T is for Thames Trader Trucks

Which were actually Ford's! Neither are they strictly rack-toys, as they would have been in a stack on a shelf somewhere, but as they would have been priced below a single Dinky, Corgi or Spot On toy and probably no more than two Matchbox's, they fit the bill, which in RTM is Hong Kong (or China) cheapies!

Before moving on - a quick apology for all the typos and lack of editing the last few days, but that BT-Wifi has decided to play-up big-time and I'm now fighting to get the posts up as quick as possible before the mast drops Fleet off the map for the third time in an hour!

Also while I always try to credit stuff which has been donated, gifted or come-in rediculasly (and delibereately) cheap, I don't normally credit for stuff I've bought normally as A) I couldn't possibly rememeber every purchase or who from and B) if you buy something in the normal way, it's yours to do what you will with, but I would like to thank Paul (of 'Saint and Grievesy' for those on the circuit who know who I mean) who came up to me at the end of a show in some forsaken sports hall in Sussex or somewhere, about 12-years ago and said it looked like the kind of thing I'd be interested in - it was!

"True to scale", but no scale given!

Typical of all eight; the axles are the worst part being cut by hand and therefore all lengths from tight-in to extra-wide 'Carlos Fandango'! It's one of those weird things about HK production in the 1950's, 60's & '70's, some used a jig to cat axles the same length, others did them by hand or a finger section or something and ended up with none the same length - this is one of those assemblers!

A body is slid over a flatbed, integral to the cab and the floor-pan holds an un-glued chrome-plated radiator/headlights part in two pre-formed slots. In this case the body has an additional refrigeration-unit (red plastic) glued on and a sticker.

Yes I said 'sticker', this is so cheap it's criminal as the cost-saving is minimal to the manufacturer, but the disappointment to the child (probably already used to cheap plastic toys instead of the die-cast stuff of his middle-class counterparts) will be measureable, and repeated, every time, but they really only put a sticker on the widow-showing side!

They are fitted into the trays with a bar that has twin pinch-points, on either end, which grab the axles, and make useful construction material! The pipe-truck is reminiscent of the Matchbox one, but that was a later vehicle - another Ford I think, but later '60's to the Thames Trader's 1959 birthday.

The tipper is a bit naff to be honest and the lorry being loaded with beams is someone's conversion chuck-out, another pipe-truck which I suspect was destined for military service - in a war games army - but only got as far as losing it's stakes/stachions. All have the dhrome hubs/rims and rubber (PVC) tyres.

You can see from the USAAF figure that they are a reasonable 1:72nd scale.

Comparisons with - from the left - an Empire Bedford RL, an interesting variant of this oeuvre as it is heavier than the (possibly absent)* Blue Box truck you'd think it was a clone of, and just as well made, so Blue Box may have been the copyist here?

Then a copy of [or] the Blue Box animal transporter (I think I've had this in a Blue Box set?)* from one of any number of 'Home Farm' sets or clone-sets, another Bedford RL type (the civi' version was an S-series I think?) which has given today's subject it's equally cloned-body.

Finally; a smaller (HO-compatible), later model of a 1960's Ford (?), copied from Matchbox with a different body which is a combination of the others - a drop-side with stake/fence for animal transport. It has single-moulding running-gear sprayed chromey-silver, but it allows for duel-wheel sculpts on the rears.

What unites all these is basic, glueable, model-kit quality, brittle polystyrene plastic for all bodies, chassis and cabs, with variation of materials restricted to the wheels and axels.

*I think the Blue Box and this are the same, even to the sub-copies by other brandings (as we saw with the Noah sets), but the Blue Box weren’t to hand when I shot these, so we’ll compare the other way, another day although the smaller Blue Box shell tanker has been on here once or twice I think?

Box-art close-ups of the Thames, a similar lorry from Commer (?) and the rest of the smaller sample which came from Trevor Rudkin a few years ago, the silver body is an older shipping/rail container, which were made of wood, rather than the stamped steel of the modern international standard. Stock-code may help someone, but I thought it might be E for Empire until the superior Empire truck turned-up!

 

A week later - I've now seen a five-truck closed-box set of these branded to Emson

Han Solo is for Indiana Jones? Or is it a Blade Runner!

Another bike! And he got around - that Harrison Ford, and gave us three iconic characters!

A couple of sets here which could have been part of something much bigger and more long-lived, as far as toy lines or concepts go, but which was aimed at the casual 'tourist' pound and priced way beyond true rack toys despite being 'only' rack toys, and pretty scant ones at that!

