Q is for Question Time - Unknown Plastic Truck

 Can anyone help ID this to a maker;

It's unmarked, about 1:50 or 1:64th, and I'm hoping someone may know it local to their territory - US, Canada, Australia . . . to work out who may have carried it or imported it here, or indeed, where it came from?

O is for Old Fashioned Cars

I finally tricked myself into getting six posts off Picasa, I can't tell you how long these have been ready for publishing, but while needing Blurb, the images have been edited and/collaged for about four+ years!

I announced they were due on a post on Moonbase Central about three years ago, since when they've done them again, twice, I think (I'll try to find the links) and Ed Berg has posted some too. While the article folders have been on the desktop 'ready to go' several times and quietly put back in 'My Pictures'!

But under the most tenuous of links with the previous post, we're kicking off with these Huilor premiums. Huilor is a manufacturer/seller of cooking oil, and issued various premiums back in the day. These were made for them by Cle, Del and Injectaplastic, with one or two still debatable, but the similarity between the vehicles, suggests co-operation of some kind between the three makers/lines, who are all, also, connected to other 'novelty' stuff.

Fully marked on the undersides of the chassis (another connection between them all), and with me not knowing much else, further blurb would be superfluous, and strained, so I've just annotated the images with the base markings . . .

 

Early racing car

 

Paris-Vienna Rally car

 

This is the only Injectaplastic in my sample.

That tenuous link!

 

People will say they are copies of this, that or the other die-cast (Brum, Rio or Matchbox 'Yesteryears') but the fact is these were very popular when I was a kid, along with pictures, posters, printed tiles, crockery & mugs, matchbox/matchbook labels, place-mats, beer-mats and coasters, 3D wall plaques, pipe-rack, ash-try or pen & ink stand ornaments and etc . . . and they were all of real vehicles, so some similarity is always going to ensue!

Not there wasn't a lot of copying, we'll see some in the subsequent posts! I'm not sure if they came assembled or as kits? Another connection all these have is being polystyrene rather than the Polyethylene of some others, or the die-casts just mentioned (which we won't be looking at). And the French for 'Old Fashioned Cars' is Vieux Tacots (old clunkers) . . . Bonux next!

RTM is for Rack Toy Month! F is for Fun-Tastic Fighters of Fire and Felony!

Well, saved July with a quick plethora of posts over 48-hours, lots going on in real life I won't bore you with; it's just life and it happens to all of us, but it did mean I just couldn't justify faffing around with toys on the internet! Although I posted the odd bit elsewhere, but they require simple uploading to the anonymity of auto-produced meta-data on the part of the host servers - a Blog actually requires a little actual work!

But, here we are, bloody August already! The weather's given us 20 years to live, which is nice, at least we have a target date now, I knew my '2055' was a bit optimistic when one of the activist science sites dropped to 2050 a while ago, now we're looking at 2040'ish!

But have any of your neighbours chucked out their tumble-dryer or dish-washer? Their Kärcher pressure washer, their four-wheeled gas-powered BBQ? Their fucking-great 4x4-crossover-SUV-utility Truck? No! So we're all going to die - quite soon . . . might as well enjoy tatty rack-toys while we can!

We actually saw variations of these sets some time ago here, with the same figures, and while these have been in storage since forever, the older post was ten years ago, so they 9the two paires of sets) are closer to each-other than to now!

Also there are three F's here; Funtastic, Fun-Tastic and Funtastik with a 'k', I haven't looked into it properly, but I think we worked out in the past that the first two are UK (one word) and US (hyphenated) branches of the same Hong Kong based jobber/shipper (with connections to many other rack-toy importers/carriers), while the 'k is another second use of the term as branding.

The figures; seen before more than once, following the Fantastic tag will reacquaint you with all sorts of polymer tat, including larger pose-counts of these, which seem to be copies (or just re-packs) of figures also carried by Ja-Ru.

