains Lilliput or Kemlow's (Sentry Box) die casts? I've never been too sure?

Crane on the right, the vehicle on the left is a sort of telescopic, vertical-only 'cherry-picker', with a ladder up the side, presumably in case the device got stuck in the up position, and while one is tempted to think 'It's only a toy', I seem to recall as kids that we spotted these incongruities as easily as the adults!

Both get copies of the Dinky road-workers, and the 'platform lorry' gets a temporary road-sign, nicked from the same Dinky set. The vehicle flatbeds are the military weapon-truck ones with the control-cabinet, but moulded in bright colours.

The crane is here rendered in reverse colours; I think the moulding was a pirate of the top-half of the old Matchbox four-wheeled Coles (?) crane in yellow-finished die-cast? These single window boxes (equating to the Combat Team military sets) were coded 77390.

The Bedford RL was eventually replaced by a Bedford MK, several of the bodies were retained, including the flatbed with crane. But new bodies were added to the range such as the shell tanker, although I've never seen a loose version of the wreaker-truck; bottom left, while the Sea-Land container lorry has a printed-cardboard container.

Figures have also been changed to the garage/service station mechanics/forecourt staff, also Dinky figures, all (the road workers as well) sculpted by Charles C Stadden originally, I believe.

I think this is quite a late issue, indeed from the price it could be anytime, some rack-toys are still a quid or a dollar? But early eighties I think for this one? The crane has been given something to lift with a card crate to place on it.

This set from the Toy Trade Distribution Company from 1986 is - in my opinion - trying very hard to resemble the Blue Box set, but with short (30-foot) articulated trailers on the fifth-wheels of what I suspect are the equivalent forward-control Ford cab-units? They have not only gone with similar artwork (including ship), but copied the printed-card shipping container!

Although they have a logo, I suspect they (TT) were a packer/shipper wholesale outfit, handing stuff from lots of smaller manufacturers, for offer as generics to the smaller chains and independent 'corner shops' (mom & pop stores) and the like (another was Hongkong [sic] Toy Exporters), that they have no 'Factory, Industrial/ Industries/Industry, Manufactory' or 'Production' in their title - which most of the actual makers in the colony seem to have had at the time - is another clue!