J is for Jimson - 116 & 127 Tank Transporter and 128 'Bulldog' Tank

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;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2010/05/p-is-for-patton-pershing-by-airfix-and.html

 

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

F is for First Flying Saucer

Except, they're not saucers are they, they're domed, and it's not my first, as I have the wonderfully lethal Marx Mystery Spaceship, and its half-controllable, 20-kiloton, kinetic-engine, with air-raid siren wind-up! But, this is my first 'full size' Hong Kong, placky-tacky, big-box toy, and I think it's one of the more common designs, not least than because PMS reissued it without stickers, a few years ago, also branded to a 'JS' (?), and claimed for China on a rack-card.

 

This is the older version, with NASA stickers, and while it was a bit grubby, which may have contributed to a cheap price, it cleaned-up near new, abart from playware to the gummed-paper flag.

 

What was known as a 'bump-and-go' toy, an eccentric steering, at the front, allowed it to escape obstacles by changing direction every few seconds, like a robot vacuum-cleaner, but it doesn't collect dust, or cats tails!

 

I don't know if the PMS issue had the original markings, or a new China-related message, but as far as I know the original was an unbranded generic?

 

One vinyl, one paper. Another Sanddown Park purchase, it ticks a box!

S is for Shark Transporter!

Because you need to transport your sharks, of course! I've been umming-and-areing on this, for most of the summer, whilst waiting fruitlessly for weeks, to see the helicopter set arrive in local stores, which it did, briefly, over a month after being announced, only to sell-out before I could get a second one, to average out the poses*. But, I kept seeing this, is the same line of '2-for-£20' sets, and I kept not investing, but equally, kept forgetting to take a shelfie!

 

B&M website, Shark Transporter corporate shot!

 

Getting very pissed-off with this quite expensive, especially when compared with the old cheapo' Fuji Finepix and Nikon Coopix's I've been using since the start of the Blog, Olympus OM System camera. Too big to shoot in my bedsit, I couldn't get the flash to trigger, under any setting!

 

The case is already in the recycling system!

 

One item of road transport, and in the end I forced the fixed 'tank' off, to get a half-descent shot of the baby shark being transported, although, when I say 'baby', it fills a lorry, it's just smaller than the loose ones in the set!

 

Two deep-sea submersable exploration types.

 

A pair of more conventional tourist/sightseeing submarines.

 

A couple of surface vessels, including a quite chunky hovercraft.

 

It's not Stingray, it doesn't want to look like Stingray, it's never seen Stingray, it has no idea what Stingray's fins look like, or the configuration of Stingray's rear-engine vent, it's not called Stingray, doesn't want to be called Stingray, and look - it has a blunt-nose! It's the bootleg Stingray!

 

Four vinyl-like sharks, from the left a Hammerhead, Basking, Swordfish and Great White . . . in scale with the one on the truck, these are about 30-feet long!

 

The reason I gave-in and bought it, apart from getting a Blog-post based on actual 'stuff', was in part for the five animals, but also because everything here's plastic, so the vehicles will go very well with the Bruder and Kinder types, in future overviews.

 

This Dinosaur Transporter, is also in the line, and has four of the smaller-size dinosaurs, I think this has been shelfied here before, as a future 'mixed-lot' animal ID aid, and we've seen and shelfied similar dino-trucks from/in B&M, Smyths and TKMaxx.

 

* The fact that the only decent set of small soldiers seen in any of the big stores this year, sold out so quickly, is possibly a message the stores have failed to recognise. More toy soldiers please!

R is for Retro Moon Man

If you have a theme - stick to it! This is actually the last one in the queue for now, but that's not to say I won't find another in the next few weeks, or certainly over the next few months. We're back to Legami, with another retro/deform/NASA astronaut, and this one is a pencil sharpener, with a shavings-collecting back-pack/life-support unit!

 

 

  

He also has one of those movement-triggered LED lights, hidden behind his opaque visor, so when you pick him up or shake/move him, he lights up, like some near-critical loon, about to go nuclear!

M is for Mohawk and More Military Miniatures

At the recent Sandown Park show I picked up a parcel from our roving reporter in New York, Brian Berke, which was very useful, as while I've mentioned them once or twice over the years, I've never encountered the sample while transferring things between different places, so they've remained rather absent from the Blog, but we can now tick that box - Mohawk's mini 'dimestore dreams'.

 

The one on the right is the colour of all my sample, so the pale herb-green ones, to the left, which made-up the bulk of Brian's donation were new to me, and this is a slightly larger version of the jeep we've seen before here more than once.

 

Brian also included a few marked-Lido mini's, so we can compare the two mouldings, as a full-stop to this original post, here, which compared the other three contenders for who's the pirate, who's the licensee, and who did the first version!

