P is for Payton, Winneco, Palmer, HG Toys . . .

. . . and now could be Victory Buy for/or by BMC? And there's bound to be a Hong Kong version somewhere!

Another post which grew organically over time, starting with Brian Berke's purchase of a re-issue in a local hobby store in N. East USA, prompting me to locate a couple, in the course of which the riders were identified (they've been in the unknown's for years!) and Hong Kong squeezed in at the end!

2.99 seems like a steal to me, Toy Soldiers Depot have some at 1.99 plus postage, so about the same in the end, if you grab a few. Now manufactured in neutral grey plastic so paint will be everything!

I don't know for certain if the originator is Victory Buy, and the packaging is generic/near-blank but they seem to have a lot of this old stuff now? It never stared in BMC publicity as far as I know (they have been carrying the Payton twin-flak 'space tank'). . . and can anyone hazard a guess as to what CHD might mean or signify - Cargo Handling Detachment? Could just as easily be coming-up from Mexico?

So I managed to track down what I guess is an earlier one (olive green, stickers) and a later one (cabbage green, no stickers), and I should point out - as we go through the post - my olive one has the slightly smaller, wider-axle'd wheels of the gun/jeep as it's front pair, not that noticeable, but it needs to be sorted at some point!

You can see from the series of mould-damage 'glitches' on the right-hand door's interior surface that all three trucks have come from the same tool.

I hadn't noticed to begin with how filthy the cabbage-green one was, I think it's been knocking-about in a box/tin/tub with lead (hollow-cast/pod-foot) or whitemetal (war gaming) figures for a couple of decades or so . . . but it might have been a pencil case, whatever the cause, static had given it a good coating of some graphite-like substance!

A scaler from Brian with one of Crescent's finest, it's really carpet-wars scale! The flash round the rear corners and on the foot-step/running board has got worse over the years as the mould ages, but it easily removed with a sharp blade.

More shots and the bedspread one shows them after I gave them the TFR treatment, almost factory-fresh!

We looked at the figures briefly ages ago in an ostensibly Marx post, but I didn't - at the time - clock the seated figures that went with them (or I might have, and not mentioned it/soon forgot it, as they were in storage at the time!), they are dead common in mixed lots, junk lots and rummage trays at shows and on the internet, so the sets must have been almost as common as the Tim Mee 'Vietnam' GI's sets were, over the years.

Brian actually sent some of them (the other figures) too, a couple of years ago, we saw them here briefly (in a bag!) and when everything's sorted we'll have a proper look at it all again.

Hong Kong took the seated chap, added a loop to his helmet and dropped him out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane on the end of a bed-sheet! MS could be Ming Shing, a known novelty issuer from Chai Wan, Hong Kong, but there's nothing concrete.

I'm pretty sure there's an Italian branded import version of this somewhere, but I can't find it or the images, so that's a big question-mark against a possible false-memory!

Thanks to Mr Berke again for the shots (all the grey ones) which got me tracking down the others and pulling it all together a bit; Payton subsequently owned by Winneco and Palmer, issued by HG Toys in a 'rack toy' style boxed play-set and now . . . by . . . someone? And the grey one's not a 'recast'; you cast metal, it's a re-issue of moulded product from the original tool.