A is for Available in Any Colour, as Long as it's Fast!

I seemed to do quite well in the racing-car department, at Sandown, I rarely go to Sandown with anything like a shopping list, it's a question of what's there (and cheap) on the day! And, a month or so ago, it was racing cars, apparently?

Rather highfalutin instructions, and blurb, bigging-up a basic mechanism in this Maserati, which had been known to aficionados of balsa flying machines for several decades before this was issued? And the addition of a crown and bevel makes the 'starting handle' a harder wind than the propeller usually employed for the winding of rubber-band models!

 

To be honest, and given the quality of some more obvious 'facsimile' boxes I've seen recently, I have my doubts over the authenticity of this box, it's just too good, too clean? But the jeweller's loupe seems to suggest it's litho- or screen-printed onto an absorbent card, and shop stock stuff does turn-up, from time to time, but I'm not confident, either way?

 

This is my second FROG (Flies Right Off [the] Ground) Penguin (flightless bird), but is very different, the previously-found jeep being a heavy, vulcanised rubber, almost composition in consistency and weight, while this is a lightweight, plastic (early 'styrene?) and tin, novelty.

 

A future post (currently in storage) will be two of these helmets, one of which, in silver, is identical to the one depicted on this driver figure (the reason vehicles started to gain traction in the collection), with the set-forward or stand-off, drop-down perspex sheet, mounted around the front of a rigid visor.

 

They both came from 'Old Mr. Bening' (might be Benny or Benning), who was a silversmith, in a little shop/workshop, I think at the T-junction of the B3004 (Forge Road) and A325, just shy of Bordon, Hampshire, although the premises seem to have gone in a junction remodelling over the 50-odd years since he died, and we last visited him.

 

It may have been somewhere else, nearby, the memories are weak, and Google is no help with everyday, local historical stuff, there might as well have been no world prior to 1997! But he had been a racer in his younger days, and gave us a couple of his old helmets.

 

Ingap large scale Porsche F1, my first larger Ingap, and another in that classic fifties or sixties metallic blue plastic! I don't know if the box is original (packing from a larger carton?), or fashioned by a previous owner, but it fits well, and keeps the car protected, so I'll hang on to it! Both the above are about 1:43rd/48th scale.

 

Not a racing car, and closer to 1:35th/32nd, but just for fun, it was one of the items missing from my flood-damaged set, which we looked at prior to my discarding the packaging as beyond saveable a few years ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/ab-is-for-vidalis-brothers-joy-toy.html

 

And given the price Greek sellers on evilBay want, for everything, it was a bargain! I guess it's trying to be a VW Carmen Ghia, or early Porsche Carrera? Bonnet's not right for either! Equally, the Greek Hellas sports-car, might fit (after a quick Google!), but whatever it wants to be, it's still, a nice find.

SPV is for Soapy Persuit Vehicle!

Heads-up, it's the BMSS (British Model Soldier Society) show tomorrow, in Reading, Berkshire, And, it's a full moon tonight, so lock up any lycanthropes' in the family, lest you fall out with the neighbours, big-time! I happened to need to go to Reading last weekend, and managed a quick trip to a couple of old collectables shops I know . . .

 

. . . of which the first, to be fair, is mostly comics and the usual Star Wars action figure type stuff, while the latter is a more eclectic shop. They are both next door to each other in one of the few remaining Victorian covered arcades. We used to have one in Aldershot, but it was ruined, blocked-off at one end, and replaced with a rebuilt fake, a couple of decades ago.

 

However, I did manage to find one of 1993's Captain Scarlet SPV soaps from NAPA Products, which had seen better days, but was, nevertheless a bit of fun, and which, being modern, in my eyes at least, will probably end up being used in the bath!

 

The dust of ages, or, at least, 33 years!

 

The vehicle - marginally smaller than the Corgi model - was more battered than the box, but you get the idea, and there's not a lot I can add to the photographs, it's a soap, with no rope! But I thought the colour was well-chosen?

 

After a bit of a wipe with a damp cloth!

 

If you do happen to go tomorrow, both shops will be open, and are minutes, or hundreds of yards from both the station and the show venue.

K is for Khaki Kattle-truck!

There is a tendency, particularly among cheaper toy makers, for military versions of civilian vehicles to be produced, by the simple expedient of manufacturing the civilian toy in military-coloured plastic, this third Jimson post covers one of those! And I should point out, yesterday's Land Rover was based on the Daktari one, not a clown/circus one!

 

These came with the Land Rover and futuristic Transporter/Tank combo', and while I don't think the figures have anything to do with the vehicles, I shot them with this one, just in case! They are high-grade piracies of the Matchbox American Infantry from 1974/75'ish.

