L is for Liberty . . . Toy Soldiers

The last of this mini-season on the AWI, and we return to the figures for the forth time in less than a year (I said that yesterday, but it's a bit neat, as I've added to the 'whole' each time!), and again we have Bill Nevins to thank for the imagery.

One of the things that were missing from the posts last year was the Shell bag with header, and here we have the evil local representative of the hated occupier (surly that should be 'legitimate government'? Ed.), one; Lt General Earl Cornwallis! From both sides - of the bag; he never 'crossed the floor'!

Close-ups of both sides of the header, the mounted 'officers' become 'lieutenants' in the MO76 retail, carded-issue, but are otherwise indistinguishable from Washington and Cornwallis as far as the figures go; Paul Revere gets a grey jacket and non-weapon hands.

You can produce regular cavalry by swapping their gold facings for the white of the infantry, indeed, once you've picked a few of these up, including the later clearance and copies, you can swap various facing with various jackets to make specific regiments or imagiments - new word!

"What unit are you with soldier?"

"1st-15th Imagiment Sah - Foot & Mouth!"

Some forts get a decent 'starter set' of figures - being at least one each of all figure sculpts but no Paul Revere nor Hessian/French colour-ways. The above seems to have an extra marching Bluecoat and missing marching Redcoat, but a typo on the white boxes seems to be the '1 Standing Bluecoat' - all the sets I've seen in pristine condition have two.

Compare with this old screen-cap of an ebay lot, the marching Brit's marched-off again (well - they left him in  a French fort!) but the rest are 'right'. This tray is to be found in the white printed '76 fort boxes and [presumably] the Jefferson Sales Corporation sets, but Bill says they (the figures) don't come in the plain brown 1776-coded set (with hard plastic fort), which rather mucks-up some of my musings on the time-lines of the sets over the last two days, but without one of the boxes it's still be to better sorted.

At an RRP of $1.49, the Shell fort was too cheap (even in the early '70's) to have the figures and doesn't suggest it has them on the above card, so it looks like the soft plastic forts were first made available in a box yet to be rediscovered, but similar to the 1975 box, they then carried over into the white boxes (with figure tray), then the hard plastic fort appeared as the 1776-coded box (no figures) the quality being offset against the price of a big ticket item, the soft plastic forts being retained for unit-cheapness made-up by/with the added play-value of the figures.

Like Airfix selling you just a hard-plastic fort in a box, or a full battle set with figures and a soft plastic version of the fort - which they did for a while and at around the same time - early 1970's? By 1975 all Airfix forts were hard plastic as all Innovative ones seem to have been in the end?

The pamphlet (issued with some retail cards but all forts it seems) we looked at the other day is © 1972, 1973, 1975, and clearly shows the grey, hard plastic fort with the metallic charcoal accessories, while the Shell card seems to be hinting at the gold soft-plastic fort. And do earlier pamphlets have less dates on the front cover?

They seem - in fact - to have run alongside each other for a while, the soft plastic as Shell and the code-101 Revolutionary Fort box (although its instructions were 'Liberty'!) as a stand-alone play-set after the '72 premiums, and before the '75 retail figure-cards? Then with the hard plastic code-1776 full Fort Liberty as a budget 'accessory' to the '75 retail issue.

At some point, the pinky-grey soft plastic fort was issued as an 'off' batch, possibly mid-term, ending up in some white (code 101) boxes and some plain (code 1776) boxes, before the hard plastic - Bill is sure his 'soft grey' is in a code-1776 box too? The hard-plastic eventually replacing the soft in both box types, but only for the . . .

. . . final sighting; this was the Jefferson Sales issue, hard-plastic with the (a?) figure tray but with no mention of 1776, either as a code or as a bicentenary! It does however have the MO76 flyer, Fort Liberty title and MO76 fort instruction-sheet - a right old curate's egg!

More digging is needed, we need to find an original Shell carton (from '72) with a date and code and contents to settle this!

