F is for Follow-up - Toy Truck-Mounted Rocket Launchers

So, managed to find both the rocket launchers mentioned in the previous article (making this a follow-up to a follow-up!), so without further ado - 'cos we don't want much of an ado about nothing! - let's have a closer look . . .

Both the vehicles I'd previously said I had 'somewhere', I knew where the paint-stripped one was, but Brian's shots were of two painted versions, so there was no point digging it out, the plastic one I knew I'd got, and recently, so it should have been findable, but a cursory look - the first time - failed to locate it, it (the Hong Kong copy - lower image) then appeared - as if by magic, a few days later! Hence digging-out the Crescent one (upper image) for a full follow-up!

The Hong Kong one is a copy, with simplifications like the 'torsion-bar' wheel attachments instead of the through-axles clipped in, as on the Crescent original, but there may have been some pantographing to get the basic moulding as one or two quirky details have been retained, albeit at about a 10% reduction in overall scale/size - I've cropped them to reflect their relative sizes.

More comparisons, the Hong Kong rocket is basically a Thunderbird (Army) or Bloodhound (RAF) missile, probably copied from Corgi, sans booster rockets, with colour-bleed from an unstable red polymer-colourant in the nose gravitating toward the 'rear' through the white plastic of the body it's plugged into.

The 'trap-door' of the Crescent cap-bomb 'missile', you can see how many caps could be stacked in the 're-entry capsule', and the substantial free-moving hammer would detonate them all against an equally substantial anvil-nose.

The trouble was you then got (in a Norwegian accent) a helllll-of-a-bang, which tended (in a cockney accent) to blow the bloody door off . . . which then got lost in the garden!

My rubber-band has perished in storage, but has retained its shape. It will need replacing with a dental-brace band - coincidently - the same item required by the little N-gauge vehicles in the Lone Star 'Treble-O Trains' rage!

Completely stripped of paint, there is a slight remnant of gloss red inside the elevation-lock wheel, suggesting this was the 'civilian version, and I'm quite sure someone was planning on repainting it as one of the two military versions, weather for home use or a fraudulent sale is anyone's guess! If I ever find the time I'll repaint it in an urban camouflage of blue-mauve-grey-purple, so there's no doubt as to its origins!

It actually looks quite sleek in its bare, weathered (or oxidised) Mazac/Zamak-alloy finish and is here posed at maximum elevation for lobbing onto enemy trenches a few yards away, or getting the best 're-entry angle' for a big-bang!

As with the other photographs above, where possible I've cropped to reflect the size difference as shooting them together proved awkward due to their length; taking the camera back to get the nearer machine in, tended to blur-out the one behind.

Not for completisms' sake, as there are plenty-more rocket launchers, but because it happened to present itself during the search, this is the smaller example from Kwong Shing-KS-Kamley-Kositoys, with the later design of truck and no card insert with printed 'flat' crew. It's the standard cab-unit with a twin-axle trailer utilising the body-mounting plug to create an articulated 'train'.