C is for Canoes - 2 - Britains Herald and Copies

So, who didn't have one of these when they were a kid? You didn't? You may have a case at the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, or wherever - 'parental cruelty'! I think we probably got ours in our Christmas stockings around 1969/70? But they may have been a summer treat to play-with in the inflatable paddling pool?

 

This was a different packaging than I remember, although it changed several times, in fact the following of the canoe-cards, the Elephant-boxes and especially the catalogues in the 1960's & 70's is a journey in itself from B&W, to psychedelia, through flower-power and glam-rock to something more conservative and boring in the 1980's!

Brian has two, both manufactured in the earlier marbled plastic which was to try and recreate the natural wood and hide products used in real life, but, it has to be said, the design itself was 'Theme Park', I remember hiring canoes like this from Wellington Country Park, and they were aluminium shells with fibre-glass-reinforced plastic seats and fittings!

 

The crew of his fawn one have the later, more colourful, paint-jobs, the grey boat's crew have the earlier 'buckskins', and the boats had stickers of the US interwar pattern, international military-aircraft recognition roundel!

I believe that when the type 2 appeared, it first appeared in this guise, as a trapper's boat with a Native American Indian . . . mate, partner, guide . . . servant? Both vessel types had the bent wire-rod counter-weight, which serves as a keel and keeps the otherwise very buoyant toys level and realistically low in the water.

 

Mine; I too have a marbled 1st type, with the trapper-era type 2 in the middle and a final iteration on the right of the trio, new mouldings of crew are given a Deetail compatible 'wash' finish in a leery orange!

 

Although the crew of the third canoe are genuine Britains, the boat itself is from the Red Box (Redbox) 'Buffalo Fort' play set I think, which has mostly Airfix figure copies - Indians in red and the cowboys in blue - for US cavalry!

 

Comparisons, the pictures pretty-much say all that needs saying, the new ones were a tad bigger, but then with Deetail, everything was bigger than Herald, with heavier sculpting too.

 

Brian has a nice copy, no brand attribution at this time, but similar to and probably 'after' the Supreme one, but it's superior for having a crew!

 

The Supreme one is a bit more colourful, but didn't get a crew, so I've used a couple of 'unknown' crew, which I've also shot in close-up, as we won't see them again in these posts. 

 

One of the Supreme sets which the copy came in, we saw a copy of the copy in the introductory post, smaller, but copying the same colour-scheme as the Supreme/SP Toys example. Note also; the raft and oar.