One blistered from the common Disney mall-shops, a card-back shared with two of the other sets in this four set line, the other (the fourth) windowed and apparently a Disney Theme Park exclusive, I have no way of verifying that and one needs to remember that the gift shops in those places are some of the busiest, highest turnover retail spaces on the planet, so 'Limited Edition' it 'aint!

I got it for the motorbike! I haven't taken a tape measure to them but they are sort of 35/40mm, not the 54mm they were passed off as by someone a while ago, not that there are many people who would make such a fundamental error (as fact), indeed, I can only think of two, and it was one of them!

Not so sure about the candy-pink sand though, especially as it doesn't match the tan bases of the other set! I think these are the third movie's characters?

While these are from the 1st movie; Raiders of the Lost Ark, the other two sets were single vehicles, the vaguely Blom und Voss from 'raiders and the WWI tank from Lost Ark, with stroppy, pouting 'ex' in tow

Basically between the four sets you have everything you need to reproduce the two most iconic scenes from both the 'German' movies, the fight at the 'plane and the tank chase. I didn't measure them and they are back in the garage now, but they are approximately 30/35mm, not the 54mm indicated by TJF's sidekick a year or two ago!

USMC is for ABC Box Ticking!

It's one of those things isn't it; time moves on when you're enjoying yourself! This, as a smaller post might have published a couple of years ago, I took the first shots within days of getting the storage stuff into the garage, two Augusts ago, but I didn't know what to say about them, then I lost the images, then I took a couple more (or found one in Picasa? I have this habit of forgetting I've shot something and shooting it again!) but wasn't very happy with them, only for someone; Blood, Pugh or Shalatain (?) to publish them in Plastic Warrior magazine (link), so the post got put on the back-burner, as if it wasn't there already!

I'd always thought of them as RAF regiment, despite (and indeed - ignoring) the fact that they kept turning-up with white trousers! But the contributor to PW (. . . it was Jack wasn't it, Jack Shalatain, who also showed some lovely pith-helmeted colonial Infantry read-coats, which I haven't found yet) made the connection (as I suspect other people had, while I wasn't listening . . . JB?), anyway, that was them and there's not much else to add, but I have found a few different ones over the years and can stake a claim for the 'Rock Apes'

The original of shot on the left has vanished, but after I'd done the collage, so it's been left in a folder somewhere, or accidentally moved to another, but it's definitely my laptop they are shot on! They are re-issues and could be quite recent?

On the right are two newer shots with base variations below (we'll return to in a minute) and paint variations above. There are two iterations of unpainted (who can be RAF regiment as they aren't dark-blue enough to be № 1 Dress), with the US Marine Corps to the right.

Second to last was always an anomaly (there's more, I just tried to pick the better ones for the shots) as he has a red cummerbund and trouser stripes, and looks like an inaccurately-painted Colour-Sergeant from the British Army, the cummerbund intending to be the cross-sash in heavy red linen?

Then, recently this chap joined the fold, he is similarly marked, so I think at least one issue tried to represent a British regiment in № 1 Dress uniform, but with the wrong blue? As the original Britains USMC in hollow-cast would pre-date the RAF Regiment's creation, I assume they were pirated from the American Marine sculpts though. And the marines (US) have all-blues but with a white hat . . . home-painting could do a lot more with these figures!

There are two main base types, the ABC, and another which may be a separate company running alongside, or just blank base inserts for ABC to use on contract-production. The arrowed two are the ABC lozenge-marked ones, while the other have a similar MADE IN HONG KONG but smaller and closer to the rim of the base - the ABC's quite centralised with the lozenge below the message.

Both have a US Marine painted version and an unpainted version, but the red-trim guys are both of the second, non-ABC version? All have the swivel-arm of the original hollow-casts.

M is for Many More Motorised Machines!

I think it's fair to say Rack Toy Month wouldn't be RTM without three elements, Parachute toys (coming), Dinosaurs (done!) and motorcycles! Not all 'rack-toys' but let's get that box ticked before we run-out of Month!

Lion toys from . . . I can't remember when now, I think I've mentioned it on another visit to the Catalogue, about 1984 I think? Maybe 1980? Anyway, the bike's tool is still around, we saw them in newer packaging a couple of year's ago, but of more interest are the Corgi copies of race official and camera-man.

Lego! I was holding this for a better shot, but this post is a Picasa clearer, so they've been shoe-horned in to get them off the laptop. Note (if you were following the Blog eleven years ago) the conversion to a German soldier on a DKW is still waiting for arms, handlebars and . . . . paint!

