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 (Which Became Three!) - Space Transports

Also in the Really Useful Box (previous post) was this pair, and again I haven't the faintest idea where either of them came from, but they are a couple of crackers, one an ephemeral piece of tat never designed to survive more than a summer's day or two in the garden, the other a classic piece of US 'dime-store' plastic in a weird red colour which changes - depending on the light - from purple, to pink, to maroon and back again!

I'm guessing from the large'ish, clip-on canopy that this was a candy-container, or more-likely - from the size of the compartment - a single-pastille bubble-gum container? Scaled to a rough 20/25mm figure wise and manufactured in the style of earlier dime-store toys from Pyro, Kleeware and their ilk, it's a space-ship/vessel of sorts and shot in brittle styrene with additional metal axles / ethylene wheels.

The little glued-on, stand-off frame that holds the wheels clear of the body looks to be a generic moulding that would also fit a tank, armoured-car or civil vehicle, so there may have been a assortment of these?

Is it browny-red or heliotrope purple? This is really nice but I have no recollection of buying it, maybe at one the NEC Birmingham/BP-shows? Definitely a 'space-age' or concept car of the 1950's and similar to other space cars including the Kilgore one we saw again the other day.

I don't know if it was issued under the Wannatoys branding, but this seems to be a Dillon Beck original, marked Dillon Beck USA on the interior and having a DB number-plate, or more accurately 'licence-plate'! There used to be a lovely azure-blue 'Futurecar' somewhere on the Internet, but I can't find it now, also with the DB 'quality' (if you believe Nabisco!) triangle and the same red canopy, it was a bit smarter than mine and had no whitening glue-marks!

I nearly forgot this was sitting in Picasa . . . so T is for Three! This one is a Wannatoys branded one and we've seen it before in two colours, but I shot this on Adrian's stall ages ago and it's been waiting for a dime-store space post!

Sizer; the car is closer to 28mm/1:48th I fear, but the ship can be a single-seat 1:72nd, or snug, two-man 1:76th! In a galaxy far, far away, long, long ago, they had A-wings, B-wings and X-wings . . . among other wing types, I think this latest addition to my space-fleet must be a sandbag-wing!

C is for Cheerio Cars from Canada

This is definitely a minor make, here, back in Canada, back in the day,  I believe it was another workaday 'dime-store' maker, but these are from the UK arm, and we didn't have the same market, we had much more Hong Kong rack-toy tat, much earlier, sitting alongside hundreds of home-grown brands, but they do turn-up and were probably - at some point - readily available; if not actually common.

I think we've seen both these shots (or other images from the same photo-sessions) before so let's get them out of the way, the upper image is my sample of Cheerio, with a comparison shot below, on a couple of similar vehicles from other contemporary companies. (yes Wanna..., not wana...)

Quality suggests that the parent; Cheerio (Canada), was sending the moulds over for a run in the UK plant, and also that those moulds were being borrowed from the US owners, rather than there being any kind of illicit copying/piracy going on.

Years ago we had a discussion about this on one of the Forums (when I was on forums!); the mould-sharing that went on, which has led to the problems of ID'ing a lot of these, was down to good old protectionism, taxes (lifted by President Johnson, I seem to recall, maybe Nixon?) on imports and exports led to moulds being flown about the planet (or trucked to Canada!), as you could run the mould in the customer country for three days and produce all the stock you'd need for the next few years!

Not sure if the chain is original, but no reason why it wouldn't be, although it is missing a hook of some kind. Equally I don't know the origin of the moulding, but I think Pyro is a definite source for Cheerio product.

The little jeep in the first shot (which we have looked at here, before - more than once) was definitely a Pyro moulding.

This is definitely an ex-Pyro moulding; you can see the remains of one of those funny semi-flat, yellowish-tan figures that both Pyro and Kleeware used with their vehicles (except when they were red - fire brigade - vehicles; then they got blue figures glued in.

One wonders how Cheerio (UK) and Kleeware resolved the fact that they were both importing similar moulds for the same companies in the US (or Canada!). The mark is not clear, but you can see how its basically the same as the Kleeware, Pyro and Tudor Rose marks with 'Made In England in a circle and Cheerio across the middle.

The reason for the similar marks and all those blank circles, or simple, unbranded, 'Made-in-England's' on the spaceships will be down to the fact that the mark was on a large rod (like a release-pin, but bigger) running through the mould-block as a separate element, which could be replaced with different rods with different faces, sometimes it was easier/expedient to just put a blank-faced rod in the tool.

This is totally unknown to me, and is a call for help, Brian Berke who's sent lots of stuff to the Blog and for the Blog in the last few months, would love to find one, as this - pictured - is his old childhood bath toy, and he'd like to find one in better shape!

Made by Remark who I've no information on, it's not in Garratt, it's not in White, and it's not in FIM! If you happen to have this boat or a serviceable component (I suspect a deck and mast/sail/s) please get in touch and I'll pass you on the Brian.