 

So that's six (Kleeware, Lido x2, Merit, Pyro and Mohawk) in total now, with the soft plastic Hong Kong version, Lido seem to have sanctioned themselves, toward the end!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/08/l-is-for-lido-not-load-of-limp.html 

 

The lorry on the left, a sort of 1950's pantechnicon, is also a homage to other mini 'readymades' of the era (the Pyro 'artic'), and also scaled-up, while the Ambulance is a more original moulding. I know I have a tanker, to look at another day, but I think I was missing the pantechnicon, so lovely to get both colours.

 

The car is also based on another model, and while less obvious, joins the Empire-Ideal-Kleeware-Lido-Pyro (2 sculpts)-Wyandotte family of small post-war family saloons, for an eight-count! While Brian himself sent us the Carzol coloured versions of the Tank not that long ago;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/07/n-is-for-new-stuff-from-new-york.html

 

Lido on the left, Mohawk on the right and there's more on the cars here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2013/03/s-is-for-siblings-take-2.html

 

Among the Lido's was a lovely bronzed version of the 'StuG III' which was new to me, and while rather washed-out by camera-flash in this shot (left-hand tank), is - in daylight - a distinctive goldish-bronze colour plastic, like some of the Captain Video figures!

 

At the same show Adrian had a few dime-store's saved for me, both of which are useful, having seen marked tractors and or guns from Banner, Bell and Merit, I'm not sure who issued this unbranded pair (left, the tractor has a 'Made in England' which I'll compare to others in the collection at a later date), but in a batch of British stuff, Kleeware, Tudor Rose or Merit (licensed or copy) are in the frame, and with the wreaker-truck a marked Kleeware copy/mould-swap of the Pyro, the clever money goes on Kleeware?

 

As with the Jeeps and 'Staff Cars', we've looked at many versions of the gun here at Small Scale World, already, but getting two new versions in one show is a feather in the collection's cap, with the unmarked green one, and a full-sized Hong Kong copy, in silver polymer, with eye-damaging ammunition!

 

There were a couple of more conventional/less contentious British 'Dime Store' AFV's from Tudor Rose, not copied by five other people, or licensed to anyone, the rather good Churchill IV, and the more dodgy armoured car.

Many thanks to Brian and Adrian, it’s all a dimestoretastic show-plunder and donations post, folks!

FMC is for Water Buffalo!

A lot of the purchases at Sandown Park, earlier this month, were suited to stand-alone posts, and this is a classic - in World War II, while we, in the UK, were melting down railings to make bombs, and German housewives were being told not to whine about a lack of bananas, the Americans could afford to make corporate desk-toy freebies, in bronze!

 

I'm not 100% sure which model this is actually representing, but I think it's the 'Amtank' (LVT (A)-1) (37mm main gun), or something similar like the LVT(A)-4 (75mm main gun), both built on LVT-2 chassis (there were lots of marks and body-types!), also known variously as an Amtrac, Buffalo or Water Buffalo, and this model appears to be a braised bronze model, of the desk-ornament/advertising variety, with a fixed turret.

 

And while the origins date back to 1935 and the civilian design 'Alligator', this is definitely a wartime, USMC procurement-driven version, so such a model is as conspicuous a sign of wealth/consumption, as you're likely to find! And, from the heft, a very useful paperweight!

 

The barrel of the gun is a steel rod, embedded in the mantlet and blacked-down to match the patina of the vehicle/model, which may have had a chemical dip, to get this antiqued look?

 

FMC is really for Food Machinery Corporation! A 'toolmaker' in common parlance, you can see the welts of the braising where the maker's plate has been added last. It could be welded steel, but it's too heavy, equally, it's not soft-enough to be a base-metal, so bronze is the obvious material, although it appears to have been slush-cast (bronze is more commonly sand-cast?), and then tidied-up with both the baseplate, and possibly an oval plate on the rear face of the hull? From the polishing on the left side, a copper-rich bronze!

 

 After a clean!

 

An oddity, a probable rarity, and over 80-years old, it's possibly not far off the same size as the Airfix Buffalo II, an open-topped troop-delivery vehicle, for which this is the fire-support variant, usually found on either wing/end of the landing line, to suppress enemy fire and engage bunkers. But it might be a bit bigger, people who know me, know how bad my 'scale eye' is, it might be closer to 1:48th or a round 1:50th?

 

If anyone with better maths than me would like to try working it out, the tape measure says it's 125mm long, 50mm wide and approximately 65mm high?

R is for Retro Kitsch

The theme we've been revisiting all year, in fact the initial post was last autumn, so it's been over a year! NASA-type astronauts of a cartoony design with rockets of a retro, playroom wallpaper style! TKmaxx seasonal shelfies, I took these weeks ago, and I think they're all sold out now, not something I'd give house-room to, but a fun addition to the trend.

 

Delivering gifts!

 

Scraping the inside of the glass dome!

 

Regolithball fight!

 

I hope they haven't sold-out of these, as I would hope my fellow Brit's have more class, sense, taste and decency, than to spend a tenner on this shite, but I know I'm deluding myself, and Tanyachelle from Essex has already put them on the fridge! Nasty.