S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Civilian Vehicles

The civilian vehicles I picked-up at Sandown back in May are probably more interesting than the military stuff, but it's a question of personal taste, and it's not like you're going round a show trying to work out what's cool or not for a future Blog post! Although you do sometimes buy things for a blog post, mostly it's filling-gaps, ticking boxes or grabbing interesting, or unusual curiosities or novelties!

 

 

A couple of bagged Hong Kong rack toy vehicles, seperate purchases I think, but shot together for this post. The Surry wagon is my second, and with the first in storage, I'll wait until I can compare them before I open and construct one. The tractor I may have loose somewhere, but I thought I'd better get this one to tie-in the Thomas-Poplar looking driver.

 

A pair from Tudor Rose, A London Taxi and Bedford / Morris (?) type minivan, the Taxi will be off to New York soon in exchange for the Marx one we looked at the other day, and it has slightly more realistic wheels/tyres than the van!

 

A few shots of the van, with the Taxi's belly-mark inset, bottom right. The marking on the van was quite poor, due to play I think. Garden/beach toys, the van has working rear doors and a sliding side-door. Those wheels though - "Purest Grreeeen, Blackadder!"

 

This was lovely, an Archer steam road-roller, I don't know if they were imported from the US at the time, I suspect not, but rather imported more recently by a collector, I will try to get a Tudor Rose (or Kleeware) one, and a Lipkin one, so we can compare with the Merit one! The red button on the nose is the knob of a pull-cord wind-in motor, not that common a motive system, but there were a few back then. I also have the Pyro (and Banner?) in 'army' khaki!

 

Not sure about this at all, the card looks fake, home-printed on a PC, but a small company may well have done something like that back in the early years of computing and desk-top publishing, yet the contents are genuine enough, and maybe it was last-minute clearance or something of a 'Friday Afternoon' or 'Monday Morning' project? Also despite the busy graphics, there's no real branding, but it's hardly a typical generic either?

 

Poplar Plastics; this looks to be an early and not wholly stable plastic, but only the v-point of the blue moulding seems to have distorted slightly? A nice model anyway, and I'm a bit of a sucker for plastic racing cars!

 

Airfix - another! I put a Hillco cowboy on it in the absence of a motorcycle rider. I've picked up a few of these now, and that page on the Airfix blog will get an update with new images. Blue body with red wheels seems to be the commonest combination, I have several now, different shades of both though.

Another Poplar product, this shares the baseplate/chassis with the Easter Bunny egg-cart we looked at a few years ago, albeit with slightly different mountings. The wheels and chassis are polystyrene, the horse and cart-box, polyethylene.

 

The cart doesn't seem to come with or be fitted for hay-racks, but has seating, presumably from it days as a Thomas Toy when it would have come with a set of those seated PVC rubber kids?

M is for Most Marvellous Model Marx Made!

I posted a 'Best Toy Ever' article quite soon after the Blog began (Triang Battle Game), then a few years later I tripped myself-up by posting 'Best Toy Ever' again! The Britains Land-Rover long-wheelbase 'technical' on that latter occasion, the other day I suggested something was 'Best Something Ever', and have already forgotten what, while ". . . too cool for school!" has become a common trope here; so it's obvious that 'Best' is subjective and depends on a number of variables, of which - how you're feeling that day is as important as any other reason!

Today's post limits the criteria to one maker, so you have to believe the claim of the author, and therefore, without further ado I give you a guest post; in his own words, Brian Berke's . . .
Most Brilliant Marx Toy Ever!

In 1971 I owned a real 1960 Austin FX4 taxi (YYX 790) it had a 2.2 diesel engine coupled to a Borg Warner 35 automatic transmission.

The vehicle was incredibly slow and loud. It was purchased as a transition vehicle between an Austin FX3 taxi and a hoped for Beardmore taxi that was still licensed and wouldn't be available for another year. Life didn't turn out that way.

I bought this toy taxi and it wasn't until I opened the box and tried it with a battery that I appreciated how brilliant it was.

As the leaflet explained, use one battery with the metal plate and the cab crawled along making as much noise as the real thing. No other toy was ever as realistic in operation as the real thing. Usually anything battery powered shoots off at a scale speed of 200 mph

The detail of the model from hood ornament to chrome hub caps was accurate; the colour plastic is all that let it down. It was about the same size as the Tri-ang version which was unpowered.

Brian also included the instruction sheet, which is useful as I have definitely seen that tin plate in dealers junk-trays in the past, now I know what it is.

And I would add that I'm sure at lest one company had metallic mauve taxis when we went to London as kids in the late-1960's/early-1970's, they were mostly black, but one company had white ones, there were the Evening Standard striped ones (orange, black and white chevrons, like the delivery vans), and the odd 'British Racing Green' one, but I'm sure there were some in this colour? As far as the toy goes, I saw a battered one in bright red at Sandown the other day.

It is pretty lovely isn't it? The Crescent berserker says 1:24th'ish? So - what's your favourite 'Best', and would you like to share it here, with a few pictures and a bit of blurb?