Listing

Shell Petroleum 'Liberty Toy Soldiers'

Premiums (bagged with header-card, all sets © 1972 - bases fitted to figures)

Unit 1 - Kneeling Bluecoat, Standing Redcoat

Unit 2 - Kneeling Redcoat, Standing Bluecoat

Unit 3 - Marching Bluecoat, Marching Redcoat

Unit 4 - American Officer on Horseback

Unit 5 - British Officer on Horseback

Unit 6 - Standing Frenchman, Kneeling Hessian

Unit 7 - Indian Scout, Standing Minuteman

Unit 8 - Kneeling Minuteman, Molly Pitcher

Unit 9 - George Washington on horseback

Unit 10 - Cornwallis on Horseback

Unit 11 - Paul Revere on Horseback

Unit 12 - Cannon

Purchasable Accessory

? - Fort Liberty (© 1972 (?) carton unknown, with moving gates, jail, British and American flags and flag-pole, soft plastic only - no figures)

Interim Play-set

101 - Men of '76 Revolutionary Fort (© 1973 - white carton, with moving gates, jail, British and American flags and flag-pole, soft or hard plastic - includes below-listed figures:)

Muster List (bases fitted to figures)

1 George Washington

1 Standing Bluecoat [seems to be a typo printed on all boxes, actually: x2 are present]

2 Kneeling Bluecoats

1 Marching Bluecoat (Afro-American features)

1 Standing Minuteman

1 Kneeling Minuteman

2 Cannons

1 Cornwallis

2 Standing Redcoats

2 Kneeling Redcoats

1 Marching Redcoat

2 Indians

1 Molly Pitcher

1 Fort

Innovative Promotions 'Men of '76' (blister cards, all sets © 1975 - all bases separate)

501 - Set No 1

Muster List

1 George Washington

1 White Horse

1 Standing Minuteman

1 Standing Bluecoat

3 Stands

502 - Set No 2

Muster List

1 Cornwallis

1 Black Horse

1 Field Cannon

1 Marching Redcoat/Cannoneer

2 Stands

503 - Set No 3

Muster List

1 Paul Revere

1 Brown Horse

1 Indian Scout

1 Kneeling Redcoat

3 Stands

504 - Set No 4

Muster List

1 Field Cannon

1 Molly Pitcher

1 Kneeling Minuteman

2 Stands

505 - Set No 5

Muster List

1 American Lieutenant

1 Brown Horse

1 Kneeling Bluecoat

1 Kneeling Redcoat

3 Stands

506 - Set No 6

Muster List

1 American Trooper (Afro-American)

1 Field Cannon

1 Standing Redcoat

2 Stands

507 - Set No 7

Muster List

1 British Lieutenant

1 Brown Horse

1 Kneeling Hessian

1 Standing Frenchman

3 Stands

508 - Set No 8

Muster List

1 Standing Redcoat

1 Kneeling Redcoat

1 Indian Scout

1 Standing Bluecoat

1 Kneeling Bluecoat

5 Bases

509 - Set No 9

Muster List (not necessarily in correct order)

1 Standing Minutemen

1 Indian Scout

1 Kneeling Hessian

1 Standing Frenchman

4 Bases

510 - Set No 10

Muster List

1 Aaron Burr

1 Field Cannon

1 Standing Bluecoat (Afro-American features)

2 Stands

Accessory Fort

1776 - Men of '76 Revolutionary Fort (© 1975 - plain carton, with moving gates, jail, British and American flags and flag-pole, hard plastic only - no figures)

Jefferson Sales Corporation (© unknown - full-colour, foil-laminate carton, with moving gates, jail, British and American flags and flag-pole, hard plastic only - no figures)

? - Fort Liberty

Contents (to be confirmed, assumed the same as Innovative)

1 George Washington

1 Standing Bluecoat [typo printed on all Innovative boxes, actually: x2 should be present]

2 Kneeling Bluecoats

1 Marching Bluecoat (Afro-American features)

1 Standing Minuteman

1 Kneeling Minuteman

2 Cannons

1 Cornwallis

2 Standing Redcoats

2 Kneeling Redcoats

1 Marching Redcoat

2 Indians

1 Molly Pitcher

1 Fort

Generics (clearance, blister-cards)

? - Various contents

Star Toys - S For Star (blister-cards, Timpo-style bases)

606 - Redcoat Soldiers (1x foot, 1x mounted, 1x gun in pieces, horse is Timpo-copy)

607 - Bluecoat Soldiers (1x foot, 1x mounted, 1x gun in pieces, horse is Timpo-copy)

Sub-Piracies (blister-cards, Timpo-style bases)

? - Various contents

A is for Addendum!