 

Compared with the transporter's tractor-unit, the body is longer, and the stake-sided superstructure is held in place with the same clip used on the transporters. It would seem these late-cab toys are harder to find, so must have been made right at the end of Jimson's reign?

 

The mounting hole equates to the other position on the tractor-cab, which is the further-back one, not found on the first version, so clearly there was an attempt to mount some other bodies on the tractor, before the newer stretched-chassis was designed, as seen on the cattle-truck? The newer chassis, like the transporter cab-units, has no mark/number.

 

Badly damaged, but I was buying the lot for the Tank Transporter and Land Rover really, and, as I say, I don't think the figures belong with the set, but they might?!

J is for Jimson - 116 & 127 Tank Transporter and 128 'Bulldog' Tank

Except the numbering is not that clear! This is one of those posts, that's been in the queue for ages, but I couldn't decide what to do with all the images, or remember what I'd wanted to say about them, so I just lost interest after the first collage was done, about four years ago!

But I looked them up the other day looking for something else (which turned out to Hover-Hoover!), and I got minded to polish it off, and get it out of Picasa! And in fact it's a tale of two transporters and two tanks!

Jimson 127 Tank Transporter with Action Bulldog Tank. "Fully Metallised" refers only to the wheel-hubs with this toy, but other toys had more chrome-effect detailing, and presumably the message was just put on all boxes! I think this is the same box-art as you get with the Fairylite issues, where Fairylite is just over-printed, but I suspect the Jimson box was different for the second version, but I don't have an example?

 

As they left the box, you will recognise the tank from a previous post on it and it's similarity to the Airfix '1st version' Patton Tank, now believed to be originally a T. Cohn design, the older one is above, and a reasonable rendition of a post-war US 'big rig' truck, the later version is very 'spacey', but uses an almost identical tank.

We'll return to the tanks in a minute, but here they are stripped down, and both have an unexplained, and unexplainable hole in the main bed/plane of the trailer, if I had to guess, I'd say the hole might be to stop warping, as the hot moulding is released from the tool?

The newer version (the trailers carry the 116 and 127 numbering, the cabs are both unnumbered) has two holes for the locating pin and clip of the trailers, and I'm guessing this will be due to a slightly different stud on one of the civilian trailers, I think there were fuel-tanker, and car-transporter bodies available, and maybe a plain flatbed for loads?

How the clip locks the pin/stud into place - older version.

As well as a whacky tractor-unit, the 127 version has whacky wheels, still 'metallised', but far less realistic than those on the earlier version, in this they were mirroring moves in the die-cast market, where realism gave way to silliness, in a need to keep kids interested, or entertained!

Piggy-back! The whole-width ramp of the later model, was separate ramps on the earlier, which loosely sat in channels, using words like 'clipped' or 'locked' wouldn't do justice to the lightly sitting-there, they were actually managing! I think they are meant to be wedged under the two suds behind the cab, but are already quite a loose fit, and with nowhere safe to store them, if you can't find a boxed one, you might not get ramps!

But, while they both carry the 128 code, the tanks are very different, while looking almost the same! The mudguards have been extended on 'II', the cupola MG lost, the main-gun shortened and the flash-eliminator fattened, while the turret itself is set back a bit, and, on my example . . .

. . . there's no push and go motor on 'I', it has the mounting-holes for one, so again, guesstimation suggests the motor was fitted to single-boxed tanks, but not to the transporter ones, because the tractor-cab has its own? But in the end it was easier to have one assembly-line, so the later tanks all have a motor?

The track-guards, extended on II, still short on I, which is how we find them as Airfix, Brumberger and/or T. Cohn, in the smaller scale, in which guise we looked at this last;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/p-is-for-patton-pershing-by-airfix-and.html

 

II (left) v. I (right)

 

Image dump;

Type I at a slightly different angle!

 

Even the same-numbered baseplates are not exactly the same.

 

Recent eBay sale, which is a II with motor, it was sold with the 'space-truck' transporter. As per previous viewings, the turrets are soft polyethylene, colour-matched to the hard polystyrene bodies and baseplates, and scale is around 1:48th.

A couple of scans I took at a later date, I think the tank is the key to the odd numbering of these sets, originally awarded 128 as a stand-alone, boxed, and probably motorised version (1960's), when the tractor-unit (unnumbered, and possibly already in use with other-number carrying tanker or car trailers) was married to the flat-deck trailer and tank, the box got the 127 number, because it was spare, and/or closer to the tank's 128, than the trailer's 116?

Then, when the combination was redesigned (1970's), the new trailer was numbered to match the earlier box, because . . . well, it's only conjecture, but the truth won't be too different? Although, as the whole thing would have required new box-art, it could have all been given a new number?

116 - 1st version trailer

127 - 2nd version trailer

127 - 1st version box

128 - Bulldog Tanks, both versions

Both tractors unnumbered

T is for Two - Four-Wheeled Wonders!

