Generally accepted to have been Quaker premiums (Sugar Puffs - more here), and from way back, these have also had
other outings and while the Quaker
freebies will have been one maker/issuer, it's clear there have been other
sources.
This was my collection late last year,
lined-up by vehicle type; I've tried to find the vehicles [in real life] but
haven't had much luck. I got out an . . . no, verily; 'The' Encyclopedia of
Classic Cars by Martin Duckley from the Library, but it precludes racing cars, and
confines itself to post 1945 vehicles! While I didn't know where to start
online, nor did I have the time!
I then rearranged them all in colour order
(it was a slow-news day, clearly!) and you can see they have come-in over the
years at a pretty level rate as far as car-type, goes with two extra 4's and
four fewer 5's. Colour-wise; metallic red seems commonest with flat scarlet, yellow,
blue and silver together in close second. On their heels are the two greens,
metallic and flat, for the seven colours issued by Quaker.
Now, I knew Adrian had a box of these as an
inexpensive 'loss leader' on his table at shows, and asked him if I could run
my collection past his stock, exchanging his colour or mould variations for my
duplicates and he - very kindly (no money was mentioned!) - said yes.
So the re-adjusted line-up now looks like
this, the former 88 vehicles is now down to 82 (with the previously not-shown Hong
Kong copies taking the total to 84), so Adrian's box is up six, but mostly
metallic reds, although they are the best colour-way by far, unless you're
looking for Ferrari red's or Mercedes' silver!
But where it still looks like I still have
duplicates, they are now all different mouldings; the rest of the post is a
meander through them; by car number.
Car number 1 looks to be a pre-war design (possibly
sharing DNA with the early Monopoly
car?) with various differences between examples; a fatter driver with arms, or a
small, blobby driver &etc.
You can see the metallic red one (bottom
right) has larger vents on the bonnet (hood) and the figure '1' is one vent
closer to the nose for instance, while the white one (a copy . . . or later
re-cut tooling) has a slightly different floor-plan (look at the exhaust-tip)
and is numbered '5' just to confuse!
Hong Kong was there as always, the
plagiarised versions being sans-car number, pantographed slightly smaller and
manufactured in thinner-walled, soft, polyethylene, rather than the sturdy
polystyrene lumps of the originals. The gold one is - like the previous white
one - from another source/issue, but
utilising the Quaker moulds I think,
unlike the white one, or the HK copies.
The red one has heat-melt damage to the
sides, which look shaped and possibly deliberate (remains of that
toffee-coloured contact-adhesive HK used) and it may have been attached to some
revolving novelty or something? Maybe sitting astride a pencil sharpener?
Also while the green one is faintly marked
Hong Kong, the red one isn't and is slightly smaller still, so two sources in
the 'Crown Colony' is a safe assumption!
The number 2 car - is it a Jaguar? You can
clearly see at least three different radiator grills, and both long and short
nose variants, with differences in the bulges forward of the cockpit too, and a
whole-car width-variation.
It looks as if the Quaker mould was a fifteen-cavity tool (three of each car, all
different) with the various pirates (at least two) employing smaller tools of
five-cavities (one of each car) while someone in HK copied the 1-car and
someone elsewhere produced a 2nd-generation piracy of the same vehicle - I've
now seen three 1's, but none of the other four cars?
My favourite example of all my cars is this
marbled/flecked purple vehicle, made from a mix of what looks to have been
50/50 red and blue granules, it's the only one I've ever seen, but they must
all have been done in the same colour, at the same time? It seems to be one of
the Quaker sculpts.
Car 3, a pre-war Mercedes racer? In the upper
shot you can see clear differences between the better finished silver car and
the poorer red vehicle, most notably in the drivers and the exhaust vents.
There are also (lower shots) at least three grill types and the red example has
thicker axle-stubs/fairings.
The number 4 car, some huge aero-engined
beast about (in scale with the driver) 25-feet long!
The right-hand yellow one is shorter,
carries a better defined driver and has a wider, flatter exhaust which doesn’t
extend to the first port. It also has a smoother bow at the end of a more
rounded nose, although you could go blind looking for all the little
differences in these!
Number 5, another huge car and a lot of
clear differences between both Quaker cavities and new/copy tools. The most
obvious are the grills and drivers, but the exhausts as well are quite varied,
with some further apart or closer together.
The white one - again - has a different
number ('4') but also has a totally re-designed rear with a round-arc covering
the duck's-tail of the other cars.
The two white ones with their alternate
sequence numbers, the most obviously copied of the 'other cars', these were a
bugger to photograph and I had to stop them right-down to get the 4-car in
focus. They are much cruder, especially in the drivers who are very blobby and
have hardly any discernible steering-wheel.
Colours so far found for other - non-Sugar Puffs' - cars, but it may well be
that some of the 'official' Quaker
colours . . . err . . . aren't. There is a paler version of the metallic red
which is a pinker shade, the metallic greens and dark blues come in several
shades, while some of the scarlets are actually a flatter, oxide-brown. The
camera's flash also hides two distinct yellows and the fact that some silver
cars are in fact grey.
The cream-coloured ones (as opposed to the
pure white) carry the correct numbers, while the caramel one at the back shows
signs of being another marbled one, but I suspect it's actually either sun-faded
on the pale side, or heat-damaged in the factory on the darker side?
The fact is, these are so common compared
to other cereal premiums of the day (1957) that one suspects there were many other
issues; gum-ball capsule-prizes, lucky-bags, Christmas crackers, comics maybe?
And that those issues came from several sources, as well as the HK soft polymer
copies, the small size and simple designs making them hard to tell apart.
It may even turn-out that a board-game
carried a set - red, yellow, light green, light blue, caramel and cream . . .
or grey, although it would have to be a game with large 'squares' or a linier
form? Or a 'Grand Prix' version of those ratchet-handle/canvas or rubber-sheet
horse race games, where they jerk down the course? It would be nice to find
black ones, 3 and 5 would look stunning in jet-black.
An idea of scale, albeit accepting that
they aren't in scale with each other or the real-life vehicles they may be
based-on, the Airfix 'Mighty Antar'
readymade tank-transporter and the similar 'dime-store' Pyro Jeep.
Finally this is one of those posts were I
have to thank everyone who's ever given stuff to me in the past or made blog
donations, whether cheap or free, as there's often one or two of these in the
bottom of a 'junk' bag, or a rummage lot, so that’s Trevor, three Peter's, Jim,
Paul, John, Brain and Brian, 'Lego' Dave, Matt, Graham, Andy and a big thanks
to Adrian!