I haven't the faintest idea why yesterday's and today's posts published in black text? Actually, I do, I think it's because the first thing I did with each post was copy Bill Nevins' eMail-comments into the Word.doc I was doing the blurb from, so I could cover all the points, and I think there was some embedded Microsoft coding which prevented Google's blogger from adopting the default text? Rivalry, it's silly!

Anyway, apologies to Bill as they were his first submissions, and to everyone who spent effort peering at black on dark chocolate this morning and yesterday!

I've just had the devils own job checking that tomorrow's will publish in a readable format, and hopefully by Saturday it will all be back to normal!

"♫ Motor'bikin'! ♫ . . . ♫ . . . ♫ Motor'bikin'!! ♫ . . . ♫ . . . ♫ Moving on the Queens High'way; Lookin' Like'a Streak-a'Lightning! ♫"

F is for Fort Liberty

The sharper-eyed among you will have noticed that the pinky-brown 'grey' fort in yesterday's post was actually called Fort Liberty, not the Revolutionary Fort of the 'gold' fort. In fact it was in the same box (with unreadable date) as the . . .

. . . 1975 retail issue as seen here. And . . . before we go any further; I am loving the stock-code number of this later issue - That is too cool for mathematics' school!

This is the standard boxing for Fort Liberty, usually in a hard polystyrene plastic, and a mid 'Mediterranean' grey - the same grey as a lot of plastic kits. You can see the earlier box behind it, while that had a resealable 'play set' type box, this is basically a standard carton with minimal over-printing.

Here's what I reckon is the time-line of these fort sets:

The 'gold' (soft plastic) fort came first, when Innovative (as a relatively new company) offered, or managed to persuade (?) Shell into running the Men of '76 as a 'liberty' premium, several years before the big year (actually 1976), beginning in 1972 (or '73, the earlier date could pertain purely to production contracts and/or artwork rather than availability) in its (screen-printed) white box, as Men of '76 Revolutionary Fort.

I think this was - as much as anything else - a testing of the water, by this newish company, possibly with/on a sale or return basis - meaning that Shell had no financial liability if the promotion flopped? The 'flyer' note on Kent Sprecher's Toy Soldier HQ points to a flexibility among service station owners/franchisee's with regard to the retail pricing of the fort which would suggest Innovative were accepting any 'hit' to the pocket?

Bill Nevins (a New York collector who's supplied all today's images) remembers buying left-over's at a gas station, which may have been stock or display, but seem to have been from a less successful outlet, however the point is; I believe the promotion overall was far more successful than anticipated, and so the [interim] 'grey' (also in soft ethylene) was issued as a stop-gap, in the plain carton.

A plain carton which was already in the procurement line for a hard plastic fort destined for the 1975 'rack toy' Men of '76 retail issue. That change being [perhaps] due to feedback from customers - not liking the bendy walls? The same carton we saw with that 'grey' fort at the head of yesterday's post and are looking at here with a hard plastic fort?

It's all conjecture, complicated by the final shot today, but those are my thoughts, can anyone help with a date on a carton with the soft plastic, pinkish 'grey' fort in it? Or share their thoughts on the various issues. There is no doubt that this is the commoner of the MO'76 forts on eBay, but possibly not as common as the one below, which I have seen several times?

Confirming Bill's 'rule of thumb' as mentioned yesterday; the polystyrene forts have accessories (main-gates and whole 'jail') in a colour probably best described as metallic coal!

You can also see how much more rigid the hard plastic fort is, but it's always a compromise; large flat areas of polyethylene will tend to warp in the short-term (and go brittle over time), but take a lot of punishment from clumsy little hands, while hard styrene's will build a more solid structure, which however - can be more easily damaged during the construction and dismantling phases, tabs being easily snapped off - for instance!

Problems which with modern toys - in the same sort of price bracket - have been alleviated by using polypropylenes or other modern plastics which have the better properties of both the older materials; being flexible enough to take punishment, yet rigid enough to retain shape.

All those action-figure play-sets, Galoob aircraft carriers and fold-out mini-van city's and things are made of many different proprietary polypropylenes (PP's), high density polyethylenes (HDPE's have a high tensile strength) and various polystyrene/styrol (PS's) hybrids

Bill also sent this which is an old Internet image, I have seen a few of these (Jefferson Sales Corporation of Oak Park, Michigan) and have a theory (another?!!) about them to:

Note - there is no MO'76 branding attached (although all the Innovative bumph is included), and the artwork (a full-colour, photographic-quality, laminate 'foil' [sheet of paper!] over the carton's card) is similar to the Arco set of Noah's Ark Brian Berke (another New Yorker - it can't be denied; those New Yorkers know their toy soldiers!) sent us last year - ie; I think this is a clearance item or exercise in flogging an already very successful line for another few furlongs, through a jobber (as they call them in the 'States), what we'd call an importer - or what anyone might call a repacker/wholesaler!