The funniest thing about these is that the helicopter is a poor copy of the Thomas the Tank Engine helicopter, or at least I thought it was, I now can't find it, so it may be another kids license, I've definitely seen it in blue or white with a  face on!

U is for Update - Airfix Jeep Page

I've added the Noreda Jeep to the Airfix page on the subject . . .

. . . but no need to rush off to it now on the above link, the info' was all in the posts earleir today, but for future reference, it's there now! I will also be doing some Manurba comparison and other (Jean?) Jeep shots for that page in the next few days.

To finish this 'readymade' day, I posted this in a Faceplant group the other day, where it will drop off the radar as everything does there! So sticking it here to get it tagged properly, the over-text is self explanatory, and we looked at them all earlier in the day.

GS is for General Service . . . -Truck, -Wagon, -Lorry

As I've had them all out for the larger articles on Jean and Noreda, I re-shot the Manurba wagons and Airfix 'Duce-', the Airfix post is still in edit, but here's the Manurba comparisons

The Manurba wagon, as stated this morning is a reasonable rendition of the Magirus-Deutz 'Jupiter' 6x6 truck which was the staple truck when I was visiting Germany in the late 70's, by the time I was back there as a serviceman myself in the mid-80's they had mostly been replaced by newer cab-over-engin (COE) designs from MAN in 4x4, 6x6 and 8x8. It also has the lines of the M35 Duce-and-a-half from the US arsenal.

Here we see an earlier toy one in a deep olive-green with grey wheels, and a later issue in a drabber green, with black wheels and wearing a German cross on the bonnet. It is this version which seems to have been sold in the UK as/under the Tallon branding.

Looking at the contemporary rivals alphabetically; we start with Airfix, nominally 'HO/OO' both scale to an approximate 1:76th-1:72nd and are useful additions to an 'old school war-games army, the Airfix being a WWII era type - I'm never sure how you tell a GMC CCKW from a Chevy' from an International or a Studebaker/REO? Except the true REO's seem to have a very different mudguard!

The Airfix model seeming to have GMC/Chevrolet open-cab and mudguards, but the Studebaker's slightly more pointed bonnet/hood and shallower bed, but a lot of it's down to camera-angle and point of view I think - they were all to a common DoD design and meant to be as compatible as possible in workshops?

Both the Jean (here) and Noreda are slightly larger models (I've tagged them 1:64th as well as the other sizes, in all three posts - the US 'HO' slot-racing 'size'), and both are pretty fictional, the Jean having a vague look of the Mercedes 911.

The Noreda effort - like Jean's - fictional, is a 4x4 and has been described as a Berliet truck, but I can't find a match, so it's French Generic Mk1! Again heading toward 1:64th (or 1:70th at a push?) it has the added benefit of a towed trailer - as we saw this morning.

All four stripped-down to open flat-bed for all weather cargo, or miserable, wet troops! Lengthwise they are all much of a muchness, but the two-axle Noreda is clearly a scale or two above, while the Jean is noticeably taller or 'chunkier'.

J is for Jean Höfler . . . Hoefler . . . Hhffluur . . . Hhoouffluer . . . Just 'Jean', J is for Jean!

Me being 'racist' again? It's humour isn't it, especially if you've watched Steve Martin's 'The Man With Two Brains' but being reminded of TJF (the man with half a brain), did you see how he followed my rocket launcher posts with a troop carrier? That crazy guy, he just loves sitting in my shadow, plotting my downfall! Seriously though, he actually had several vehicles and could have done a half-decent post, but then he doesn't do 'plastic smalls' he was just advertising his feebleBay sales, 'cos he's a dealer not a collector!

So I'll start with the troop carrier too! But compare it ('J' above) with the Noreda one ('N' above) from France. Some sources think Noreda copied Jean, but I think they just share the 'dime-store' styling, and a coincidental rendering in soft polyethylene plastic. Although both have polystyrene wheels in a more rigid polymer, and altogether have all the tropes of Airfix 'readymade' Attack Force vehicles.

