T is for Two - Novelty Vehicular Thingies!

Just a quickie, but as I was sorting stuff to put back into storage I was shooting all sorts of old friends and things I'd forgotten I had, and batch throwing them on Picasa against the possibility of being stuck somewhere in the near future, possibly for months, house-hunting, while everything is in the said storage; these are two of the things I'd totally forgotten being the owner of, and, while 'only' novelties, they are both quite cool from a toy soldier perspective!

We get used to seeing the Award, Grace or Star branded wagons - copied from European originals, typically Timpo or Britains - on feebleBay from time to time, but how about a money-box!

Imported by a D.A.S. of London in an otherwise un-branded/generic packaging. I think this is (or was) quite recent, from the CE mark; 1980's or 90's maybe, I also suspect it was a charity-shop purchase, but can't actually remember where it came from or when, one of those last Birmingham shows, 2011?

She looks a tad Britains in origin, he . . . Elastolin medieval? The whole wagon (with figures) is in hard polystyrene with 'propylene wheels and horses and an 'ethylene plug to release the savings, hopefully to buy another wagon!

It would benefit from a 'paint down' from the current scheme of psychedelic puke! Obviously, painted or not, it's wholly compatible with 50-60mm war gaming or figure collections which is why it's in mine!

While this is more geared toward H0 or 00-compatible war-gaming collections, for which a coat of grey or olive-green would be the minimum requirement! No branding at all beyond the CF stock code prefix, it's a fun thing with two forms of power/locomotion.

Verging on 'shelf' or 'big-box' toy rather than rack-toy, it would have been rack toy budgeted I suspect and it's possibly a bit earlier than the wagon above - late 1970's? It may - of course - have been an overpriced element of the Hoverspeed gift-shop/duty-free exercise? I well remember the piles of Airfix ferry models at the Purser's window of the Enterprise Spirit class ferries we used to get - now a much sought-after kit!

A pair of batteries in the body drive a vibrating mechanism ("Oh Matron!") which causes the brushes to move the hovercraft (Saunders-Roe SR-N4 Mountbatten Class) across smooth or flat surfaces, while a secondary single battery-motor of a pretty standard slot-on design (dozens of toys came with them when I was a kid) will drive it round the local pond, boating lake or bath!

That's it, a couple of boxed-items, box-ticked!