F is for Follow-up - Dime Store Row Crop Tractors

The first of a few (?) follow-ups to things seen recently here at Small Scale World, and it's those pesky row-crop tractors, a design which never took off here in the UK, indeed, while there may have been a few demonstrators, or experimental imports, they were never a 'thing' over here at all, but, nevertheless, British toy companies ran with them, as mould-swaps or straight lifts from US dime-store vehicle manufacturers, and may have instigated some?

 

Partially as a follow-up to this post;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/11/m-is-for-mohawk-and-more-military.html

 

A line-up of the recent additions to the genre, with from the left marked Tudor Rose, x2 unmarked, marbled blue is slightly larger, both likely British, possibly Tudor Rose or Kleeware, the previously seen (in the above-linked posts) marked Made in England in military green, and a marked Banner in dark blue, The last two being bigger again, but not the same. Obvious differences in wheels, also contribute to the question marks.

 

Comparison between the Banner and unknown tractors, frankly the unknown (which I floated as possibly Kleeware last time) is the better moulding, did it come first, or was it re-cut? Maybe it was a mould swap with someone else - Pyro, Wannatoys or Wyandott - with the Banner being a copy of whatever donor's tool, the England mark was using?

 

I then found the military pattern Banner-marked version, so re-took the comparison, light conditions differed, so here's two, the lower image is eye-true colours, and you can see how the engine details are cleaner and more symmetrical on the Made in England - left hand of each pair.

 

The two Banner's, the blue one is marked Banner USA, the military-green one has had the USA removed, otherwise they are the same, and one wonders if it's a case of domestic and export, and if so, which is which?

 

They both have a hole on the right side of the engine-bay, which could be for a missing flywheel (more normally found in the other side in the UK, when present), or a higher-price-point's clockwork conversion, unlikely as the wheel is partially obscuring it?

 

The two known British ones, they are different mouldings, with the yellow Tudor Rose one slightly smaller, and only marked in the upper portion of the hollow engine cavity, while the 'army' one has the Made In England along the length of the engine on the right-hand side.

 

A larger, closer to 1:32nd scale, soft polyethylene Tudor Rose row-crop, in reversed colours from the smaller one, which is an earlier 'styrene, or less stable polymer (phenolic or urea-formaldehyde type?), but with perfectly stable polystyrene wheels.

 

Kleeware marked wreaker-truck (a straight mould-swap of the Pyro dime-store model) behind the 'England' pulling its gun, just for a colour study between the two, and because it was kicking about! The gun is a much copied design, and really, I don't think anyone knows who did it first (Auburn Rubber?), or in what size! And - of course - there was that close connection between Kleeware and Tudor Rose, and between both of them and Pyro on the space-stuff.

 

This artillery combination appears to be the one seen in this post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2016/11/d-is-for-dimestore.html

 

Where a mix of a Bell machine-gun, a pair of unmarked Gilmark (possibly Tudor Rose) AFV's in bright colours, and some of the 'Built-Rite/Hardy/Kilty/Loeser/Spencer' semi-flat GI's were all found together with the tractor-gun combo'?

 

We've looked at them before, and looked at three versions of the Merit (J&L Randall) offerings, with solid wood, solid-rubber and hollow-backed plastic wheels like all the above. When I've got them all together, we may be able to work out a timeline of piracy, from US originals, to n'th generation Hong Kong clones!
 

All six. This post doesn't prove anything, but it didn't set out to, beyond the fact that there are many of these, and their heritage/origins aren't clear! When marked, we can say, they are what they claim to be, even if the tool is someone else's, but when unmarked, it's all a bit grey. More images are here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/03/b-is-for-banner-and.html, and I bought them in the end!

 

And knowing at least one was used as an artillery-tractor, I'll have to look at them all again, with the guns present? There were several already in the stash, mostly military green ones, but there are some other 'farm' ones.

M is for More Model Matlots

Seen before, both as contributed images and as a donation to the Blog, Brian Berke(who was behind the previous two viewings) sent these a while ago, ostensively off the back of the HO-railway figure season, and I know it's really only, and all about the imagery with this blogging marlarky, so here's some more!

