The first of a few (?) follow-ups to things seen recently here at Small Scale World, and it's those pesky row-crop tractors, a design which never took off here in the UK, indeed, while there may have been a few demonstrators, or experimental imports, they were never a 'thing' over here at all, but, nevertheless, British toy companies ran with them, as mould-swaps or straight lifts from US dime-store vehicle manufacturers, and may have instigated some?
Partially as a follow-up to this post;
A line-up of the recent additions to the genre, with from the left marked
Tudor Rose, x2 unmarked, marbled blue is slightly larger, both likely British, possibly
Tudor Rose or
Kleeware, the previously seen (in the above-linked posts) marked
Made in England in military green, and a marked
Banner in dark blue, The last two being bigger again, but not the same. Obvious differences in wheels, also contribute to the question marks.
Comparison between the
Banner and
unknown tractors, frankly the
unknown (which I floated as possibly
Kleeware last time) is the better moulding, did it come first, or was it re-cut? Maybe it was a mould swap with someone else -
Pyro,
Wannatoys or
Wyandott - with the
Banner being a copy of whatever donor's tool, the
England mark was using?
I then found the military pattern
Banner-marked version, so re-took the comparison, light conditions differed, so here's two, the lower image is eye-true colours, and you can see how the engine details are cleaner and more symmetrical on the
Made in England - left hand of each pair.
The two
Banner's, the blue one is marked
Banner USA, the military-green one has had the
USA removed, otherwise they are the same, and one wonders if it's a case of domestic and export, and if so, which is which?
They both have a hole on the right side of the engine-bay, which could be for a missing flywheel (more normally found in the other side in the UK, when present), or a higher-price-point's clockwork conversion, unlikely as the wheel is partially obscuring it?
The two known British ones, they are different mouldings, with the yellow
Tudor Rose one slightly smaller, and only marked in the upper portion of the hollow engine cavity, while the 'army' one has the
Made In England along the length of the engine on the right-hand side.
A larger, closer to 1:32nd scale, soft polyethylene
Tudor Rose row-crop, in reversed colours from the smaller one, which is an earlier 'styrene, or less stable polymer (phenolic or urea-formaldehyde type?), but with perfectly stable polystyrene wheels.
Kleeware marked wreaker-truck (a straight mould-swap of the
Pyro dime-store model) behind the '
England' pulling its gun, just for a colour study between the two, and because it was kicking about! The gun is a much copied design, and really, I don't think anyone knows who did it first (
Auburn Rubber?), or in what size! And - of course - there was that close connection between
Kleeware and
Tudor Rose, and between both of them and
Pyro on the space-stuff.
This artillery combination appears to be the one seen in this post;
Where a mix of a Bell machine-gun, a pair of unmarked Gilmark (possibly Tudor Rose) AFV's in bright colours, and some of the 'Built-Rite/Hardy/Kilty/Loeser/Spencer' semi-flat GI's were all found together with the tractor-gun combo'?
We've looked at them before, and looked at three versions of the
Merit (
J&L Randall) offerings, with solid wood, solid-rubber and hollow-backed plastic wheels like all the above. When I've got them all together, we may be able to work out a timeline of piracy, from US originals, to n'th generation Hong Kong clones!
All six. This post doesn't prove anything, but it didn't set out to, beyond the fact that there are many of these, and their heritage/origins aren't clear! When marked, we can say, they are what they claim to be, even if the tool is someone else's, but when unmarked, it's all a bit grey. More images are here;
And knowing at least one was used as an artillery-tractor, I'll have to look at them all again, with the guns present? There were several already in the stash, mostly military green ones, but there are some other 'farm' ones.
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