O is for Oriental Oldtimers

[Heh-heh! I'd written this up at the time, so this was the Hong Kong shite which was supposed to go in front of this morning's Citgo post, while the French stuff was all found in the garage after I'd prepared this one and started the Citgo! 2022 additions in square brackets or with strikethroughs]

A couple more days with no figures I'm afraid, but these need to be ticked-off, a lot are or were rack toys and they were a big part of our childhoods, whether the expensive Yesteryear's from Matchbox, or cheap rack-toys, and whether toys or place-mats, mugs, ash-trays, linen kitchen-cloths, tin waste-paper bins, bathroom tiles . . . d'you remember the bathroom tiles! Yet; they've all but disappeared now?

I love these; they have that cusp of the sixties look about them, half-psychedelia, half early-'70's glam rock, seen in both the card artwork and the plastic colours. The only clue to maker is a submarine-logo which seems to be made from WS and while the card-back shows six vehicles; there may have been more.

It's tempting (and for some time was my general thought on the subject) to think these are Yesteryear copies for the main part, but in fact there are lots of sources, not least several French plastic Marques - as we shall [have] seen in later [earlier] posts.

Here we have what appear to be three Mercers, all plastic but all different when you study them, the support for the front mudguard (fender) for instance has three different design-treatments, the seats all differ, one has a radiator/headlight plug-in, one has only the separate headlights and the third has that whole section as a single integral moulding with the bonnet (hood).

15th August 2023 - The left-hand, better one, is now known to be a Henry Gordy 'Gordy Mite', see card here.

From a production point of view; the plastic also differs with the Minimite all hard polystyrene (apart from the tyres), the unknown all soft polyethylene and the one marked Prosperity Toys being a mix of components in both plastic types - it's also missing it's spare-tyres! [While the Minimite, arguably most likely to be based on the European one we saw in the Fuilor post, has its spare tyres in a different place?

[I've failed to find the links to the similar stuff on Moonbase, despite an hours search, even though I know it's there somewhere!]

Two more, both unmarked, the white one has the look of the Walgreen generics in the first shot but not the whacky colours, and it's not on the card-back, while we had the Matchbox version of the Rolls Royce as kids and the finer bits tended to break (windscreen, headlights), which they are less likely to on a soft ethylene copy!

I think this is a Renault? It's also a fifth or sixth origin/maker to those we've already seen and gives an idea of the 'parts-list' of one of these. Pulled from bins by assemblers working in a hurry; you end up with different coloured seats!

This is also Hong Kong production, but is as good as some of the better French examples we will look at later, branded to both KMC and Mini Models, the polyethylene tilt/cover and tyres are added to an otherwise well made polystyrene model, with the problem of the spoked wheels (simplified on the proceeding models) here solved with clear discs.