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Shite in Miniature II


Split_Pin

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15 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

For any out there feeling the Dub Luv... Home Bargains has the Dickie Toys VW Microbus back on the shelves again.

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They're plastic, but pretty big and nicely detailed. Must be around 1/18 scale - they look to be over a foot long.

And they come with stickers, so you can customise it.

Lovely.

TBH I was just relieved to see a VW Camper in a box branded Dickie Toys

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Today's eBay delivery was a welcome one. I put a best offer on this and got a counter offer, that was still less than the opening bid. No scene tax on this Ford! Mind you, it is only a 1100L

I'm thinking beige with some sort of hub cap. Need some of those things that push onto the ends of rods - what are they called? 

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3 minutes ago, TheDoctor said:

Today's eBay delivery was a welcome one. I put a best offer on this and got a counter offer, that was still less than the opening bid. No scene tax on this Ford! Mind you, it is only a 1100L

I'm thinking beige with some sort of hub cap. Need some of those things that push onto the ends of rods - what are they called? 

IMG_20201103_170305.thumb.jpg.8e5478cd30c39947e125c606816891ba.jpg

 

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Is that a Bburago? 

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Seems that many folks are relying on miniature items to make life bearable at the mo, so it figures that eBay prices have gone into orbit lately...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/29/lockdown-sales-boom-puts-model-railway-maker-hornby-back-on-track?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

And I'm probably not helping matters...

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Yup, the Corgi Mania continues unabated.

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A lightly worn but boxed 416 Buick police cruiser, plus a 294 Renault 5 Alpine (though the base reckons it's merely a TS).

The Buick should have a police officer figure alongside, but he's apparently retired.

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Along with a couple of minor chips, it's also missing a roof light lens and has something weird and brown on the grille, which may or may not scrub off.

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But despite these issues the box is pretty good, so I'm hopeful I can pick up the missing bits at some point and have a complete set.

The Buick casting first appeared in June 1976, painted bronze as the unmarked cop car from the Kojak TV show (#290).

It featured a typically Corgi innovation - a 'clicker' wheel mounted below the back bumper which, when rotated, made a vague approximation of gunfire. This tied in with the figure of Kojak's partner Crocker firing from the rear window.

Running until 1980, Corgi managed to shift 824,000 units of the Kojak Regal, proving that what kids really want in a toy is a lollipop-sucking, follicularly challenged, wisecracking NYPD lieutenant. Who knew?

This uniform police cruiser version, numbered 416 in the catalogue, made its debut in April 1977 as Corgi were trying to make inroads to the US market again and presumably felt a cop car would be a good seller - and although not scoring quite as many sales as the TV version with the Telly Savalas figure, Corgi put out a healthy quarter of a million of these over 18 months or so.

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In January 1979 the next iteration of the Buick appeared, boasting an additional light bar and a new bonnet decal, now billed as a City of Metropolis patrol car in Corgi's Superman themed lineup. The roof was also now painted white, though the rest of the body was the same metallic blue and the side decals also remained the same.

There was very little to mark it out as different from its predecessor - but the Superman box seemed to have scored it a few extra sales, even though the police vehicles shown in the Superman films were Plymouth Caravelles.

Corgi managed to sell nearly 350,000 of these singly in two years, before it was withdrawn in 1981. As well as appearing as a single vehicle (260), from September 1980 the Metropolis Police Cruiser was included as part of a set with a Daily Planet helicopter and a Supermobile (Gift Set 21), which clocked up another 27,000 sales until it was deleted in 1982.

As an aside, the Buick casting also appeared as an individual model in the Marks & Spencer branded toy range, this time as a red Fire Chief car (#8803).

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This range was made by Mettoy on behalf of M&S under their proprietary St Michael brand, first as multi-vehicle playsets in 1978 and then including a range of single models from early 1979. All Corgi branding was removed, and the range featured unique colours, decals and boxes. These were trialled in a selected number of Marks & Spencer stores to gauge public opinion.

The Buick Fire Chief was largely the same as the City of Metropolis Police Cruiser, with only different paint and decals.

The whole M&S diecast range only lasted for a little over a year, being canned before the end of 1979 once M&S decided they weren't selling well enough to justify wider distribution. Unsurprisingly, this is the rarest version of this Buick casting.

The Regal was obviously very much a car of the 1970s, with its fussily baroque styling, so it wasn't a surprise that the more modern-looking Chevrolet Caprice effectively took over its role from 1980, appearing in plain, police, taxi, Corgitronics fire chief and even stock car variants until Mettoy's 1983 demise.