I will try to re-shoot them separately (and better) as comparisons with the scooter rider in the Airfix Civilians set over on that Blog one day?

Not motorised, but as there were bicycles in the previous shot, they can fit here, also we have seen them before I think, but I don't always remember what's what, so shot them again (or just had some shots left over) as I think the red one is a new colour?

Robo-motorbike-cop! There's no indication this chap from Lik Be / LB is a policeman or any other kind of law-enforcement or security operative, but I've always thought of him that way! He could just as easily have a hose and a buffer in his hand sockets for cleaning cars "Would you like wax with that Sir?", but I like to think they are a siren-horn and a 'needle-gun'!

Branded to Hunson and shipped into the 'States by JPW, these were sent to the Blog by Brian Berke and look to be 3/4 inch Action Figure sized? Four colours with a possible shade variation of the green - but including it would have ruined the collage!

I can't remember if we've seen one of these, both of them or neither? More board game flats anyway! The one on the left looks a bit like the Waddington's one from those post-war versions of Monopoly (see recently here at Small Scale World), but is a softer lead/whitemetal flat, while the other one (with a short-shot suffering front wheel - bouncy-bouncy!) is probably from a much earlier Edwardian game from between the wars?

Similar to the green one

By way of a follow-up to a motorcycle ChrisSmith donated to the Blog a year ago, but only in its size, and the stabiliser wheels! Classic rack toy, and it can't have been rare as that rider seems to have been in every-other rummage tray I've ever looked through!

Speaking of Chris, he sent these as a follow-up to the unknown copy of a Britains Sheriff's motorcycle we looked at a while ago, which came from Jeff I think, at Sandown Park, or Gareth - I can't for the life of me find the post now, so if any loyal readers happen to have bookmarked it, or know where it is?

Chris not only found the bike and a complete rider, but he found the accompanying (Spanish) guard and the base of that figure reveals the truth - Guisval! Obviously they can be used as WWII Germans, but with a Harley-D and white gloves I think we are actually talking Franco's Civil Guard, on parade?

These came in a week or two ago, a donation from Peter Evans, and another Red Deer offering; chunky and fitted with stabilisers, they are really infant toys (as if most of the rest aren't!), bt it's all grist to the mill.

Only seen the other day, but I already had these in the big folder! Home-cast or similar figures, the post was here.

News, Views Etc . . . Dinoposts

I have added a bunch more imaged to today's (new yesterday's middle post.

Naming Names! (It's actually a post or two down the page!)

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And later today you've got the 'annual' motorcycle round-up, ABC US Marine Corps and Indiana Jones.

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I've also added Amato's (Connecticut) and Toy Soldiers Depot (Maryland) to the US dealer's list.

D is for Dino III - The Search for Karn...'ivore

I love that title! Sometimes you think of one and you think "Yeah, there's about four levels there!" . . . anyway, it IS the third Dino-post today, the second from Brian Berke over in the Big Apple, and we're looking at the Dollar Tree dino's, most compared to the Dollar General ones we saw earlier today.

These are branded to our old friends and regular visitor's to these pages; Greenbriar/DTSC, who are more widely available I think. Again there are no species given on the sales-tags/labels - I didn't ask Brian if they have monikers on their bodies?

Sizeing with both the previous lot and our trusty Crescent rifleman reveals a larger animal from a similar species, indeed it's almost a scale-up, but there are differences.

Compared to the pretty basic 'Chinasaurs' of our childhood, there are some very good models out there now, and while the real biggies from Schleich, Papo and Co., are very, very good, these cheapies are also excellent sculpts. I think a lot of it is in the skin-textures they give them, think of that WHSmith's set I was buying a few years ago?

The new set runs to seven against the five we looked at earlier and here the 'Tree's are compared with their 'General counterparts, except the Triceratops who is compared to the old Timpo one (which Brain pointed out is as good as a dinosaur 'dinosaur' such is its age!), the new one is a really nice pose, in my opinion! A second meat-eater should be identifiable from the larger arms but is unknown to me?

The two Steggie's are quite similarly posed, but the new one has slimmer limbs, while the Dollar General example seems to be barking! And there's a kerthunkersaurus to finish-off the line-up

Cheers Brain, that Dino's done in RTM, but I've only got a few days to tick the annual motorcycle and paratrooper boxes . . . it's in hand!