Dating from maybe '77-'79? It's lost the MO'76 tie-in between 1776-1976, and been given the standard 'Christmas catalogue' artwork of two impossibly cute'sie kids grinning like loons as posed by the photographer! Indeed - this type of set may have been responsible for some of the odd-coloured bases, or those without the Innovative mark.

Bill wondered if the common occurrence of the hard styrene grey fort was down to a UK issue, as he has seen a few in our evilBay portal, but I don't remember them being available over here. I was a 'mere' twelve-year-old in 1976 so I should have been the ideal age-group to be attracted by such a thing, do any of you 'old gits' in the 60-something bracket remember them being sold here?

It has to be said - while our political (and military?) bigwig's would have attended various official functions in the 'States and/or those organised by the US embassy in London, it was a celebration of a war we err . . . lost! Also it was a really, really, really hot summer! We were all lying in the shade or panting on the beach with our Tudor Rose bucket & spade and tipper-truck! By September '76 the South of England looked a bit like Ethiopia!

So I don't think there was much of an appetite in the High Street or on the coiffured lawns of suburbia for celebrating the bicentenary, although I do remember the hype surrounding it as all the ad's in glossy magazines for American products (airlines, cigarettes & booze particularly) were draped in bicentennial/'76 iconography.

And the news programmes on telly carried various '200-years since this or that specific action/event' type tail-ender stories occasionally while there were historical programs and such-like. I think there was a National Geographic 'special' as well?

Tomorrow we will tie-this up with a forth look at the figures in less than a year! And thanks to Bill Nevins again for the photo's.

S is for Star Fort

The fort which first accompanied the Shell Petrol (well - really it was a 'gas-') premium (for it was them!...and I don't know why I was asking for the petrol gas company's name a year ago - it was written on the bags at Kent Sprecher's site! "...wood; for the trees" as they say!), and would go on to accompany the retail release of the Men of '76 (hereafter; MO76!) actually holds the answers to most of the other remaining questions posed last year, and raises a couple of intrigues to carry us onward!

The 'grey' issue

Thanks go to Bill Nevins a US collector with an enviable stack (or is it a 'stash'...?!!) of Marx and other Play Sets for today's photographs, and indeed all the photographs and most of the info., over the next few days; I've cropped, collaged, blurbed and drawn a few conclusions from packaging dates, but without fort pictures - there'd be no posts!

This is the rarest of the two rarer visions on the star fort, which is not a bad rendition of Fort Ticonderoga as we saw yesterday, the real thing has a couple of extra bastions external to the dry-moat, more substantial officers living accommodation/admin stuff and wide, flat-topped walls with barracks, indoor ranges, arms cotes &etc under/within them, but for a toy, this is the real deal!

PS - I think we only 'lost' it because it was made by the French! Wasn't worth keeping in the inventory . . . ;-)

I would say this is a pastel or nut-brown? But Bill (and American collectors generally?) refer to it as grey to differentiate it from the one below which is in a golden, sandy-brown or tan plastic, they are both soft polyethylene, not the hard styrene of the retail issue. Unfortunately we can't get a date from this late looking box which was an old Internet image.

The 'gold' issue

Called: Revolutionary Fort in this - the Shell promotion - period it would have a name change as we will see tomorrow. Note that the code on this (from Bill's collection) is 101 and the date is 1973.

Referring-back to the leaflet issued with some of the latter figure cards (and included in some forts it seems) you will recall that they are ©'ed to 1972, 73, 75, now we'll be looking at the 1975 one tomorrow, but could this mean that the above soft plastic 'grey' version was the 1972 initial release, being so rare as it was produced in small numbers, Innovative having not anticipated the likely popularity? More on my thoughts about that tomorrow, where I argue the opposite!

Note also that the contents (including a tray of figures and things in the top of the box which we'll look at in a couple of days time) are listed on the box in at least two places.

How the corner bastions fit into the side walls, this is one of the two 'standard' sides, the front and back both having 'specialisations' . . .

