B is for Best Show on Earth! 8. Civilian Vehicles

Lead here by the two non-show purchase carts this afternoon and there is more horse-drawn stuff (along with elephants; another great favourite sidebar of mine), but we've got all sorts to look at.

 

We've seen this in more than one Hong Kong iteration, here at Small Scale World, but I have a fancy this one is actually French or Italian, someone like Cle or Jouplast issued them as beach toys I think, and supplied some (of the smaller ones?) as premiums to people like Bonux, while in Italy, think I they might have been married to Texas and their plug-in based figures?

But don't quote me on either point, it's only memory! Suffice to say the finish is sharper than the Hong Kong ones (previously we've only seen stagecoaches), and the plastic is chalkier. The design of this one is a tad ridiculous, with over-sized tools stuffed through two unrealistic holes in the removable, but not working, tailgate. However, if you're moving sand on a beach, quite playable, if not terribly practical!

Tudor Rose beach- / bath-toy tugboat, small Hong Kong pleasure cruiser and A Bruder vessel make up the merchant navy in this lot. I believe the TR Tug, was reissued by Springwell in a retro header-carded net bag!

 

There is a bag of the HK ones slowly growing, and when I think I've found most of the body-type variants I'll blog them, in fact there are lots of bags of similar things all slowly growing . . . or at least some are!

 

Mixed road transport, a magnetic racing car we'll look at below, Praline and Minic (Triang-Mettoy) model railway HO/OO (respectively) compatible cars, a jig-toy truck (which will join all the others) and two classic 'dime store' or - in the UK - corner-shop/pocket money vehicles; a car marked 'Made in England' which could be Kleeware (?) and a Fairylite road roller.

The steam road roller is either a phenolic plastic or an early, unstable polystyrene, and is beginning to warp, while the racing-car, also Fairylite is quite stable.

A handful of Quaker racing car premiums to be checked against the master sample, and a comparison between the number-3 car (also used - as a sculpt - by Parker/Waddington's board-game Monopoly) and the previously seen Fairylite model.

 

Which is here for a third look! A simple magnetic novelty toy where you used negative-to-negative to push the car around with the hand-stick, a simple thing for simple times, what would they make of today's all singing-all dancing, digital Frozen dolls, or Super-deform Star Wars Angry Birds!

 

The jeep is supposed to be Tudor Rose, but smaller and less accurately portraying the real-life version as we saw the other day in military guise, and being unmarked, I'm only considering it an 'unknown' vintage beach/garden toy for now?

The tanker is usefully marked Banner Oil, so clear piece of Dime Store tat there! And the old-fashioned car is another of the better detailed Hong Kong copies of a French original I think?

The motorcycle side-collection took a real fillip in the last few weeks with another Airfix the following week, a second French Bazaar police motorcycle and then two more Airfix a week later.

 

What we have here are, from the left; that French bazaar copy/late issue of Cofalux's policeman, a Hong Kong with the base we were lacking when we sorted all that out with PW's help a few years ago, the motor-trike by Poplar Plastics / Poplar Playthings (they used both, and Poplar Plastic Products!), and the two Airfix 'dispatch riders'.

So soon after the gold one from Chris Smith, comes a full colour Gondola in the larger size, Brain Carrick remembered these being sold (or cleared?) through Woolworth's, but as this would have been the beginning of the age of mass-consumerism we're now trapped/locked-in to, there is the secondary reasoning that rather than being clearance of unsold Italian tourist trinkets, they are aping the silver neff which the rich had on their dining tables or sideboards, in a more affordable material?

 

It seems to be missing a couple of components down by the Gondoliers feet, and there appears to be two hinge-covers for a storage-compartment flap behind the customer's throne, so I will now look out for a cheap bashed one which happens to have the missing pieces.

 

 

Finally, a couple of 'box scale' wagons from Kleeware, from US tools (Pyro-Bachmann-LifeLike?), note that the buggy driver is about HO/OO compatible, while the fire-pump's driver is closer to N-gauge! Same sculpt. I have a bunch of these somewhere and will look at them all one day.

Thanks to all for everything last month; Trevor Rudkin, Adrian Little, Andreas Dittmann, Gareth Morgan, Michael Mordant-Smith, Peter Evans and Brian Carrick.