F is for Follow-up - Earlier Today!

Not often we get a follow-up this fast which wasn't planned, but I've just found these in my in-box, courtesy of Brian B! I'm happy to admit I don't really follow metal, civil vehicles closely, although there are tons on the dongles, it was all downloaded from the internet back in the twenty-tens, or scanned in batches, and is really just sitting there waiting for me to sort out the A-Z pages!

 

So when I mentioned earlier that Autocraft were new to me, I meant I'd never seen or heard of them, but it turns out at least one Loyal Reader knows all about them, and has populated his layout with a few;

 

Open Tourer

 

Soft-top.

 

The red motorcycle is a Wizard Models from Australia by a British Expat, while the other two are both Autocraft kits, I love the Noddy-coloured one, which Brian reports is an Austin 7 - the Colleges at Mattingly, had an Austin 7 (hard top) and an Austin 10, both of which I remember being built from the shiny-black painted frames, up! Brian also pointed out "The nice thing about the models is where appropriate people were included wearing correct era clothing".

The pick-up in grey here is another Autocraft and, while I thought I recognised the Charbens Old Crocks, Bran had to point out to me, that the green one with red wheels, is a similar but Japanese-made model.

 

Other stuff in this shot is best left to Brian (my italics);

 

"The black car is a Triumph Mayflower by Oxford Models

On the right, the truck with a red barrel is a Keil Kraft kit.

To the far right is a black diecast Model T van by Lion?

The blue car in front of the Mayflower is a plastic Harburns kit of a Vauxall Taxi built by me. Also issued for Jet Petrol. [which we looked at here - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2019/03/f-is-for-follow-up-kit-cars.html - number 7]

The blue vintage car front right was a US metal HO kit of, I think, a Buick, built by me."

 

So it was only the other green one, which was Charbens! But nice how they all look together.

 

While the big vehicle is a Tower Model plastic kit of a Blackpool Coronation Tram converted to a travelling/mobile library trailer, with what looks like a Cooper Craft (or another Keil Craft) cab-unit? And more Old Crocks in a jam round the corner!

******************************************

 

This should have, and nearly did, publish several hours ago, but I had to go for a quick drive, then got into an eMail conversation, and then lost an hour watching A Grand Night In, the Story of Aardman, which is free on YouTube!

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMexOinKhQ)

 

So what was aiming for a ten-post day will remain an eight-post day, as my eyes are going funny! But I'm cracking-on this month, and there's still a lot of seasonal stuff to clear, so more to come!

P is for Petroleum

On one level this is just a nostalgia hit for people of a certain age, and not a young one, as this is from a mid-1970's colour supplement (I forgot to note which one/when), and the mid 1970's were, now, fifty years ago!

So which ones do you remember, these were all brands at the time, and the article makes clear there were more besides. Mex and Maxol are obviously sibling brands, while Sky and VIP look to be related. Some (six or seven, ten maybe, Mobil seem to have disappeared in the last decade or so, along with Chevron and Murco? Fina?) are still with us, with new ones like Q8 (Kuwait). We were a Shell family and had an account at the little garage on Phoenix Green, where they would come out in their khaki overalls and pump the fuel for us!

 

But this also helps illustrate a point I try to make from time to time . . . we all know the premiums issued by the bigger boys, even if, like National or Cleveland, they are no longer with us, because they were made in the sort of numbers where a fair amount survives; coin collecting albums (Shell and Esso), comic-book adverts for the promotion (Cleveland), surviving packaged examples (Jet), &etc.

 

But many of these would have issued some sort of incentive from time to time, and some of those would have been toys or collectables, which were never issued in the numbers to leave a trace, hell, half the above have no mention on the whole Internet!

 

But when things keep turning-up, like the 'Euro-premium' colours of Magic Roundabout figures, rather than our own Nabisco cereal premium colours, chances are they were issued by one of the above, or another, not illustrated above, or a smaller/regional ice-cream brand, or fleet of ice-cream vans, or even a regional chain of convenience stores, long since swallowed-up by the big-six?

Not generic, just lost! And what is the yellow disc one - CW?

