Beeju is for EVB Plastics

The title of this post was the complete opposite, but when I went in search of the latter link, I found I'd already used it!

From before the idea of rack-toys as we know them, these would have filled the same pocket-money niche, and the early ones date from the late 1940's, so contemporary with other early plastics makers like Airfix, Bell and Randell.

Graces Guide tells us they were making a patent application for "Improvements in and relating to the attachment of axles to toy wheeled vehicles" as early as 1946, while by the following year were listing "Moulded Plastic Toys, Cars, Aeroplanes, Boats, Tops, Dolls, Trains, Plastic "Mah Jongg" Indoor Game, Prototype Electric Toy Motors...", of which my samples are pretty pathetic, but there's enough for a post on the civil stuff today (although I think we've seen most of them before?), and the military another day!

Comparison between an early dairy lorry collecting the churns from farm-gates (as was still quite common when I was younger) on the left and a later (1960's) version, not that while the silver one is perfectly stable in a bog-standard, brittle, 'kit' polystyrene plastic, the yellow one is a more unstable styrol or phenolic/ureic polymer of some type which is - like most of their early production - starting to distort.

Also, while the later model is a vaguely recognisable long-nosed Bedford or Morris lorry, the earlier example is (or 'was' in its day -) a more futuristic-looking fictional design.

Cleaning algae off a Penn

Plax fish-tank ornament!

A mid-era fire appliance/turntable ladder-truck, you can see from the remnants it should have three crew; one sat further-down from my headless ghost-rider, the other behind him on the opposite side. I think they had so many of the old 1950's production figures in a bin somewhere that they went on using them until the company faded from the scene, consequently the figures tend to be very brittle or are often missing altogether.

This version has no passengers in the cab (compare with the yellow milk truck) as it has no floor/chassis.

A 'proper' fire engine, with what is actually the same ladder, but locked in as a load, although you can slip it out to play scenes, it does have a floor and crew! It is also building a coating of dusty-pink 'leechate' which I didn't think to clean-off until I was putting them away again!

The last iteration (still with the same ladder) is not trying terribly hard to belong to a fire brigade, possibly becasue it's a telephone company truck (the difference between fire-bell and cable-loop is marginal, but this would appear to be the fire bell?) being in multiple colours (it has red wheels!), as a lot of the late production was, just attractive 'pester-power' stuff for no money. I think it's supposed to be an incident-control wagon; the same body was issued as an ambulance and - with a camera in place of the bell - as an outside broadcast TV unit.

In the lower shot you can see three generations of underside, the later ones having a more realistic arrangement of 'things'. Beeju also had friction versions with a more substantial chassis-plate to take the weight and stressing of metal/flywheel mechanisms. In the larger scales/with larger toys they also offered battery-operated and clockwork internal mechanics.

This is probably what EVB Beeju are best known for amnoung toy-fair brousers, they did many vertions of single and double-decked coaches, buses, trolly-buses (here on the left) and open-topped omnibuses, in many colours - we looked at these in close-up a while ago [check tag list] so I won't wax further!

A couple of other pieces marked Beeju, we only recently looked at a better version of the Native American canoe, but I mentioned this one on that occasion, so here it is, you can see where the oar used to be, and comments are the same as for the figures really, although I wonder if some antique-dealers back in the day may have whipped some of them to make faux 'ivory' spoons for Chinese snuff-bottles.

The little car is more of a puzzle; approximately N-gauge compatible (but probably too early for that system), I have images of similar designs being used with a larger, boxed, car-ferry toy, or being used as loads on flat-bed versions of some of the lorries above, but none are the same vehicle/design as this, and none have a hole in the driver's seat (UK side).

The hole could be for fixing to something, or for a driver-torso, but the other micro-cars have no figures (larger 1:43rd'ish toy cars do), so it may be from an - as yet - unknown playset, or car transporter?

As mentioned above, I'll look at the military another day, but I also have a small WWII mosquito (seen here passim) and a little boat, neither of which have been sorted to the Beeju tub yet!