It's A Small World After All: Kellogg's Corn Flakes 1956-57 Fire Engine Set - Kellogg's Fire Dept.(K.F.D.) - Fire Chief's Car

Here's the first vehicle in the K.F.D. series, the Fire Chief's car. These photos were taken a l-o-n-g time ago when I had yet to establish the 12-position photo essay I use for the most part today. Still, there are enough pics to show the outlines and details. I believe these may have been made by F&F, a company well known for making cereal premiums and specifically small-sized vehicles. However, I'm not 100% sure so any real confirmation would be helpful.  Enjoy! Opa Fritz

It's A Small World After All: Kellogg's Corn Flakes 1956-57 Fire Engine Set - The Kellogg's Fire Dept. (K.F.D.)

We are now entering the final phase of our look at small vehicles. Back in 2011 I made a few posts of these Kellogg's mail-in premium fire engines. Then the thread stopped until I could gather more material. In 2015 I re-engaged the subject using all the new material I acquired. So here we go again as an attempt to tie-in this set of small vehicles with the others that have been posted since early December 2023. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Offered in 1956-57 as mail-in premiums from Kellogg's Corn Flakes, I personally remember having only one of these as a kid and always wished I could get more. But it didn't happen until much later in life. The box images were culled from the Web many years ago and are not a part of my collection.

This was an insert that apparently came with the trucks (my collection). 

I love how they suggest that you could build your own fire station utilizing a shoebox.

I took them up on this challenge, but did it in a slightly different way. More to come in a later installment.

The reverse of the flyer

Years ago I lucked out and was able to get a complete, unassembled set.

These trucks are slightly larger than the Empire Plastics trucks I just finished posting. They also have rolling wheels vs. Empire's cast-in wheels.

Kellogg's Engine House to Fire House Project Templates!!!

HOOORAY! I've been able to recover the .PDF file for the templates. Here's what happened. Not long before the external hard drive went kaput I had downloaded the file to Google Docs, then when I went back to the docs page I couldn't find it!!! arrrrrrgh@!**#  

So today I went back to Google Docs and played around with the settings (Google re-formatted their screens from the last time I used them and I was a tad lost) and found the file along with several others that were 'lost'. Below is the shared link to the file. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Kellogg's Fire House Template

I hope the template is easy enough to follow and that someone out there is able to do a much better build than me. I'd be interested to see your results.

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 4

Losing our external hard drive with so many of our photos on it was depressing and quite frankly we haven't felt like blogging much. I'm gonna try to get back in the swing of things though. Eventually I'll probably send the hard drive back to the manufacturer to see if they can repair it, but it's no longer under warranty and the holiday season is too close to have to spend money fixing gadgets. That being said not everything is lost and we'll do what we can in the meantime.

I know I promised there would be templates to go along with this Kellogg's Fire Engine project and while I was able to get the photos downloaded to Google, the .PDF file remains tucked away on the broke hard drive. Sorry. So anyway, here at least are photos of the completed project. Enjoy - I hope. Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

You'll notice the walls don't go together well at the top. When the top couple rows of bricks were folded down, and the glue tab then folded up there always seems to be a problem joining those corners together. I've had this same problem on other buildings with similar construction techniques and it's been bothering me. I thought it over and have come to realize that further trimming is needed on those portions of the wall that get folded over. I won't be able to re-assemble this building until I recover the .PDF file though 

Going to the scrap box yielded several detail parts to add a little interest to the wide expanse of roof. An o-gauge diesel horjn was place atop the hose drying tower to act as a siren and was surrounded by lengths of HO scale fencing. The tower top is accessed by an HO scale ladder. A small plastic tube is a vent and a piece of cardboard became the access hatch

The building measures about 7 3/16" square. I could have made a wider building with less depth and five bays but this is what I ended up with for better or worse.

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 3

I'm getting there folks, I'm getting there. The Fire House now has a new roof which measures 7 1/8" (18.09cm) square. There's a bunch of stripwood framing on it to ensure a nice flat roof, and it makes it easier to to take off as well. When applying the stripwood the outer pieces are set in from the edges just enough to clear the stripwood on the walls. Also, a couple of the glue tabs on the walls were a tad too long, sticking out from the framing enough to require a little trimming. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Opa Bettina

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt 2

Well, progress is slow but sure on the Kellogg's Engine House turned Fire House Project. This week I managed to carve out enough time to build what may be the final version of this. I posted pics of the mock-up in the Oct 23 post and that mock-up helped me identify some big errors in my template. I think the changes I made will result in a model good enough for anyone with a little experience to put together a decent model. 

As I was building this it became apparent that plenty of bracing was needed. At first stripwood was glued to the top, bottom, and sides of each wall, but then the middle portion of the walls started bowing inward calling for additional bracing. The front wall ended up requiring a whole bunch of bracing so that it would stand straight with the doors open, otherwise it would have bowed outwards. Anywho, it seems to be working out okay. Once I get this all built up and photographed I'll make sure to post the template for it. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

I braced the heck out of the front wall, but it stands nice and straight without bowing outward

Kellogg's Fire House From Engine House Project - Pt1

For the past couple of months I've been hinting at a project in the works for those diminutive Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereal premium fire trucks featured here. A normal person would have cranked this out in a couple of weeks but so far it's taken me several months and I'm still not finished! Well, okay, but at least now there's some progress to report.

This whole thing started last year when I bought a vintage 1975, unassembled paper N-Scale Engine House (also a Kellogg's cereal premium). The problem was two-fold:

-I don't operate N-scale model trains and don't have use for an engine house

-We didn't have a scanner big enough to scan the sheets

The graphics were cool enough that I thought they could be used for some other kind of building and when the idea of re-posting the Kellogg's fire engine cereal premiums took hold, so did the idea for the Fire House project. By this time we had a large format printer/scanner/copier and so the project took off - at a snail's pace. That's okay, at least it got started. This is my first ever attempt at putting together a building of my own design and I must say it's a lot more work than I expected. Along the way I did a lot of stupid things (my forehead has a bruise from constantly hitting it with my palm and exclaiming, "Doh! Why did I do that?")

Here's the original sheet for Kellogg's Engine House kit. It was already folded in half making it easier to scan.

Between Photoshop and Microsoft Picture Manager I cropped the walls and further cropped out various architectural elements from the original artwork like doors, windows, course of brick, etc., and saved them as individual files or 'parts' for the new 'kit'.

Here's a low quality B&W print-out of the wall posed behind one of the Kellogg's trucks just to see if the size was right

This is as far as I've gotten so far, a full size mock-up of the station. It's designed to accommodate the shortest engine and the fire chief's car, one in front of the other in one of the bays. That ensures all the other engines would fit as well.

I wanted the doors to be displayed open but I now know it will take a good deal of bracing in order for the front wall to sit nice and straight. The building may have to be glued to a base.

I designed three different side walls. Two have varying window arrangements and one is solid brick, with graphics used from a sheet of brick paper that's been laying around The Cave like, since forever.

That tower in the corner is meant to represent the hose drying tower found in fire houses. The other boxy looking thing is the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) unit.

No bracing on the mock-up. It just ended up being square. It was the proportion that just worked out better for me.

There's still more work to do on the building. I have to re-arrange windows and some other odds-&-ends after which I'll build another mock-up

Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina