AB is for Vidalis Brother's 'Joy Toy'

Back to Greece, pure coincidence but there it is, another Greek plastic toy here on Small Scale World, but sadly no figures again; no figures today actually, so figure-purists come back tomorrow, and more 'plastic smalls' so the PSTSM can have the day-off too!

The set, which has - since these shots were taken - gone in the bin! Reason being, it was a very poor carton when I got it, with a sun-burnt blister-window, and a lot of hidden mending; I did the whole dismantle - dampen - iron - patch-the-inside (with Butterfly paper-tape) job on it years ago; so it was already a bit ersatz over its originality, and these are not so rare on feeBay, or at the bigger shows like Sandown, so - in the end - there was little point keeping it limping along.

The 'meat and two three veg' in this set is the Bedford car-transporter with three VW Golf/Polo type 'hot hatches', all have tinted windows and the Bedford is particularly well done with only the gryphon missing from the little shield 'nose'.

Partly that is down to a larger size, these are toward the larger end of 1:72nd, rather than the similar Blue Box's smaller end of 1:76th, and the cab is the same model as that military MK from Blue Box (and others), but as a triple-axle tractor unit this would have been a larger engined vehicle or have a different gearbox and therefore a different code-designation, I suspect?

The same cab on a longer chassis provides heavy-lift and there is a good measure in interior detail in the cab. As far as I know this type of Bedford nevr saw service with the British Army, who used Foden's in the heavier classes, but some other NATO members may have had such equipment, while for old school war-gaming all they need is a coat of matt-green and they can serve in any army you want them to!

The logo is an AB from the Latin alphabet, odd for the country which still uses the Greek alphabet, but as it stands for 'Adelphoi Bitali' which is the Greek for 'The Vidalis Brothers', I suspect it's all cleverer than me! This is - obviously - the Mercedes bus.

While there is a lack of figures, there is still a lot of play-value added with the inclusion of a whole bunch of accessories, including both working traffic lights and working pedestrian crossing lights (for the non-existent pedestrians!), for those who need to know about these things, there are two variants of road sign with longer and shorted plinths at the bottom of the Lego-like pole.

The light units are quite clever with a slider placing a white plastic disc behind clear, coloured plastic lenses as you push and pull it up and down behind the cover, finally' two slightly sub-scale petrol-pumps are included. there's also a bag of traffic-cones

The typical range sample circa-1970, when this set was issued (note the larger 1:43rd (?) sports cars), there are a few earlier, simpler models from the 1960's, and it may be that more will be revealed by Greek collectors going forward, I don't know a good source for Greek toy info, beyond a couple of toy soldier pages, but 87th Scale Info havea page on them here, despite their mostly being quite oversized for HO-gauge - the smaller turcks here are Toyota's in a very HO-looking size.

And - as with the Comet-Authenticraft stuff (which they never actioned) if someone from that site contacts me I can give them the new model numbers and some new photo's?