If you're wondering what the black thing behind the boat is, it's the mounting-plate for the single pom-pom gun on the back of some Tri-Ang Minic plastic trucks!

R is for Rocketry

We'll pull the shutter down on 'space day' after this one! having taken your winged Electra-Glide or fancy train into town avoiding the steam-punk road roller on the way, you need transport of an altogether more violent nature to escape the 'surly bonds of Earth' and travel to your intergalactic heavy-weapons stations....

...and there's no shortage of choice in the space-port today! the Chromium-plated Thunderbirds ones are candy-container lids I think? Or actually candy-containers, missing their lids..sherbet dips? The dime-store three-stage is unknown to me, while the chocolate-brown cap-bomb is a particularly fine example of the genre, although passengers must be strapped to the outside please!

Two Wannatoys space-cars might have made for a better trip to the space-port, than either a Harley-D or a 'streamlined' train! Although the cockpit nacelle/bubble-canopy is the wrong way round on one of them and it's not that clear which one!

A close-up of the dime-store rocket and a couple of larger space weapons....one - the missile-launcher is a very common design, being given away with American cereals, British comics, copied by Jean &etc...ad nauseum in dozens of slightly different designs and various polymers - we will return to them, in a post of their own one day.

The other is a copy in plastic of the Lone Star army-lorry piece originally a die-cast item.

M is for Mini-trucks, Part 1 - Cab designs and overview

This set of 7 posts (following) was born out of the catalogue page the the boys over at Moonbase let me use the other week (month?!), and the fact that some time ago (over a year and a half) I said I'd do a thing on the mini-trucks from Hong Kong that were born out of the Kleeware trucks that were themselves apparently copies of the Dinky original of the post-war Humber.

Along the way it ties up a couple of other loose-ends...

Bottom right shows the two larger scale Banner trucks, I've looked at before, they were also produced in the UK by Kleeware (from borrowed moulds), next to them is the small scale Pyro/Kleeware lorry.

At the top are a Pyro cab unit (or 'Semi', or...see 'comments' the other day!!) in army green next to a Wannatoys red one.

Sandwiched between them all are a Cheerio pick-up truck apparently from the UK and the Wannatoys cab again to compare.

These mostly generic 1950's Lorry Cab Designs all have some features in common, such as the divider down the bonnet (hood) or the cab-roof lights, or the military 6x6 truck type wheel-arch headlights.

Alongside them ran metal vehicles of similar design and these are all from a Mettoy Playcraft (later; Corgi) catalogue of unknown age. The lower engines look very 'Denis' in execution, my local Lorry builder, they used to test-drive the chassis round Fleet when we were kids.

One of the loose ends; the upper shot shows the Triang Mettoy Breakdown Lorry, it is as you can tell the same vehicle as the two military ones in the original Littlewoods ad. Below it is the Lone*Star Cab Design.

The Matchbox take on the Humber lacked the sentry-holes and detail of the Dinky version and was not a copy, while the Dinky Lorry begot all the others!! I think?

The Humber was the Post-war (WWII) replacement for the plethora of 15cwt (UK) and 3/4-ton (US) trucks in service by the end of it. It would also provide the chassis for the wheeled APC immortalised in Northern Ireland as the PIG.

Kleeware (top left) to modern Christmas cracker toy (bottom right), these are the little beasts we look at in the 6 posts below this one.

P is for Pyro (and Others)

So from Banner lets move across to Pyro (They share the same container so I could take all the photo's at once! Another of the dime store plastics producers from the 1940/50's, indulged in a fair amount of mould-sharing, and a bit of 'l'Homage'! The executives of Model Shipways called them 'Pirate Plastics'!

Very much compatible with the Banner trucks at around 1:48th scale is this - really quite sturdy - model of a generic 1950's tank. Sort of Centurion without toolboxes crossed with a T44!

This is also about 1:48, with hard styrene figures glued in. It's this arrangement which I'm sure Ive seen with the Banner trucks below, but with plug-in soft ethylene figures? There were several body types for this truck, which is similar to the Dinky or Lone Star takes on the post war British Humber 15kwt class utility truck (which - itself - became the basis for the 'Pig' which served-on in Northern Ireland with various engine up-grades/up-armours until the late 1980's) but without the cab-roof rings for convoy sentries.

These are much smaller and can be used with 20/25mm figures without looking out of place, especially if your doing 50's pulp or steam-punk roll-play. One trailer-bed gives three very different looking wagons and I've covered the jeep in depth before.

Top; I have the four non-articulated versions as Kleeware, so will cover them next, however to show that these are identical bar the stamp in the roof - the one behind is the Pyro...I think!

Below; The Wannatoys cab-unit and two trailers, these were separate designs, rather than the Pyro variant-glued-to-standard-flatbed. While the Wannatoys tractors were styrene, the trailers were cellulose-acetate and suffer from shrinkage and warping which pulls the tow-hitch off eventually!