T is for Toy Fair 2020 Reports - Hornby - Centenary

As the title suggests Hornby are celebrating 100 years of the brand, in actuall fact the 'firm' really died at the merger of Tri-ang/Rovex and Hornby, but such details are irrelevant when it's all about branding and the brand was founded by Frank Hornby at Binns Road in Liverpool in 1920.

The deal is supposed to be to have ten special or limited-edition items available, one for each decade of the branding, and reflecting some of those older logos or brands, but the salesman explaining it to me couldn't rationalise the display with that 10-total!

He did realise that one of the Rocket's (yellow box) is from the standard range, but that still/then leaves either 11 or 9 other items/groups on display?

Anyway, they are from the top, an

• ·         [Meccano] 'The Hornby' electric train set
• ·         Hornby-Dublo 'Sir Nigel Gresley' train set
• ·         Hornby-Dublo locomotive - stripped box
• ·         Range of Dublo-Dinky 'OO' vehicles
• ·         Tri-ang 'Stevenson's Rocket' (red box)
• ·         Tri-ang Hornby locomotive 'Evening Star'
• ·         2x Hornby Railways locomotives (different price points)*
• ·         2x Hornby [Hobbies] locomotives (different price points)*
• ·         Rovex train set

*I think they are also representing four different 'standard' packaging changes?

This was nice but also possibly the most disappointing of the lot, as it's obviously meant to represents the old burn-your-house-down before a zeppelin gets to it, bare-wire carpet-railway early electrictrickery train sets of the inter-war period, and while on one level it does so very well, especially if it runs on vintage O-guage track (?), on another level; it's a horrid colour/finish.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of maroon locomotives and treasure my Duchess of Southerland despite the fact it hasn't run for over 30-years and may need a complete overhaul, but semi-matt, or eggshell or whatever they call it . . . really? It should have been shiny-gloss, with broad black & gold pinstripes round the tank-case, surely?

These, on the other hand, are both lovely and interesting. Lovely because they are 'true' OO or 1:76 or 23/25mm-compatable vehicles of use to model railway fans and war-gamers everywhere, yet interesting because they are NOT the original vehicles, or reproductions of them (there was a sports car and a tractor, but not these) . . . which, loyal readers, might suggest that if they/their sales are successful through 2020, it could make them the vanguards to a new range (half planned already?) in competition with Oxford Diecast? Only thinking out-loud!

Already two of the vans would make useful (if inaccurate) vehicles for French Resistance units!