D is for Dinopost

Which was the title of the folder I chucked the images in, and it seemed to be an appt-enough title so I kept it! You were going to get this morning's LB (LP) post a couple of days ago, but Brian sent these late on the weekend, so I pushed the other post back by a day to get this edited and in shape, only for Brian to send more on Monday, so it all got another delay, and we can have Dino-Day today - which would have been a good title too!

Brian has a young grandson for whom he has been out and about buying dinosaurs . . . start 'em young, and all that! To which end he went to Dollar General and purchased their current range of medium-large models for a single greenback apiece (about 80p?).

Now dinosaurs are funny things to scale as the new-born's of many species would have been no bigger than a cat or dog, but a 80/100-year old adult might be half the size of our street! And my sizing isn't terribly accurate, but these are clearly useful with 'toy soldiers', whilst being maybe half their scale, as intended?

Branded to Dolencorp (who did some of the skeleton/mummy stuff a year or two ago I think? Phantom brand of Dollar General?) and the models are exactly what's written on the tag!

Brian found five different animals in total and while the slaes tags don't give names, what we seem to have here is a Stegosaurus (used as a sizer), a Triceratops, a meat eater who is probably an Allosaur' or Gigantisaur' rather than a 'T'; T-Rex - if modelled well - has larger concave 'dimples at the backs of the cheeks, roughly where our ears would be.

Finally a veggie sauropod, who's clearly a smaller scale (box or 'unit price' scale!) as is often the way with these and would go better with HO/OO type figures, but if you're 2 or 3-years old, you're not worried about scale, you just want to see how many things that go "ROAR!" there are in your granddad's toy box!

Thanks to Brian for this rack-toy update, and there's more to come, later, from Dollar Tree!

Later the same day/Early the next day!...

Further to the comments on the post after/above this one (newer post) I asked Brian for the names printed on the bellies and he sent some more shots WITH the names (which was very kind) and which I've placed under each animal.

No surprises but what I called the Triceratops is actually a Styracosaurus (which is a mistake I often make) and I would argue the T-Rex is anatomically incorrect (which is a mistake Chinasaur designers often make), but hay . . . it's a vicious meat-eater, right? Thanks again Brian!

BRACHIOSAURUS

PARASAUROPHUS

STEGOSAURUS

STYRACOSAURUS

TYRANOSAURUS REX

M is for Monster Fantasies

I knew this set (or something like it) had to exist, as those dinosaurs which appeared to be LB (LP) were much smaller (and less silly) than the 'funimals' they seem to be numbered in sequence with, while I had tentatively ID'd the four cave-men as LP (now LB) some time ago, so when I saw this going for a song on feeBay, I grabbed it!

An absolutely 'classic' rack toy; an assortment of figures and animals with no attention to either physical scale or geological timescale, in some whacky coloured plastic with gloss paint fired at them by a blind man! Really; I should have opened Rack Toy Month with this post, but I forgot they were in the queue!

We have pretty-much done these to death now (first with a clean sample from Adrian Little and then with a look at my larger 'in storage' sample - when they came out of storage!), but to confirm the assumption they were Lik Be here is a clean sample, and to add to previous musings on the legs, all four have been given the same legs, so it must have been done by batch, not pose! Also, the 'blood', spread rather liberally on some of mine, seems to have been meant to represent the wood of the bow and spear!

We get two contemporaneous prehistoric mammals which I have identified as vague renditions of a Dinocerata type (on the left), although all the real ones have paired horns/tusks, while this one has them as in-line singles, probably for ease of moulding, but it makes him a unique HK-species! The other is a more accurate Macrauchenia, except when I say accurate; I'm ignoring the blue plastic!

Going back a 100-million years or more we get two larger dinosaurs, conforming to the bog-standard rack-toy plant-eater and a duck-billed chap (or chapess), they are what they are, and might have been pink-on-yellow, we don't really know! In point of fact, some of the stuff being found now (in sedimentary beds in places like the Gobi Desert) gives very good colour clues (and feathers) and can be tied into surviving lizards and reptiles.

These are tiny, and I mean 'Micro' sized (and are mostly another 50-million-odd years earlier?), with a baby meat-eater and various other infants, including my smallest Dimetrodon to date! From the poses, I think some of them are copied down from larger rack toys around in the late 1960's-1970's, some of which are still with us in Hing Fat's tool-set!