Another reason for believing in parallel evolution, rather than influence either way is because - frankly - (ehh? Franks . . . oh, nevermind!) the French models (flash excepted; look at the driver's window!) are undeniably better made; if anyone 'copied' - it was the German firm!

Early Jean's have white wheels for some reason, but a lot of the cheapies did back then, and were decorated with 'Allied' stars, these being the same cheap, self-adhesive, paper ones you can still get from stationers, applied in a slap-dash fashion with no attempt to level them!

A standard cab-unit has the slots, brackets, holes and hooks for all the other variations/loads to be attached, and one large sample I acquired had most of them fitted with the missile-retaining T-bar, even if it was fouling the other attachments?

There is a canvas-tilted 'GS/Cargo' variant, but it has a strange hinge which leaves the tilt upside-down on the ground but still attached to the truck! While a carded set on eBay right now (download the image before it disappears!) has the cab-unit and chassis only, possibly as a tower for the long-barreled gun (see below), the other half of the barrel has slipped under the truck.

Fully traversing and elevating; the twin AA-gun was a real leftover of the earlier dime-store types, where pretty-much every set had one; Lone Star, Pyro/Kleeware, Beeju, Tudor Rose et al!

From little guns to big guns, again harking back, this time to the heavy siege and 'battlefield tactical' weapons of the 'world wars', and providing a nice basis for a war gaming conversion to rail-gun - old school; not realistic!

I think it's always meant to have the plug-in extension, giving it a 155/175mm look, but I've now found two without, which are still usable as 203/240mm howitzers, so a pair of both sit side-by-side in the tub.

The towing-bogie is the same as the guns, but the trailer=body is different, both seen recently here, but better angles on them I think, and the plug-in 'bolts' are obvious, and as I said last time; I'm not sure the 'plane was actually issued in this configuration, but the mechanism is the same . . . the aircraft probably came with a coloured launcher as a novelty?

The launcher being hard polystyrene, it's probably an earlier stand-alone novelty toy . . . there's no evidence of other loads for the trailer so the one was designed to take the other and with the plane it makes a great drone-launcher!

Space Tanks! Seen here years ago, and I think I have Bill (or Paul?) at Moonbase to thank for the trackless ones? They weren't sold trackless of course, and while I've tried fitting the turreted one with old truck wheels to make a wheeled APC, the length of the axles between the hubs is greater, so they just float about!

Noreda used a similar system on their bulldozer (upper shot; probably taken from the/a civilian range), without a middle wheel-set and with narrower, finer moulded tracks, another pointer to the originality of Noreda over Jean. Both went with polyethylene for the tracks, which makes them bow-out unrealistically, in a way stretched-rubber wouldn't have.

While the lower shot compares the Jean GS truck with a contemporary Manurba wagon (sold as Tallon in the UK), the Manurba is a reasonable approximation of a Magirus-Deutz 'Jupiter' truck (with a bit of US 'Duce-and-a-half' DNA), rather than the purely fictional Hoefler effort (with vague Mercedes L-series/911 lines?). It's because we saw the Manurba stuff here, years ago, that I thought I'd also covered the Jean!

Tractor! Artillery tractor!! Jean stole a few from their civilian range as well as Noreda, with the same simple expedient of running them in 'army' khaki polymer! Here the farm tractor gets to pull other loads, a civi' one is seen at the back; bottom left.

The civilian fuel-tanker also gets a military call-up.

Below that are two armoured cars, one recognisable as the WWII vintage M8 M20 (Greyhound in British service), the other a more generic thing with features of early cold-war stuff from France, Austria, Switzerland or Germany.

This pair is the exception that proves the rule; in having soft polyethylene wheels to the hard polystyrene of the other vehicles. Also I haven't seen them with white wheels in either plastic, so they may have been later additions to the line?

 

Both are now known to be Injectaplastic, not Jean, hence them feeling less comfortable here!

Typical packaging (as per the link above, but from the collection), the three blisters are large enough for anything except the articulated tanker-truck, which may have come on its own card, in a larger set, or as a counter-display/stock-box purchase? Or even cab and trailer separated in two of the blisters and a second vehicle as the third item?

Mine has a rocket-carrier, tracked APC and gun-truck. You can see a cement-mixer version of the 'standard' lorry in the photo-artwork, whether they also did a khaki version I don't know,  nor have I seen military iterations of the road-roller, front-loader or dumper-truck, but they may be out there; there is - apparently - an army-green dustbin lorry/refuse truck . . . not!

Look at the wheels man! Really; a crazy guy!

N is for Not Jean! Noreda

I had one or two items in the Jean H' tub, which were not happy being there, a truck body and chassis which wouldn't take any of the plug-ins known to be Jean, and a transporter trailer/low-loader which wouldn't attach to any of the Jean stuff . . . and they both had 'new' wheels. About 18 months ago I found them on feeBay, did a bit of a dig, satisfied myself as to their being what they were and started watching two BIN-lots! I finally purchased them the other day.

Starting with a reverse of the Jean article (which will appear above this in one minute's time! If I get the scheduling right!), but here the Noreda (for that is what they are!) are the left-hand of each photo-pair, and looking at the troop carrier. It doesn't matter how you cut it, the Noreda are better finished (flash excepted) than their German counterparts. Although; with those blanket rolls, the troops themselves are a bit . . . err . . . Soviet!

Like the Höfler trucks there is a generic cab/chassis to which various add-on's can be attached, and also like Jean, the canvas-tilted GS (General Service) variant is a separate moulding, but here the tilt is a simple plug-in, rather than Jean's clumsy, hinged effort.

A nice touch is the matching trailer . . . when we used to go off on major field training exercises, nearly every vehicle would have a trailer, something missed by most kit manufacturers and/or war-gamers, it's the shear amount of 'stuff' on the move which actually blocks the roads after a strafing!

You can shift a few burning trucks in minutes by pushing them out of the way with a same-size or larger vehicle, but if they are all twisted together with their own or other vehicles' towed-crap, it all takes much longer. A battalion carries tows about 12 field kitchens, several wreaker-bogies and about 1-in-four water carriers to GS trailers (as here) on most of the other vehicles, the HQ company packets (small convoys) would have a number of generator trailers and office-bodied comm's trailers distributed among everything else.

The radar truck is another throw-back to the earlier polystyrene and die-cast sets of the 1950;s & 1960's 'dime store' era. The truck itself seems to be a generic although I've seen it described as a Berliet, I can't find a matching real-life example?

The Tank Transporter however is truer to type being a Berliet T-6 / TBU15 as also modelled by Dinky Toys (France), although the trailer is more reminiscent of that attached to the equally die-cast T-12 (also a Berliet) as modelled by Solido of Belgium. It's really a 'low-loader' suitable for APC's or (as here) plant, rather than a tank-transporter trailer.

Another comparison between the Jean APC (left) and Noreda bulldozer tracks; you can see the Noreda tracks are all-over neater, being narrower, better sculpted & finished with more strongly defined links/pads.

As a GBU, the T6 cab-unit was used with various body-types including artillery tractor and GS truck in real life, and Noreda followed that in their toy line, although this model is a bit odd - obviously meant to be a telescopic-boom crane, there is no hook, cord or anything else likely to provide instant lift, so presumably the buyer was expected to cobble something together themselves; several sets are exactly the same?

The same cab was given to an articulated petrol-tanker trailer which is similar to the Jean beast, but again cleaner and less prone to warping.

They do a Jeep, this will be the French-build post war licensed version, although I don't know what the signature differences are, I do know that AFV-geeks will walk round vintage fairs saying "That's not WWII, it's French" to anyone who'll listen to them! Same size as the Airfix Jeep (top left) takes it out of scale with the rest of the line?

The two Noreda items I've been watching for months while waiting for the moment when I'd have the funds to spare - a lack of shows has improved the evilBaying budget! Also in the lower shot a comparison with the smaller Jean card, that some copying was going on seems hinted at by the choice of both makers to go with an orange field? However given the ubiquity of Jean and the superior quality/finish of the Noreda's I don't think you can really call for either being pirate, or victim?