 

Pyro's diminutive ship's crew; as I've mentioned before, there was back in the 50/60's (and to this day some of the mouldings are around) a series of vessel kits of tugs and similar vessels in scales around 1:86/7, 1:90 or even 1:100'ish, mostly copies of each other, and these chaps, are ideal for those kits, most of which had no figures (one had a couple, who are in the stash somewhere!), and a couple of Brian's are painted and serving on the tug-boat in the background!

 

It's the 1:87th scale Pyro Diesel Tug, later carried by Lifelike (briefly) and Lindberg, which could be motorised and taken down to the municipal boating pond for a putter-about, not many left now, but Basingrad still has quite a large one down at Eastrop Park! The beauty of the slightly smaller scale is that they take up less room on an OO-gauge railway layout, while retaining substantiality, and if you need more;

 

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/pyro-207-sea-going-diesel-tug--1172808

 

Many thanks to Brian for the images.

P is for Plastic Toys!

The title of Bill Hanlon's excellent book on Dimestore Dreams of the '40s & '50s, and the core of this blog, no matter how much metal, wood, glass or card sneaks in! Alongside the military vehicles, which Mr Berke sent us the other day, was a plethora of civilian transport delights, most being of the 'dime store' variety, and this post is looking at the larger examples.

Left to right we have here, a 1911 Maxwell Roadster, a 1911 Daimler and a 1911 Renault, all made in Hong Kong, and my initial thought - given the leery colours - was Wilton's cake decorations, but they are different, so these may have just been pocket-money rack toys, like the ones we saw in a bit of a mini season a while back, but lovely additions to that particular oeuvre!

Two of the vehicles had been enhanced with 'ticker-tape' type-written graphics, which had seen better days, but with weathering/discolouring looked like a comercial exercise, until you realised one was a Marx tanker, the other a Dillon-Beck 'Wannatoy' utility/tool-locker truck, so I removed the remnants, which proved easy, as the glue was some water-based animal-stuff, like the old 'Gloy' pots at school!

 

There were actually a fair few Wannatoy or DB marked examples, including the boat and three 'rigid' trucks - we saw the artic's here, years ago! Indeed i think there were five different markings between the seven items. One of the spare cab/tractor-units had a different hitching mechanism/method, and I thought I might be looking for new trailers, but the aforementioned Hanlon book put me right.

 

I had seen the unmarked yellow bit, and decided it must be part of a construction vehicle or earthmover, but it turned out it's the other half of the 'new' Wannatoys cab design, but I'm still looking for the outer-end of the arm, for now it can do service as a tow-truck!

 

A lot of red, in the parcel, it has to be said! Three lovelies here, with a Renwal delivery van, we know it's a delivery van because it has DELIVERY written across the roof for police helicopters!

 

In the middle a Thomas Toys marked sedan, or at least I think it's called a sedan, in the UK it would be a 'family saloon car'! With a soft polyethylene dream to the right! I thought it might be a T-Bird and was googling with image-results by year '51, '52, '53 etc. . . and getting nowhere, before switching to Processed Plastic soft top, and finding it was a '56 Cadillac El Dorado, which I should have recognised, but I only drove the hard-top!

 

Stop me if I've bored you with this already, oh! You can't, it's a Blog . . . Hay-ho! Many years ago, like about 25, I worked for a stretch-limo' firm for a bit, actually ran into a childhood mate, but have since lost touch with him again!

 

Anyway, they were mostly shitty-old Lincoln Towncars from the 90's, ratted, sparking mother-boards you had to hold against the shocks with your spare hand to keep the gizmo's shining for the punters, awful things which had been hammered doing the LA-San Fran-Las Vegas triangle, 100's of thousands of miles. And in various liveries of silver, graphite, grey, white (weddings!) and two-tone.

But, there was one original 1960's 'Beatles & Stones', presidential Cadillac El Dorado ('68 I seem to recall), in black, with all leather, slightly stretched with a little B&W TV, and mahogany veneer bar, it only sat about six (some of those Lincoln's could hold 12 or 14 topless tarts!) in a small broken-U, but compared to the modern shit, it was one classy lady!