For those who - like me - are trying to build a complete listing of LB's known/marked/numbered stuff, here are what I can make out on these;

Prehistoric Sets

1046-20 - Monster Fantasies

'Micro-mini' Dinosaurs

   73 - Brontosaurus [or] Diplodocus (no 'A', larger)

A74 - 'Duck-billed Dinosaur' (larger)

A75 - Ankylosaurus (smaller)

A76 - Dimetrodon (smaller)

A77 - Triceratops (smaller)

A78 - 'Carnivore' (smaller)

   79 - Stegosaurus (no 'A', smaller)

Cavemen (each with a choice of three different un-numbered legs and three loin-cloth designs)

No. A80 - Waving Axe

No. A81 - Archer with Bow

No. A82 - Raising/Throwing Rock

No. A83 - Long Spear/Sharpened Stake

Prehistoric Animals

No. A111 - Macrauchenia (Prehistoric Camel/Giraffe Ancestor/Ant-eater)

No. A126 - Dinocerata-like (Large, Tusked Mega-mammal)

2025 - The prehistoric mammals and dinosaurs here, seem to have been copied from the larger sculpts of the Holly Plastic Factory (HP), and LB also copied six of the ten-odd, from the 'Gygax' monster sculpts of Holly (and others), now posted here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2025/08/g-is-for-gygax-monsters-part-v-lik-be.html

S is for Soma's Star Rider Space City

Picked this up a few weeks back going unloved and un-bid, on that there evilBay, a month or so ago, I had no idea it existed and was looking for something-else entirely when I found it. Not really a rack-toy in the traditional sense, but I bet that when it was originally retailed it would have been half the price of a Bluebird Mighty Max or Polly Pocket set, and a quarter of the price of a similar Galoob Star Wars toy?

Folding-up to very small (6"x4¼x1¾-deep - 150x100x44mm), there's enough play-value to keep any kid happy in a caravan on a wet week in Rhyl! These days - of course - it'll either be too-hot to play in a caravan without cooking yourself, or so wet there's a danger the caravan will float away!

Fully unfolded; the gun-tower has shades of 'Hoth', the rest is - dare I suggest - more Flash Gordon than Coruscant! It comes with four of the diminutive little HO-figures I think I've shown before (we'll look at them again in a second) and a small truck the seller (alkim96) kindly added to the lot before sending, but which hadn't been in the sales shots.

And this is it, I think it's based on one of the ex-Giogi/for-Kinder mini fire engines, dated to 1997 (the Soma set) that's quite possible, but only as a vague copy; the Kinder ones were clip-together while this is screwed, following the Micro-Machine principle.

"Plastic smalls" as those with little finesse refer to them! I think we have looked at these before, and I think I've only added the four new ones, all duplicates, this is one of each from my sample, spacemen in grey and 'pilots' in green, each numbered on the base from 1 (on the left, purple and orange) to 12 on the far right.

My whole sample, most of them came mint with their aircraft and or 'spaceships' all of which went to charity about 20-odd years ago, found in generic packaging (I think) in Woolworth's it was only the little Soma on the base, and I think I'm right in saying the fighters came with one figure, the spaceships with two, hence the imbalance.

Also I don't know why I'm missing grey-5, as I should have all of them? You can also see there are some minor colour variations within each sub-tranche, but schemes stay true. Hopefully, one day, I'll be able to show you all of them, but they are not a high priority, with only two found in addition to the new four, over the years.

I have joked (at length) on the assorted panoply of weapons, clothing, equipment and headdresses so won't bore you with all that again, you can see what an eclectic mix of 1990's 'straight-to-video' post-apocalyptic B-movie extras they are! And they make an excellent set of extra bounty-hunters for Galoob's Star Wars Micro-Machines!

Ph is for Phidal's Phrozen Phellows

No, it was similar but I don't think is was exactly the same! Just a quickie, we've seen some if these as an incomplete lot in a charity-shop bag, but this is the whole set, there was another set with smaller figures (and the useful sleigh) which has also come-in as both  awhole set and some spares now.

And it's a while since we've had a Phidal post, but apart from one or two superhero sets still to find (the earlier ones) whole, and the Transformers one (which I've nearly bought several times, to actually picking it up - only to suck my teeth at the x6 micro-vehicle blobs and put back) along with various Disney/Mickey type which I'm not so worried about, I think we seen most of the better ones here now?

A mass of snow-babies and another useful deer, useful for 54mm rather than the 25/28mm of the one in the other set? The three figures are big, too big for much @approximately 80mm, but would fit-in with ELC-Papo-Schleich medievals, while the snow monster (Marshmallow?) could be thrown straight in a fantasy/D&D army/setting!