. . . one (the 'back wall'); taking the 'jail' which could be the armoury! Or a guardhouse, but it seems to have been built large enough to take the evil Cornwallis - complete with/mounted-on . . . his horse! The other wall being the main entrance or 'front wall' with the main-gates inset.

An easy way to spot these earlier ones on feeBay is that - as Bill pointed out to me - with the soft-plastic forts the doors are the same colour as the walls, tomorrow you'll see that with the grey styrene ones, the doors are a darker charcoal or black.

Sadly Bill reports that brittleness is starting to show with these soft plastic forts, something I'm suffering from with one of my early Airfix French Foreign Legion Fort Sahara's - also soft polyethylene.

Sunlight is the killer here, but I will do a page on plastics one day, and it's a little more complicated than just sunlight, but it is sunlight with triggers the release of the free-radicals which eventually 'dries' the plastic out.

Many thanks to Mr. Nevins for the pictures, Bill is also the proprietor of a war-games figure company which - you'll be unsurprised to hear - specialises in the revolution: King's Mountain Miniatures.

A is for America's Struggle for Independence

Not one of my more alliterative or humorous titles...

Although carrying no less than three copyrights, I can't see how a long defunct toy company might still lay want to lay-claim to a pamphlet that was given away as part of a commercial premium anyway, but in the event that a surviving rump of Innovative Production Inc., would like this removed, let me know.

Otherwise I offer it up as a historical curiosity for reference purposes. And it is very interesting; slightly jingoistic - as you'd expect - but fascinating none the less and a nice little 'primer' for anyone not familiar with the details of the conflict.

 

Thanks to Brian Berke - an Englishman in New York!, for donating a copy to the Blog.

S is for Spirit of '76 Marches On! Against Great Odds?

Well, I was looking for the baseless 40mm versions of the Spirit of '76 as flagged-up by Chris Goddard in his article for Plastic Warrior magazine (issue 153; pp.19), it’s a search I do occasionally when I'm feeling rich (spare fiver!), when I found these a couple of weeks ago with a $7-something BIN and three watchers! You can guess the rest 'cos I'm the one photographing them!

Aren't they lovely! Before and after cleaning and before I got the black off the boy's nose and straightened the drum-sticks. Isn't it typical - they were beautifully packed and you could see from the photographs on feeBay they were not damaged, yet USFail, Royal Fail and/or Parcel Farce managed to crush both drum-sticks, despite a mountain of bubble-wrap! I gave good feedback as it wasn't the seller's fault in any way!

It was nearly a year ago that Brian sent the Award International set to the Blog, and here they are again with their diminutive clones . . . clones neatly-spliced with a dwarf's DNA though! I also took an Airfix comparison shot for that Blog as it was clear they weren't 'any-old' cake decorations . . .

. . . they are in fact the same maker (in Hong Kong) as the old Airfix piracy Redcoats - actually cross-painted Bluecoats!

Now, I may be no particular fan of terrorist insurgencies (did you hear that collective murmur of WTF from the PSTSM?), especially when it involves spilling tea, but even I can see there's something not quite right about expecting two old guys and a small-boy, armed with three musical instruments and a flag to march across a birthday cake (other puddings/desserts are available for decoration) to certain death while whistling whatever-came-before-Dixie!

It 'ain't right, I tells ya!

However, as far as I know these 40mm Spirit of '76 figures were never available in the UK, yet the Redcoats (based on Airfix'sWashinton's Army - still needs text!) seem to be freely available over here, usually as a set of 7 - with the 7th sometimes glued to his horse - or as an 8-piece set.

Now, here's the thing . . . assuming that they are neither that rare, we are probably looking at Culpitts handling the UK invasion, while someone like Wilton was distributing the spirited fifes & drums of the tea-party wreakers.

Here's a 'What if?';

What if Wilton (or someone similar) ordered a bunch of figures for the [then] upcoming celebration of the bicentenary of the success of said terrorist insurgency, say from a dodgy-looking bloke down the mainly toy-producing industrial estate alongside Port Tain Sang, at the end of the really long, really wide (with lots of hotels and restaurants - says Google) Grainville Road [don't look for any of this on Google Earth, you'll be wasting your time, it's only known to Erwin Sell and Paul Stadinger!].

