S is for Sometimes . . . I Can be a Fuckwit, Twice in a Fortnight!

When I published the Robots the other day, I had totally missed a much bigger folder with a shed load of mostly eraserbot shots in it! Anyway, I found it a couple of days later and after a quick "Doh!", cobbled the next two posts together (helped by a recent purchase) and chucked a couple of dozen -  mostly Internet - images back into the generic folder for another day!

I'd forgotten acquiring these a while ago . . . last year some time, even before the posts I did at the time, simple flats, but colourful, several sellers were selling them individually for silly money, but I found one who had the set for a reasonable collective price, we'd seen similar flats (or 'tiles'?) before, so it seems a new branch of the collection was calling!

 

Here the red one is compared with those seen in that/those previous post/s, and you can see these are toward the larger end of the spectrum, at around 60mm, but the fun is in adding six items to a growing sub-genre!

 

Spotted this set on feeBay, branded to Emson, can't remember why I left it at the time, possibly because there were only the two figurals, for a high BIN, or postage from somewhere else was ridiculous (global shipping program anyone?)? But they are interesting for having a semi-transparent polymer with flecks of glitter set into it.

 

I also saw these TV related ones online somewhere, probably an incomplete set, and, like all these: the artwork is waterslide transfer-printed straight onto the blocks of eraser rubber.

E is for Emergency . . . Empire or Emson?

A closer look at a couple of the sets in the packaging-post from the other day now, with a look at the Blue Box emergency set, and what I've suggested is the Lucky 'version', however in preparing the images, it became obvious that it's probably not Lucky, but E (for Empire? Or Emson, see past article on Thames Trader trucks!), the people who made some of those Tri-Ang Minic ship knock-off's.

The two sets side-by-side, ignoring the illustrative card coming off the front side of the Blue Box carton, you can see the two boxes are roughly the same height and depth, but the unbranded one (sold as Lucky but probably Emson) is wider for double the contents.

 

The Blue Box turntable ladder truck is a bit of fun with a fully traversing, elevating and extending, sectional ladder (a very delicate structure in polystyrene, I don't suppose many have survived outside the packaging!), but purely fictional on a Bedford RL chassis I think?

 

The ambulance, on the same chassis, has been (along with the figures) quite badly discoloured by sunlight (ultraviolet), and you can see that while the far side isn't so affected, the cab/chassis moulding is untouched.

This confirms my own theory much expanded-on in an interesting thread on plastic diseases, on the old HäT forum, long since deleted, when H adopted the 12-month cut-off! Basically, I believe all problems with old plastic are related to errors on the day they were formed, with incorrect temperatures, pressures or additive quantities resulting in hidden flaws with will come out later, I'm guessing the body and figures were probably overcooked in the tools, while the cab-chassis went through their birth without problems?

The other set is aping the 77xxx series from Blue Box, with a window in front of each element, and similar packaging dimensions, and confirms the link between the round-based mechanics and the oblong-based firefighters, previously made here at Small Scale World.

I thought the artwork was rather atmospheric!

 

I don't know my cars well enough to call either of these, are they US vehicles, with that soft spongy suspension which makes kids car-sick, or are we looking at a Ford Zephyr or Zodiac for one of them? Corgi did an Oldsmobile staff-car, could one of these be a clone of that?

 

We've seen the figures before, they are copies of the Blue Box copies of the Dinky figures, but the sticker on the blue Police-car's door is clearly the branding of the 'E for Empire' toys, probably, actually Emson, seen on other toys of this type, which is not to say Lucky aren't in there somewhere, there was a lot of cross pollination between all those cheapo-platic makers, and having discovered that Blue Box (and Redbox) are only brands of Tai Sang, there's no reason to discard previous theories without empirical evidence, so I'll tag all three (Lucky Toys, Empire Made, Emson) until we know more!

 

The Thames Trader water tank (? Or tool-lorry?) is similar in lines to the real-life T55, but that was more streamlined, while the Dennis looks like a bit of a hybrid between a 1971 D600 (Mk 2) and the earlier F101. As different brigades would have replaced different numbers/types of appliances at different times, there would have been a gradual evolution in outline and fittings, as well as different decorations (some have more chrome), so it's a fair representation of a generic Dennis!

It was machines like this which attended our house, and saved it, back in the 1970's, when the heath caught fire (thoughts for the people of Maui, Greece, Portugal, Canada et al.) and the tar on the flat roof started steaming! The firemen gave my brother and I regular top-ups for our watering cans, so we could help 'damp-down'! We found tons of cooked Adder's eggs - sadface, and ended-up looking like a couple of Victorian chimney sweeps!

 

Being a local manufacturer, my childhood memories are filled with Dennis fire engines (and County tractors) being test-driven or 'shaken-down' around the area, and they often went through Fleet, sometimes as plain chassis, with the drivers' using motorcycle helmets and four-point, racing seatbelts, perched - as they were - on a temporary seat over the bare engine! I seem to recall the seats were held-on with a literal network of bungy-cords, but it was probably coloured rope!