Between civil, military and space, there were lots of vehicles in the last lot of Sandown show plunder, but that's not such a surprise, given as how it started life as a train/die-cast show, those tables groaning under the weight of Furby 'plushies', Bratz dolls, Lego and Transformer stuff you see these days, are far more recent additions to the halls!

 

In its day, this must have been a common-enough pocket-money toy, as it's at least the third to be added to the stash I think, and while this isn't the best one, it comes with the driver, which previous examples were lacking, but which I probably have in the loose passenger/rider zone, so will hopefully now be able to properly crew the others with! It's a pretty-standard Poplar/Thomas PVC figure, but in white rubber, rather than the usual flesh/pink/brown tones; possibly to match the wheels he was shot with?

 

While this, Jean Höfler or Manurba (?) toy is another Mercer, and it could be the Mercer all the other plastic Mercers are copied from, but I don't think so, it's not even the best moulding out of all those US, French and Hong Kong ones we saw here at Small scale World, a while ago, so I suspect it's a copy too, from whichever was the better Mercer, one of the French ones, Schuco, Matchbox 'Yesteryears'?

 

I don't recognise the boy-logo, and Jean used a drum-logo, but the text is very much in the style of either maker. I've found the rest of the set on a locked foreign-language site, associated with the name Rosenberg, and have possibly ruled-out early Siku and Bruder?

P is for Police Department

Just a quickie tonight, it's a Hasbro dime store type, which is unusual in itself, but more so for having a folding roof, with no apparent purpose, by which I mean the internal compartment won't accept figures, there are no holes for torsos, and it may have had a small bag of candies, but it would have been very small?

What do you make of it? I took too many shots of the underside, and not enough of the top, but it's in storage now, I think? The hinged roof only invites damage? Marked POLICE DEPT., lengthways on the bonnet (hood), readable one way only, and HASBRO 1 MADE IN USA on the underside, it's a lovely shade of ultramarine!

B is for Before & After - Cleaning!

Quick one from the photo-archive, the Auburn Rubber half-track, before and after cleaning, the lighting also changed slightly, but I think the job still shows itself to have been a good-un!

Not terribly realistic/true-to-life, but better than Marx's efforts, and around 1:48th scale? Manufactured from a synthetic PVC-rubber, rather than the earlier vulcanised tapped-rubber, of which Auburn had done a few military vehicles, but not a half-track, I think Sun Rubber did a very crude vulcanised half-track?

 

I put a little touch of WD40 on the axles too (hidden carpet-wheels behind the track-units), just to stop them getting any worse, after I'd given them a wet-polish with a bit of wire-wool, while it was in the sink for its once-in-a-blue-moon valet!

Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hints - Curtainsider!

H6-5! Best said in a West Country accent; Curr'un Cider! We're returning to the previous post with a simple fix for that rather leery truck we saw.

As it comes from PMS, stickered-up to within an inch of its life, and hardly the low-visibility or 'subdued' scheme you'd want on a military vehicle; with the sun on it, I fancy you could spot it from the International Space Station!

But they are all simple paper stickers and were mostly destined for the bin!

The removal revealed weirdness, moulded into one side as full cavities in a stencil style, the letters ABCOK, which is then fully mirror-reversed on the other side so you can see right through them both like the two ends of a tunnel?

Now does this mean ABC  OK, which might mean the vintage ABC is still extant as part of the modern Chinese toy industry (very unlikely)? Or is it poorly selected random letters because someone detailed someone else to select and cut some letters into the tools for some inexplicable reason? Or is it a more insidious hidden-behind-a-sticker thing, like the abbreviation for 'American Bastard Customer' or 'All Brit's Cocks'?

I doubt we'll ever know, if it was an Early Learning thing on un-stickered civilian versions of the toy it would be ABCDE or ABCXYZ or something wouldn't it? I suspect sample text on the CAD drawing which was accidentally transferred to the CAM tooling and reversed 100% for the other cavity! But there you are - spurious letters cut into the sides of the truck for no [apparent] reason!

I then cut new plain paper stickers from heavy parcel labels and coloured them in with a Sharpie! Simple, but effective, although the sides needed about four coats of Sharpie to lose all the pen-lines and hide the letters underneath. I used an old agate nail-buffer to smooth the sticker down especially round the edges and the four corners

Neatly converts a leery truck into a logistics curtainsider, although pretty fictional and we have to ignore the wheels for now! It's a sort of 5½-7½-ton rigid-bodied puddle-jumper (with a 'big-rig' cab!), around 1:48th/40mm compatible. And as you can see I left the 'sensible' stickers front and back for a bit of interest! And thanks again to Peter Evans of PW for the PMS Truck.