S is for Spring . . . Powered!

I don't know who came up with this first; [Islyn] Thomas or Pyro in the States probably, but it could just as easily have been an European maker, and probably harks back to an earlier poured lead / slush-cast toy or tin-plate toy anyway?

These are a quite late version I think (1960's? But were the first to be shot so can go first!); Unimel premiums from . . . Now, here's a thing; Wikipedia doesn't have a Unimel page, not for the bee equipment, not for Melbourne University, not for the Portuguese thing (whatever it is - I didn't look), not for the pinterest page/guy/gal, so Wiki . . . not so smart now are you!

For Wiki' (don't say I don't help!); Unimel was a conglomerate created by the merging of four French companies in prepared food production; Brochet, SAB, Vandamme (cakes, 1929-merger) and Van Lynden, the company was later taken over by Danone. They issued various premiums usually sourced from other companies such as Starlux [Sources PW153 / Christian Hardy / JC Piffret], now - I think - all part of Kraft Foods?

The other sides are blank, pointing to at least two cavities on the tool, as they are marked on opposite sides, the rocket being closest to the old US-NATO air-defence SAM, the Nike-Ajax surface-to-air missile. And, while the launchers are polystyrene, the projectiles are polyethylene.

These are unmarked generics of - probably - older (1950's?) vintage, and may have been comic giveaways here in the UK where such things were once 'given' away! And in the colours of so much of that 'Dime Store' stuff, again 'styrene the rockets however are - again - 'ethylene.

Ammo! I don't know offhand what toy the smaller version comes from, but I suspect an AFV (probably battery-operated) or bath-toy of some kind? It looks [a bit] like the old Aussie' Malkara which we put (experimentally) on a ferret (Humber 1-Ton?) chassis! The Unimel (top) has the cleaner lines of the two full sized ones.

Jean Höfleur of Germany resurrected the design (with the cruder, extended fin) in the 1970's for its range of rugged readymade's, and 'bolted' it to a trailer with little hex-plugs! Two more were carried by a supporting artillery tractor!

There is a prescient foretaste of drone technology to be found here, ten or twenty-odd years before they were a serious proposition, but I think the 'plane, although also Jean (or one of that 'group' Heinerle-Koho-Layla-Manuba?) and contemporary, was from a  different toy which happens to have the same (common) mechanism! The photographs weren't at the best angle but it's a swept-fixed-wing design, which I think I've also seen in green?