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;
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
