I've seen these described as being made by '
Sanchez', but this one is marked
Ruiz, so that's what I'm going with until someone puts me right!
I'd been after one of these since I saw them in - I think - Akela's
Kiosk about six years ago, and a chap had a load at Sandown a couple of years ago (and I mean a 'load'), but - as always - I had no dosh; he said he's bring them next time and I haven't seen him again! Then the last NEC I did another chap had 4 in pretty mint condition so I grabbed a sample colourise; he had no tow-truck bodies.
Although marked as a
Santana, the licence-built Spanish
Land-Rover, these have the same wheel-arches as the UK vehicles and will pass for a basic Series III, and around 28mm are really useful for the larger figure sizes - if wargaming/role-playing...Zombie skittles, anyone? To be honest, I've just Googled them and most Spanish made bodies seem to have rounded wheel-arches, so it must have been the early ones from my childhood that had angular ones.
There were several body types for these toys, apart from the aforementioned Wrecker/Tow-truck and hopefully - now I've started to pick them up - we'll return to them when I encounter others.
The little animals that went in the back of the cage version, there are others, of course, but I like that while well out of scale the Giraffe sticks out of the roof! You can also see the 'spare' hole for the lifting-arm/boom of the tow-truch and other body types.