 

One summer evening I parked-up in the big Sainsbury's at Hatch Warren in Basingrad, while my fare did their function, and I went in for a snack and when I came out I had a crowd! She was lovely, and this little toy, albeit an earlier model, will remind me of her! She broke down as often as the others, though!

If you need a Limo', go to a reputable firm, with new cars and a landline, stay away from the local-press guys with their old cars, a mobile number and maybe a hosted webpage, you could spend half the night by the side of the motorway, or miss your flight, and you rarely get your money back!

This was funny, I'd literally mentioned it in passing a few days before it dropped on the porch, unannounced! It's the dairy boardgame, which was from Hasbro, and four players go around delivering milk, eggs and butter (I think) which fit over the different studs on the back! There was a green one in the parcel, but Royal Fail did their worst, and I have a bag of green bits waiting for a glueing session.

 

Some more polyethylene, the two to the left are in the style of all that German or Scandinavian vinyl, but in 'ethylene, and probably some similar infant/first/early-learning type thing, 1970's maybe? The tractor is lovely, marked Hong Kong, it is a direct copy of the Jean Höfler one which I have in military and civil types, so it will be nice to compare all three sometime.

While the sports car [muscle car!] is in a similar vein to the first two, I suspect enhanced with aftermarket or old leftover kit transfers, and while I would clean them off if I was sure, I'm not, and I'm even less sure about the blue paint, not obvious in the shot, but which runs around the lower quarter, and might/might not actually be factory-finish, so I wouldn't want to lift that at the same time?

Two of the little Pyro's, an Ideal 'aerodynamic' trailer (very 1950's), which is a fair lump of stable cellulose-acetate, a Banner road-grader, I think I have the military-green one somewhere (?) and a locomotive conductor's caboose from Lido Lines!

 

While this is a mystery, there's a feint USA mark under the right corner of the bonnet/hood, but no other markings, and it clearly had some interactive properties which are now half-missing, a hole in the rear only reveals that which is no longer there, while a sliding piston thing at the front has no obvious stop, trigger or function? I don't think it's dropping low enough to fit in a road-slot?

 

I suspect either a jump toy, with the trigger in another component (ramp or launch-mechanism), or a magnetic novelty with parts/a corresponding magnetic-wand missing? So any help tying this down to a maker or a set would be happily accepted!

 

And many thanks to Brian again, for this pile of brightly-coloured treasures!

T is for Two - Scarlet Space Fleet!

These two came flying-in from the US-of-A a week or so ago. I think I did add an X-100 about a year and a half ago, possibly a blue or silver (more likely) one, which I vaguely remember putting with the others and sending-off to storage, but I think if you're going to have a Pyro one, it needs to be red!

 

It has suffered a dink to the rear fin, which has been smoothed-off by a previous owner, but is otherwise a clean one with all wheels and a clear Pyro mark under the left wing, which is in exactly the same place as the Kleeware/Tudor Rose 'Made In England' one we looked at the other day, confirming (to me, as I've not compared these before now) that it was a removable drum in the tool, which I have suggested in the past.

This is a Thomas Toy 'ACME' futuristic Airport Limousine, which has most of the future bits firmly anchored in the 1950's, as each decade's sci-fi tends to sit within the meilleur of its own time, Star Wars managing to be an exception, keeping a similar look throughout, which Star Trek didn't quite manage, think of the 1980's uniforms of the early movies!
 

Duty pilots switch at launch-bay Red 1, while service droids get busy with maintenance and pre-flight checks!

F is for Final Round-up . . . Rangers and Scouts

We've looked at the X-200 Space Ranger once or twice here at Small Scale world, so I'm actually going to concentrate on the space scout, which isn't obvious in either of the 1954 annuals, but despite appearing four times in the tag list here, is not covered that well on the blog, with one tag being the X-200 renumbered by Dimestore Dreams (imported into the UK by Great Gizmos) and the other mentions being single image posts or follow-ups to other things.

 

But first, I did look at the Premier sculpts (first post in this sequence) once before. I think it's one of these which has joined my fleet, possibly the other 5" Dart - version 6, to use Ed's nomenclature.

 

The back cover of the Adventure Annual shows two versions, the green one having a closer resemblance to the real thing as far as window-panel count is concerned, but I think the other (Swift's ship) is a different variant in real life, the 'bat-wing' tail-planes marking it as a Tudor Rose Space Patrol craft? Image on the right from Ed Berg a while ago.

