With
apologies to Messer's Steve Harris and Co., of Iron
Maiden! We're having a quick top-up on the 1-Ton
Humber 'Pig' story today, with a few bits that have come-in over the last
couple of years. I have in the past added a few images to the original
eight-or-so posts on the subject, but as they have their own tag 1 Ton Humber Mini Trucks (which seems to extend to 18 entries with this post?), they can
go here!
These are interesting and I've been after
some for years, as you can see I only managed three crappily-painted ones, but
they were cheap and I only needed a 'sample' to illustrate a point, or the 'missing
chapter' of the original posts.
You can see the black paint (old school gloss
enamel) has damaged the polystyrene substrate, as has the green to a lesser extent and where
the black was laid over the green on the cabs the damage is worse, so the camouflage pattern remains visible, but I hope
they will polish up when I find the time in the future.
They were manufactured - unpainted - by Hasbro, sometime in the 1970's (I
think), possibly as part of a transporter, ferry or collapsing bridge type
playset; I don't know? And are about 1:76/72nd. But the point is, however, they are not of the era of
the Dinky original, nor the Pyro mini- or Sam Toy full-size copies.
They are - in fact - completely re-designed/sculpted,
to a new degree of detail, and may be the donor for the NFIC trucks, and probably some of the sub-piracy generations of
Hong Kong mini-truck. And when I say 'may be', both are slightly wider/flatter or squashed than the
Dinky original, but we did see an interim one in a larger size from HK here?
I also picked this set up a while ago,
these are the eponymous 666-marked trucks of the title, the type I
originally listed as Type 4's, and they seem to be among the commoner
variations of these mini-trucks.
The card-art actually shows those early Matchbox 1-75 vehicles known to have been
copied by Blue Box, 'Blue Bow' and many others, in both soft
polyethylene or hard polystyrene, but the actual contents are just the 1-Ton Humber mini-trucks.
Two cherry-pickers and two
tipper/dump-trucks were the slightly disappointing contents, but random packing
. . . I guess! 1 purple body, the rest are pink/yellow and more bodies/plug-ins
do exist.
I also picked-up the full set of fire
vehicles (also Type 4's), but can't remember if I got a card with them and
forgot to shoot it, or if they came loose? But I think it is all the body-types
for the 'set'?
Inventive if not terribly accurate as to
the equipments available in the real world, and in the case of a couple, just construction-site
bodies in silver rather than black plastic - cherry picker (top middle) and crane
(bottom left), but nice to have them all and tick that box.
The modern holder of that novelty/pocket-money
niche; Kinder's efforts from a few
years ago, apart from a bit of flash on the basket of the cherry-picker, they
are manufactured to a high level of detail/tolerance, come in multi-parts and are
made in a more substantial material, with a higher degrees of play-ability
through moving parts . . . just harder to find under the blind-bag [egg] model!
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