And suppose the dodgy-looking bloke said "Yes, no problem, 20,000 units American Revolutionary Soldiers like these (opened hand to reveal Airfix Washington's Army figures given him by Wilton's rep's shipper's buyer), but twice size yes? And 20,000 units of men in painting (waving magazine-cutting of Archibald Willard's famous doodle with other hand), two months, real good, no problem".

Three months later, a tramp-steamer (this was the '70's!) arrived in the US (having left Kowloon harbour some weeks earlier) loaded with this sure-fire patriotic money-maker of cake decorating joy.

The cartons were shipped to Wilton (or whoever), and are opened . . . "What the Effing-mother-of-C?!!?" said [yelled] the Sales & Marketing guy (they always cuss in the movies - maybe I'm a closet Sales & Marketing guy?); "Get me another box!", he barked; it too was opened "No! They're all Effing red too - Godammit! What the Eff are we gonna' do now; they were CoD not FoB?

Now cake-men - like toy-men - probably have networks, and just suppose someone in the office said "What about PJ [Culpitt] over in Ingerland (they didn't call it Ookay then), he owes us a favour after he dumped all those dumb soccer players on us for Mexico" [or something improbable like that!], a phone call was made, a deal was struck and Britain got the Redcoats, while the American market kept the Spirit of '76 figures as a nice stand-alone vignette;  sans armed-support?

Only a 'what if?'!

But they were definitely from the same maker (image stopped right down to be readable; translucent white is a bugger to macro!), and I recon they were designed to be together, but unless there are Bluecoats somewhere - and I've never seen them - it's not right to face them off . . . on a cake!

Are the Redcoats readily available in the US does anyone know, or do US collectors scan UK evilBay for them? Have you seen Bluecoats? Did you see the Sprit of'76 figures in UK bakers at the time?

A couple more comparison shots while I was in the mood! Did the Americans win the war by drumming us to death? No, but they drummed us out! Boom-boom! I wonder if those colonists ever dreamed what America would become . . . ?

You can see that the small-boy will make a decent adult for 30mm figures, here Marksmen/Rado-Ri-Toys, but SAE or Spencer Smith AWI would also benefit from his attendance at muster.

Still looking for the baseless set though! Maybe next year . . .

I seem to recall more reverence when I posted the Award set last year, it all depends what mood you're in when you sit down to type, anyone offended by any of the above - for any reason; should go to their doctor tomorrow and ask for a sense of humour - except the PSTSM; you can stay offended! More, less irreverent AWI tomorrow . . .

L is also for Laurie Toys

were going to be having American War of Independence (or colonial terrorist-insurgency - depending on your viewpoint - and you all know mine! It's tongue in cheek you humourless....) stuff today, but I thought I'd tie-up a loose-end from the 'Lucky week' thing, by clearing these from the dongle

The item itself is in storage, while the photographs I do have were taken back in 2010 or something for an eMail exchange and somewhat fail to show the vehicles off to their best! Still; after yesterdays post you probably won't mind a short one with few details!

The box! Laurie seem to be a wholly owned brand-mark of Lucky, but which I mean that while Clifford or Fairylite were independent import firms ('jobbers') with the products from other sources under their brand (I have somewhere an image of a polyethylene boat 'made in England' [possibly a Rafael Lipkin/Pippin piece] with a Clifford card), Laurie only appear with a Lucky Toy in the box!

 Despite water damage the box was otherwise 'unused', and the contents were still in two poly-bags, the failing of me to shoot a decent shot of the vehicles will be the excuse to return to it when it's released from its prison, but you can just see the figures stuffed lengthwise into the caravan for storage!

The interior is reasonable for a cheap toy, but note the flash stretching up from and down to the holes in the floor, these are a necessary part of the moulding process (undercuts and stuff) with such a complicated single-shot tool, but they provide a weakness for pressurised hot-polymer to squeeze out of.

I don't imagine you can get a much leerier colour scheme than candy-pink and apple-green, but maybe bright yellow and sky-blue could beat it, however the icing on this 'pop-art' cake - has to be the tangerine-orange car!

Lucky mark on the Laurie caravan mirrors the car and an interesting feature is the retracting tow-bar, making it harder to damage in play.

A small chromium-plated excuse for the 'Volksengine' is crammed-up against the housing of the pull-back motor, and the same shot of the car's mark we looked at the other day.

Only a box-ticker, and box ticked; Lucky - for Laurie!