 

We looked at the Ranger in detail not that long ago, here, and in the strip Swift mutters of the enemy ships that "Those must be the secret X-200's", so he knew his toys! But then they were on the artist's desk!

 

So, to finish-up, the X-100 Scouts; the metallic blue one (probably Kleeware) was in the lot I had to let go, but I've since picked-up a silver one (probably Tudor Rose, it has a hole for hanging/mounting on/off something), while Ed Berg also sent the red-one (Pyro?). In the past we have seen semitransparent Skandi' ones, versions with a floor piece, and I know a push-and-go was made, so quite a versatile little model!

 

And they are all septuagenarians now! To be in British 1954 annuals (printed at the end of 1953, for the Christmas market), they must have been born by Pyro, Thomas and Co., in the US, early 1953 at the latest?

C is for Clipper-ships - Space Clippers!

Back to the 'Spaceways' annual for a second, and you may have noticed down the bottom left-hand corner of the cover (previous post) what we would call a thumbnail image these days, back then it was probably a miniature-insert, insert-miniature or something!

Again he's turned to toys for his inspiration, and this time we're looking at Tudor Rose for the donor, a push-and-go version is out there, but it may be a knock-off?

Never given an X-number, it really should be considered X-500, being a larger, passenger beast than the X-400 Space Explorer, a sort of fighter-bomber to all the smaller fighter-types! leaving X-600 for the 'big bus' the Atomic Space Ship, and you could allocate X1-10, 15-95 etc . . . to all the little flyers, flitters and Premier's darts and wide-bodies; a neat idea spoilt only by Dimestore Dreams swapping a number a few years ago, Doh!

Turning to the Adventure Annual for a quick look at it's treatment in the Swift Morgan strip, and you can see it's pretty accurate, and I like the idea that when these guys got writers block or a stiff hand (pen and ink can be intense) they would have been able to play with their toy space-stuff while enjoying their coffee or watching the world go-by outside!

 

The push-and-go version has a large box for the mechanism, on the underside, and bigger wheels set further-out, while the artist's got the little cheeks on the sides of the wheel-cowlings down just right, so he had something like the photographed example in front of him.

Clearly marked and probably the best for surviving, being quite a robust toy - except those little fin-tips! Sadly and for reasons I won't bore you with this was only mine for about 24-hours, 15-years ago, and the 'mine' is open to question, but I've regretted letting it - and an X-400 - go, ever since!

X-300 is for Space Cruiser

The sister publication for Ed's Adventure Annual, was The New Spaceways Comic Annual Number 1, a slightly pretentious title as I don't believe there was ever a 'number two'! And, it too pulled heavily from existing toys for it's artwork, mostly hollow-cast, but the Pyro et al Spaceships were also referenced. I believe they were published the same year, 1954, but while The Adventure Annual seems to have run for some time (with title tweaks - Okay, for Boys, the Boys & Girls, &etc.), there was only the one 'Spaceways.

This is the cover of the annual, with the big beast it's lifting-from to the right; The X-300 Space Cruiser and probably my favourite of all the ships in the extended family of 'Dime-Store' sculpts.

 

You can see that the cover art has taken a wing and turned it into a powered tail, Tristar-like, while pulling the tail down to make two wings! The nose has also been sharpened and shortened, I wonder if they used the Combex sharpener!

Mine is missing its wheels, and while they do turn-up on evilBay occasionally, even ragged ones with no nose can cost a pretty penny, so for now I ignore the absence, it still sits 'right' on a flat surface! You can just see the Kleeware mark on this one, on the underside of the left wing - on the right here.

 

My tail-fin is also slightly truncated, the tip was lost long before it was mine, and I just cleaned-it up with a file to match the lower one, but I notice it's cut-short in some of the artwork below, so it must have been a common break/fault, present on the artist's bench-model too!