Oddly, I hadn't realised that while the Kojak car was (correctly) badged as the top-end Regal model of Buick's A-body platform offering, the box of this police version referred to it as the more humbly-spec'd Buick Century.

But the casting and base still say otherwise...

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Ah well.

The Regal also appeared in the Juniors range in broadly the same iterations as the 1/36 toys - Kojak car; generic police car, Superman police car, fire chief car - as well as checker cab, hot rod and plain sedan versions, amongst many others.

Unlike its bigger counterpart, however, the Juniors Regal remained in the range for decades - I remember picking one up in an Auto City twin pack in the mid-1990s, at the time Corgi were owned by Mattel. In fact, I must have had over a dozen different variants of the Juniors version. The post-Mettoy cars gained a jacked up rear suspension, for reasons that were never quite clear.

But its ubiquity as a Corgi toy meant that for years I thought it was a common enough car in the US, yet bafflingly I'd never seen a 1:1 example on TV.

I picked up a City of Metropolis version in an antiques shop around 1992; I think I paid £5 for it which, looking back, means I was pretty much robbed since it was fairly chipped with cracked glazing and had the light bars and steering wheel missing.

It's weird to think it was already thought of as an antique when it couldn't have been much over ten years old at that point. Also, that I was stupid - I'm not sure I'd pay a fiver for one in the same condition if I were to find it on a market stall one Friday, nearly 30 years later.

I sold that one on a couple of years ago during one of my diecast purges, along with a reissued Kojak Buick that I'd got cheap from TK Maxx because the box was damaged.

Guess what else I'm looking out for...

More on the Renner still to come!

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I love this write up in particular as the Buick was very much part of my childhood in both scales and I'm also a big fan of the Kojak TV series. It's a lovely casting and the car choice is very 1970s. Where do you get your dates and figures from, they're really interesting to read.

I got a battered 1/36 Kojak example in the 1980s which was my Cousin's and in 1994 I bought another tired example at a Swapmeet. I made a good example out of the two and managed to find spray paint of the right colour. I regrettably sold that in my 2013 diecast purge. In 2015 I bought a juniors Kojak version to replace the police one that I had for 1 day in 1984 before losing it permanently, as I had a habit of doing when I was 5! I also remember my P1 teacher Mrs Leitch confiscating a green Juniors version from my classmate Colin one day as he was foutering with it. To my horror I spied it in her desk drawer about 6 months later. That wouldn't happen nowadays.

The Corgi model is actually named incorrectly. The cars are all Buick Centurys with Regal being a trim level such as was common in the 1970s with US cars. Names like 'Brougham' and 'Cricklewood' must have seemed cultured to American designers, which were in reality a small town with a historic castle in Cumbria and a borough of Greater London respectively!

I'm on the lookout for another 1/36 version now!

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I had the Kojak Buick 1/36 as a child.  The Kojak figure turned up again in recent years, but car itself long gone even though it was 'looked after'

I can remember well how the model stood out as a toy because of the low centre of gravity, it could be almost thrown across the playground tarmac and it would slide and slide - yet stay on its wheels.  School friend had the Metropolis one and that was its fate.  I can still see it now, after being 'new' that morning.  Smashed in roof and battered to bits by the afternoon; but still rollin'

So after what feels like a (Buick) Century, the set as I remember them has been obtained

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Will all have to go in the imminent autumn lockdown purge though, now they've had some time with me

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10 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

I had the Kojak Buick 1/36 as a child.  The Kojak figure turned up again in recent years, but car itself long gone even though it was 'looked after'

I can remember well the model stood out as a toy because of the low centre of gravity, it could be almost thrown across the playground tarmac and it would slide and slide - yet stay on its wheels.  School friend had the Metropolis one and that was its fate.  I can still see it now, after being 'new' that morning.  Smashed in roof and battered to bits by the afternoon; but still rollin'

So after what feels like a (Buick) Century, the set as I remember them has been obtained

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Will all have to go in the imminent autumn lockdown purge though, now they've had some time with me

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Interested :)

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1 hour ago, sierraman said:

The Camargue is stripped down ready for a coat of Russet Brown. Getting all the trim off wasn’t easy.

That's weird, almost everything fell off mine by boxing day 1988 after receiving it from Santa the morning before! I was 9 by then so well out of my reckless phase and I glued them back on as they fell off. It's still complete and on my shelf today.

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7 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

That's weird, almost everything fell off mine by boxing day 1988 after receiving it from Santa the morning before! I was 9 by then so well out of my reckless phase and I glued them back on as they fell off. It's still complete and on my shelf today.

Oddly enough it’s got paint stripper on the shell but the paint stripper isn’t touching it. The paint seems really tough!

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