Next day -

The link I mentioned in the comments is still there, it's changed appearance in the decade or more since I last looked, and has a legacy-page look to it now anyway, but a useful list and nostalgia read which also educates!

http://www.petrolmaps.co.uk/special/glossary.htm

F is for Follow-up - Kit Cars

I'm definitely in an unproductive phase, not a lazy phase, just an unproductive phase - as far as the Blog goes; I'm busy sorting the various bits of the collection together, photographing like mad and dealing with eMails in a vaguely timely manner! This week I'm shooting Airfix readymade AFV's for what are well-overdue pages!

There are a few follow-ups I'll try to get-up here, over this week, this one comes from the De Gruyter post the other day,, not the best photo's but they're sufficiently illustrative of the pints; it struck me the unknown green one might be the Jet Petroleum premiums, so I dug out the near complete set we looked-at a while ago, and the part set in storage (pleased to say I had the missing '3'), but the question-mark car wasn't one of them!

Eight of eight Jet premiums to the left, manufactured by Rosenhain & Lipmann. The other three - from the other day - on the right.

Colours for the jet premiums tend to match the colour of the cars' artwork, but there are shade variations, and left-field alternatives like the orange '4' (the black bits have been painted on by the previous owner) and a black '7'.

Kellogg's (in the tub - for a whole other post another day) introduce a pink, but seem closest to the green of the unknown car.

C is for Clip Together

No more than an overview with these today, it was a bit of serendipity and a reader contribution which led to this post and I have many more in storage so we will look at them properly by company/type another day (or: other days!), for now, let's just get an idea of the wide range of mini (or micro) model-kits which were available as - mostly breakfast cereal - premiums, many - but not all - supplied by R&L (Rosenhain & Lipmann) of Australia, primarily (in the UK) to Kellogg's Foods.

Kellogg's liner which we've seen here on the Blog before and racing cars which were also issued by Sanitarium in the antipodes, as well as someone on the continent (Portuguese food company?), so they often turn-up, but with all the little pieces (especially the wheel hubs); are rarely whole. I do have another bunch in storage including orange, red and white examples so we will look at them again one day. The driver moulding is the same for every car, so you can build him half-and-half - two colours, he looks good in black and orange!

Various ages and generations of bits for the Montaplex Bi-plane, I picked these up as a single lot in a larger bag of mixed bits; someone was obviously building himself a 'circus'! Between the bits I can still get one airborne!

These are all soft ethylene plastic with the WWII fighters (and sub-scale Heinkel? Mostly bits) having been given-away in the UK with boys comics (Fury, Valiant and Warlord), as part of the hype surrounding the release of the movie Battle of Britain - I believe? Sellotaped to the cover as an unmade kit on the chunky frame...for years I wondered (not being a 'plane guy') if they were Atlantic, the frames are chunky enough!

The Concord (I think?) is one of three (or four) in a set with The Tupolev and Boing efforts, possibly from Quaker Foods or Weetabix?. I say "I think" as there were several sets with Concord in and I'm not sure which is which!

I bought the bagged ones at a car boot sale quite a few years ago, the chap had loads of them in a fruit basket, so I assumed they were a new issue or a re-issue of older moulds which he'd picked-up as a job lot or as clearance, so bought one of each, but I think they may be the 1970's originals, now, which is annoying as I would have grabbed them all, he only wanted pennies... The broken-up bits have come in with mixed lots over the years and I think between the two shots are aircraft from two different sets?

While the ME109 is probably a modern 1:144 kit, but he's in with the medium-smallies in the unknown bag!

Jet Petrol (gasoline) stations issued this lovely set of 10 (?) cars for quite a while, so they are not too uncommon, and while I'm missing one or two, I'm hoping I might have them in storage, but if not they will turn up one day!

One made-up and broken into its constituent parts, a pair with a colour variation and two soft-plastic (polyethylene) cars from Europe - Spain or Portugal I think...Tito? I do have some Ford and Vauxhall rally cars in this style marked Tito, but these two are unmarked.