The Covers of The Adventure Annual use the same ship, but with no real changes, grounded on the left with a bunch of distinctly Johillco/Cherilea figures, and flying in formation with an X-100 Space Scout through some bloody dangerous manoeuvres courtesy of an X-200 Space Ranger!. Artist seems to be Denis McLouchlin

 

I should add that all these connections were first made in Plastic Warrior magazine a decade or two ago, and these [above] crops can be seen in context, via Moonbase Central here, thanks to Ed Berg's scans of the 'Swift Morgan' strip.

An older shot of mine, the line between the portholes isn't a crack, but rather the boundary line between two regions of the resin, flowing into the mould from different directions, and meeting, just as they begin to cool-off, producing a kiss rather than fully-melting into each other, the mark is called a weld-line or a knit-line, and it is commonest, or more-commonly found with metallic materials, due to the inclusions in the polymer making moulding harder to get just right.

Couple of hours later - I forgot the image inside the cover! Complete with another Johillco/Cherilea figure and the hollow-cast 'vending machine' robot!

Later Still - In the 1950's, future spaceships were going to be very easy to control!

In the early hours - Brian Berke sent his scan of the bookplate from 'Spaceways, which I had failed to scan (because it had been filled-in I think), which was daft as I could have used it to illustrate a point on the bookplate posts, at Easter - Doh! But there's the converted Cruiser again!

A is for Atomic . . . Space Ship

You may recall we looked at this beast before (ten years ago, where does it go . . . WHERE?), a contribution from an anonymous follower of the Blog, at the time he had some space-battle damage to one of them but has since sourced a whole one, so sent a follow-up here to Small Scale World.

Not much to add to these as we have looked at them before, and I was going to save the shots for a 'pulp' season at some point, but thought I'd try to clear some of the contributed stuff now, and so when I do return to dime-store space, hopefully use all the images 'in the bank' in better context?

Largest of the single-moulding (plus wheels) vessels, the Atomic Space Ship was a convoluted pile of three aerodynamic buses, piled on two V2 rockets, given a subway car front and four huge afterburners at the rear! Sort of what I said last time but possibly more prosaic . . . time's tighter this time!

Like most of the contemporary space ships it was carried by more than one company (Pyro too?) and while these are  both Tudor Rose, even these two are not quite the same, the silver one having a thicker chin-line or skirting below the forward cab and thinner window-bars on the three upper sections, which - finding these differences - is half the fun of collecting!

Cheers Anon' - you know who you are!

T is for Two - Contributions

We've had some pretty eclectic stuff here at Small Scale World in the last week or so haven't we! I'm sort of clearing the decks for other things which doesn't mean the other things won't get thrown on the back burner at some future point, but I mean well as I'm going-about it! Here's a couple of things of interest sent in by loyal readers in the last few months;

Theo van de Weerden picked this 150mm figurine up cheap-as-chips (I believe) in a mixed lot at a sort of car-boot sale a while back, and isn't she a cutie . . . no, no, she really is  . . . a 'Campus Cutie' from Marx and one of the ones I would imagine it's harder to find in perfect condition as that oar she's holding must be a candidate for damage? Nice find Theo, thanks for sharing!

While Brian Berke sent this as a follow-up to his own donation of HO/1:87-90th scale Pyro figures, and which I then forgot when I did publish a follow-up the other day . . . also from Brian (who didn't remind me these were in the queue, so it's easy to lose track of this stuff!),  it's a model Tug outfitted with the very figures we looked at the last two times! Thanks Brain and sorry I lost track of them!

F is for Follow-up - Pyro Sailors

By way of a follow-up to his own donation to the Blog, Brian Berke has sent the following to add to the post with the Pyro sailors from April gone . . .

The Pyro Schooner model kit came with colour-matched runners of the figures we previously saw as stand-alone marine-modelling accessories and - for a second - I thought "What a swizz, you had to buy two packs (of the seperates) to get all of them!", then I realised the kit has two duplicate runners!

However Brian further reports that the later iterations of the kit (Life Like and Lindberg 'Classics' boxings above) don't have the figures included, which is odd as Pyro being gone (for the moulds to move-on/change hands) you wouldn't be able to source the little set we saw last time, or not with assumed ease?

I guess it was a separate mould, which would make it a smallish, man portable tool, which may have been nicked at some point, damaged or lost? Anyway, whatever happened to the figure mould; many thanks to Brian for the follow-up!