I have been waiting for years to post this bad boy! I wanted to include it in a Payton series, but as it turned out, that took many years to happen. Well, we've been doing Payton now since January, so it's about time this gets it's due!!
Of course, the prime subject for this is the absolutely awesome H-21C Piasecki Tandem Helicopter, also known as the Flying Banana which entered service in the early 1950s. REMCO's version is large and full of features. REMCO had an unusual nomenclature for their sets, referring to them by 'style number' instead item number or part number. This one is Style No. 712. It is battery operated and turning it on caused the rotors to rotate and the helicopter to move along the ground. A separate switch allowed you to raise or lower the hoist. Unfortunately mine doesn't work - it's strictly a display piece, however it does display really well. There is a cargo door on the port side, allowing you to fill the hold with the 25 Payton troops that came with it (spoiler alert: they don't all fit nice and neat like). BTW, this is the pre-Monkey Division set. The Monkey Division was a whole series of Army toys REMCO came out with in the 1960s. This set was advertised as early as 1960 in Sears, but I don't know how long of a run it had - either as a regular helo or Monkey Division helo.
My set was missing its full compliment of figures and vehicles, but I had more than enough extras to turn this into a complete set. Like Marx, Payton too would supply products to other manufacturers for inclusion into sets. This REMCO Whirlybird included the following Payton pieces:
-25 Man Attack Force (45mm Army Men)
-1 Tank
-1 Troop Carrying Truck
-1 Jeep
-1 Howitzer
The helicopter measures: fuselage 24" (60,96cm) x 6" (15,24cm) W x 8.5" (21,59cm) H with a 36" (91,44cm) rotor span.