The guys still have a few for sale, and I can heartily recommend them, there were problems with the order - a combination of factors some of which seem to have been down to the limitations of eBay's own systems for handling currencies - anyway, they sent two [big] parcels for one postage charge and gave me top feedback the same day, not knowing what I'd give them after 24-hours of confusion!

The stuff was superbly packed as well - which left me fighting for the right to unpack! You-know-who has learnt to recognise the postman's knock from the bottom of next-door's garden! She slept in it all afternoon!

And I got to catch up on the local München news courtesy of some paper twists holding all the bubble-wrap in place. It's one of the secret pleasures of buying stuff from around the world, or around the country, papers local to the sender; Florida car-dealership deals are so much more interesting than the local garage's!

The fight for the oldest chip-shop in some forgotten corner of Norfolk seems far more important than the corrupt parking regime here in town, some property tax debate in New South Wales takes on a certain fascination lacking from the possibility of 24-months disruption if they widen the motorway within earshot . . . do you enjoy other peoples' papers in your plunder-parcels?

MC is for My Chap's . . . Geddit!

I know, I know, I'd shoot myself, myself, if I wasn't having so much fun spouting nonsense in the general direction of the Internet! Just a quickie following up on several previous visits to these Chap Mai modern combat, small scale types.

I was going to put this on the 'But is it Giant' Blog, but feel as new/newish-production it should be here, that Blog (which hasn't had a post for a while . . . ?) is really for pre-2000 or even pre-1990 'vintage' stuff.

We've seen the green set before, on the runner, but Peter Evans sent a whole bunch of them loose in a parcel six-or-more months ago, and they included a whole set of the same poses in black, so here they all are together from both sides. I hadn't previously encountered them, but Chap Mai have issued various big-box sets over the years, including some store-branded generics, maybe one had 'goodies & baddies'; their own sets tend to have a single un-clipped runner?

We can then . . . now (?) run through all the charity-shop purchases of vehicles, with the new figures . . . for the hell of it! The M1 Abrahms type is a bit on the small side for the 25mm-odd figures, but the five kneeling poses look better.

The M2/3 Bradley/A-Cav MICV is also a bit small, but looks better with standing figures although the one on the left is more helicopter- than AFV-crew?

Hummers stop for a nosey-about, but they aren't paying attention to the Shat-al-Arap waterway where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's frogmen have a bone to pick with Uncle Sam! Topical humour there, unless you're on the end a Trump-triggered, state-sponsored terrorism 'incident'! The language is lovely these days isn't it? The Coca-cola Games - The Iranian Maimings, The KGB Slow Painful Death Incidents!

Lannies also park-up in 'all round defence', but the spanner's come out - How very 'British Army Procurement'!

The Land Rover and the Hummers are the only ones with the clip-receiving protrusions on the underside (see posts passim under Chap Mai) for parachuting, on a little pallet, out of the big Hercules/Transall/Galaxy transport aircraft play-sets. I guess the others must be from more recent sets involving less parachutes? Although I'm guessing, they will all be on the old Index and Argos catalogues I keep meaning to go though!

The 'Rambo-squad' pulls-up! Jeep Wrangler 'technical' and rather odd-shaped/sized 6x6 truck of vague WWII vintage (which despite the looks actually holds-up well against the Airfix readymade) who are my latest two procurements (in the course of last year) and must also be from more recent/less common sets, as they definitely weren't in the old adverts, but they have the same wheels as the other soft-skins.

I still need to do the same paint-removal job on the jeep bonnet (hood)'s 'SOLDIER' artwork - leaving the allied air-recognition star - as I did on the 6x6 'deuce-and-a-half'. In point of fact - that these two are both 'new' to turn-up and in a new colour and have the same bonnet-markings strengthens the case that they are from a newer set, possibly the source of the equally 'new' (to me) black figures?