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

S is for Ships (and other vessels); Part 1 - Lucky for some...

...but not the owner - who was gunned down in public by the Triad's after he failed to repay them some money he owed! Lucky Toys ('L' in a horseshoe and probably LP - Lucky Products), Laurie Toy (LT), Clifford (CT), et al. There was as much from this company as Blue Box, if not more and one of the variants of the logo is this E for Empire Toys...but I'm getting ahead of myself! Given that I am the grandson of an Admiral, the first C-in-C of the Indian Navy; Grandad! I know precious little about naval matters or ships, so the seven posts below are - you must understand - written by someone who barely knows a trawler from an oiler! However I have been following the games of Tim Gow and friends over at http://megablitzandmore.blogspot.com/ with some interest, not least because there seems to be an 'old school' casualness to it, just get some boats, paint them grey, give them names and away you go - all over the floor (they do need a roll of blue linoleum - I think!...but if none of them has a Volvo that's going to be problematical!), then they bomb the hell out of them with out-of-scale aircraft...it's how war-gaming should be...says a non-war gamer! Anyway the other day he (Mr Gow) was saying he'd found some ships on feeBay, wasn't sure what they were, but they looked like such-and-such so that's what they'd be in the next game and I got to thinking; "Yeah, there is a lot of this vessel-shaped stuff in the mixed junk lots at shows and toy fairs, in fact...I've got a box of it upstairs... E for Empire by Lucky, these are clearly meant for the bath as the bigger vessels have weighted hulls and they all have deep hulls, but it makes them hard to stand without taking a hacksaw to them! Another view of the same three vessels and a couple of close-ups of the missile cruiser [this is how little I know - should you use capitals? 'Cruiser'?], I think this may be a copy of an old kit by Pyro or Aurora, I'm sure they produced something with a ridiculous great missile on the deck! But it may just be 'based on'? Also while the rest of the range are vaguely in-scale, the missile vessel is huge. The smaller warships - the five destroyers - are all different and again may be based on or copied from Western or Japanese model kits. The medium-sized thing (corvette?) turns-up unmarked in all-silver but it's the only one I've encountered so far, I have a red-hulled version of one of the little ones, which is also unmarked, but somehow it didn't get photographed. Sizes; Missile Cruiser - 18cm (weighted hull) Carrier - 15cm (weighted hull) Missile Destroyer/Corvette? - 14cm Tramp Steamer (?) - 12cm (flatter bottom) Small vessels - all approximately 10cm These have flatter bottoms and can be used strait-to-floor! But they are all civil subjects...with a simple 'MADE IN HONG KONG' they may or may not be Empire/Lucky, I suspect a rival, but you don't know with HK stuff until you get marked packaging. Sizes on these and the lose ones below are between 12o (green and red one above) and 155mm (the two black & white ones below). The small black and white one is 130mm The upper shot shows three more with - is that? - the QEII at the back, a large steamer with cargo and passenger areas and a smaller liner which also comes in grey (inset left, 105mm). The shot bottom-right shows the grey one with a smaller compatriot (who may also appear in the coloured series, 80mm), both these have been put together very poorly with funnels all askew and glue all over the place. They have also been militarised with the addition of gun-turrets! The little ship sneaking away at the back is by the Italian from of Ingap and is 10cm long. everything in this post is polystyrene except the masts of the civil set. I've put the sizes in so that if you are a gamer you can work out if they are 'your' size, and any corrections or identifications will be most welcome, some of them must be based on real vessels, but apart from the cereal premiums in Part 7 below, none have their names on them. Also I've guessed scale for one or two but any help there would be appreciated too.