 

While it is also similar to the Bedford RL 'Green Goddess' wagons of the Auxiliary [Army] Fire Service (AFS), and of the fire-strikes fame! All gone now, along with everything else in the cupboards - Thanks Tory voters, you know the price of everything and the value of nothing, least of all 'society'.

In both sets, the figures are slightly over-scaled at 28/30mm, but all the vehicles could carry-off service in 1:76/72nd scale armies or on HO or OO-gauge layouts, or maybe not the two cars; just the lorries/trucks?

T is for Thames Trader Trucks

Which were actually Ford's! Neither are they strictly rack-toys, as they would have been in a stack on a shelf somewhere, but as they would have been priced below a single Dinky, Corgi or Spot On toy and probably no more than two Matchbox's, they fit the bill, which in RTM is Hong Kong (or China) cheapies!

Before moving on - a quick apology for all the typos and lack of editing the last few days, but that BT-Wifi has decided to play-up big-time and I'm now fighting to get the posts up as quick as possible before the mast drops Fleet off the map for the third time in an hour!

Also while I always try to credit stuff which has been donated, gifted or come-in rediculasly (and delibereately) cheap, I don't normally credit for stuff I've bought normally as A) I couldn't possibly rememeber every purchase or who from and B) if you buy something in the normal way, it's yours to do what you will with, but I would like to thank Paul (of 'Saint and Grievesy' for those on the circuit who know who I mean) who came up to me at the end of a show in some forsaken sports hall in Sussex or somewhere, about 12-years ago and said it looked like the kind of thing I'd be interested in - it was!

"True to scale", but no scale given!

Typical of all eight; the axles are the worst part being cut by hand and therefore all lengths from tight-in to extra-wide 'Carlos Fandango'! It's one of those weird things about HK production in the 1950's, 60's & '70's, some used a jig to cat axles the same length, others did them by hand or a finger section or something and ended up with none the same length - this is one of those assemblers!

A body is slid over a flatbed, integral to the cab and the floor-pan holds an un-glued chrome-plated radiator/headlights part in two pre-formed slots. In this case the body has an additional refrigeration-unit (red plastic) glued on and a sticker.

Yes I said 'sticker', this is so cheap it's criminal as the cost-saving is minimal to the manufacturer, but the disappointment to the child (probably already used to cheap plastic toys instead of the die-cast stuff of his middle-class counterparts) will be measureable, and repeated, every time, but they really only put a sticker on the widow-showing side!

They are fitted into the trays with a bar that has twin pinch-points, on either end, which grab the axles, and make useful construction material! The pipe-truck is reminiscent of the Matchbox one, but that was a later vehicle - another Ford I think, but later '60's to the Thames Trader's 1959 birthday.

The tipper is a bit naff to be honest and the lorry being loaded with beams is someone's conversion chuck-out, another pipe-truck which I suspect was destined for military service - in a war games army - but only got as far as losing it's stakes/stachions. All have the dhrome hubs/rims and rubber (PVC) tyres.

You can see from the USAAF figure that they are a reasonable 1:72nd scale.

Comparisons with - from the left - an Empire Bedford RL, an interesting variant of this oeuvre as it is heavier than the (possibly absent)* Blue Box truck you'd think it was a clone of, and just as well made, so Blue Box may have been the copyist here?

Then a copy of [or] the Blue Box animal transporter (I think I've had this in a Blue Box set?)* from one of any number of 'Home Farm' sets or clone-sets, another Bedford RL type (the civi' version was an S-series I think?) which has given today's subject it's equally cloned-body.

Finally; a smaller (HO-compatible), later model of a 1960's Ford (?), copied from Matchbox with a different body which is a combination of the others - a drop-side with stake/fence for animal transport. It has single-moulding running-gear sprayed chromey-silver, but it allows for duel-wheel sculpts on the rears.

What unites all these is basic, glueable, model-kit quality, brittle polystyrene plastic for all bodies, chassis and cabs, with variation of materials restricted to the wheels and axels.

*I think the Blue Box and this are the same, even to the sub-copies by other brandings (as we saw with the Noah sets), but the Blue Box weren’t to hand when I shot these, so we’ll compare the other way, another day although the smaller Blue Box shell tanker has been on here once or twice I think?

Box-art close-ups of the Thames, a similar lorry from Commer (?) and the rest of the smaller sample which came from Trevor Rudkin a few years ago, the silver body is an older shipping/rail container, which were made of wood, rather than the stamped steel of the modern international standard. Stock-code may help someone, but I thought it might be E for Empire until the superior Empire truck turned-up!

 

A week later - I've now seen a five-truck closed-box set of these branded to Emson