The  next four images (below) are all courtesy of Andrew Boyce who sent them to me ages ago (before Christmas?) and I said I'd be publishing "soon", "in a day or two hopefully", "probably tomorrow" then in the February splurge...only for time, Nathaniel and Voda'fail to intervene in their timeless fashion! Can time be timeless? There's an existential debate for a cold winter's evening!



A lovely shot with samples of various sets Kellogg's issued, along with both Gerry Anderson sets complete. I also remember a set of clip-together Tony the Tigers', with another set of train kits coming out of Italy.

Of interest to me in this shot is the set of blue wheels on the red estate car (station-wagon) as the ones I have all came with black wheels and the helicopter which I was unaware of.

This shows the kid's comic ad. for the Captain Scarlet vehicles shown in Andrew's image above, I think I have the Patrol Car somewhere, and shot the SPV before Christmas here on the blog, it's a lovely little model, almost 1:300th scale, with all the little wheels (10 of them in two sizes!) separate.

I suspect these were from a different source than the others, they are much chunkier with only a few (or no - TB4) parts, and lack the finesse of the R&L stuff. It was including some of these in the novelty posts before Christmas which triggered Andrew's contribution, which in turn led me to gather up a few bits and bobs to photograph for this post.

Sugar Stars and Coco Crispies gave-up this set of six vehicles which we will return to one day as I have a tub of whole and partial ones somewhere! Like a lot of these cereal premiums, they were issued elsewhere by other brands or products, sometimes in different combinations, so some seem commoner over here than others, the train and 'Rocket' seem easier to obtain than the car, while I think I've seen the bus (still on the frame) in a small box as an Italian pocket-money toy. 

 Finally; an old scan intended for an article on wagons in Plastic Warrior magazine's little brother 1"W which never happened! A rather damaged London taxi from the 100 Years of Transport above (1834 Hansom Cab) it came with a horse and I think a better version in blue was shown on the Cabinet of Curious Things posts, but I haven't got the images here (editing away from the internet) and the tag list may not help!

I don't often deal with the filthy subject of money, but seeing some of the buy-it-now (BIN) prices of things like this, it's worth considering this: even though you are always competing with other collecting field's aficionados; train buffs, space fans, 'plane-spotters, more general premium collectors, kit guys, TV & Movie fans...so prices are often high even for common examples, you should always remember they made millions of them and you should set a limit and stick to it, I aim at no more than a pound a piece.

Let's do some hypothetical maths; Say two [popular] cereal brands (from the same manufacturer) run a joint-promotion with comic and early-evening TV adds, of a random-packed set of 4 models for 4 months in 1975, selling (even as early as the 1950/60's) maybe 100,000 packs a week to a population of approximately 12,000,000 baby-boom households (now closer to 16 million, but with less school-age kids per household).

100,000 packs x 16 weeks x 2 brands / 4 models = potentially 800,000 individual units of your searched-for 'rarity' were once out there! It's 'ball park' but it's not fancifully way-out there.

'Family Sized' packs may have two models (or five against three, three against two) which might push our fictional total to a million-odd, better known or more popular brands like Cornflakes might issue 500,000 packs a week? Three months (or two years) later the models are run again, or in another brand, or with another foodstuff, or in another country, or the model you're after is put in another set... Tom Smith get the mouldings (Quaker Gladiators) for 25,000 boxes of budget Christmas crackers, in four designs - six years running, or in more 'promotional' boxes (Thunderbirds figures)... a HK company or two copies them (jig toys)...finally some warehouse lets the remnants go by the bagful (Coca-Cola animals) as clearance or pocket-money toys to another country.

There's so much more to these, and as a specific collection, they can take-up surprisingly little room, but take a lifetime to track down as colour variations, mint in pack examples etc...but please - keep it in perspective, a 5-quid or $10 BIN is not worth the pain, when mixed lots might be had for 99p plus postage.

And many thanks to Andrew for the additional images.

Next day...Brian Berke sent this image of a "rubbery" plastic copy from Hong Kong of one of the R&L toys [2023 - probably Rubenstein rack-toys], still on the frame, he remembers the Rocket loco and has a Hansom Cab in the same neutral colour of soft polymer...remembering also they came from a 99-cent store in NY; approximately 1986. And that's a New York pound for scale!