Shite in Miniature II

[Datsuncog]

This is what yesterday's mail-call brought...

Oh yes.

Oh very yes.

I've been looking for one of these for a while, having missed out on a silver one back in March.

I think this is possibly an earlier version, with the Rover badge printed on the box insert, and black painted sections on the A and B-pillars - the one that got away was plain silver, with no black paint (making it look a bit wrong). And I do like this oh-so-80s pale metallic blue paintwork.

Everything opens! (Well, other than the back doors.)

The bonnet and boot hinges are very delicate, positioned where they would be on its real-life counterpart - as opposed to the usual centre-mount double hinges. This enables them to open much wider than otherwise possible, but it also explains why so many playworn eBay examples are missing their bonnets.

The tinted glazing is a new one for my Corgi models - not only does it look quite neat, but carries over onto the opening sunroof. My BMW E30 and Mercedes 190 have a black opaque sliding sunroof; this one is made of the same semi-translucent plastic as the windows. Nice touch.

The headlights are slightly cockamamie, but otherwise the proportions are very nicely done at the front.

Other than the slightly-over shiny wheeltrims (for some reason, the Volvo 760 of the same era manages to have type-correct trims which are less plasticky-looking, somehow), and an unfortunate bit of flashing making the passenger window look raggy, this really does look very good and sits so very well.

The rear is nicely modelled too, with the panel shut lines very finely done. Like the real thing, the bootlid opens along with the numberplate and reflectors, while the tail lights remain in situ.

Downsides include the hilariously squint 'number plate' on this example (which I may attempt to remove and refit at less of an angle), plus the annoyingly typical Corgi paint bubbles and flashing along edges.

It is a bit of a shame that all of the 'mint boxed' examples of '80s Corgis I've tracked down have arrived with numerous factory paint and casting blemishes. I appreciate that these cars were made and sold as toys for kids, and that Corgi maintained its GB manufacturing operation long after all its competitiors shifted production lines to the Far East - so they had to be quick off the production line to stay competitive - but it's this slightly lax approach to quality control which holds them back from being absolutely fantastic. The 'mask & spray' black paintwork also suffers a little from overspray and missing some bits - but I know I'm just being picky.

On the other hand, it does mean that a proper bare-metal restoration of a model like this could result in something much better than the factory finish.

As an additional point of order, the wingmirrors are also very oddly swept back and angled in a way that couldn't surely be much use to a driver...

But! Playing fussy buggers aside, this is a charming little toy and I'm pretty delighted with it.

Ready to join the rest of my fleet of 1980s executive saloons by Corgi!

[sierraman]

When I was a kid our neighbour had a Montego in that colour. I remember seeing the Corgi Rover 800 in a model shop that used to be on or near the sea front at Blackpool in the early 90’s. It was a toss up for me to spend my holiday money on a Rover 800 police car or a Volvo 760 and caravan combo. Captain Sensible here picked the Volvo which happily I still have. 

[Split_Pin]

I have the more common Police version. I believe there were several issues because I got my original example in the late 1980s which was 'West Mercia'. This was swapped some years later but fast forward to 1997 and my friend was selling some diecast so I bought his one which had more of a 'jam sandwich' stripe as opposed to the yellow and blue of the earlier one. I made a new roofbar from plasticardb, touched in the paint and applied matt black to the pillars.

One oddity of both models is that the bootlid wouldn't stay shut. I think it was catching on the lower edge of the back window. A brilliant model from my childhood.

[Amishtat]

I had (and presumably still have somewhere) both the silver and police versions of that but until now had completely forgotten about the bootlid that wouldn't close. Never seen a pale blue example though, that looks lovely. 

[RoadworkUK]

I have that precise 800, because of course I do. Bought it MIB from a local charity shop that went through a phase of having quite incredible diecast stuff in it – up to the point when they realised just how good a revenue stream it was and put prices up tenfold.

Anyway, I love all the opening bits, but it saddens me that there's so much flashing and shonky paint everywhere. Makes a nice stablemate to the Corgi SD1, incidentally, which boasts the same strange headlight treatment.

[Burnside]

21 hours ago, flat4alfa said:

The 1:32 Fiat 500 would find a home here 

Hi it's yours! Just pm me and I can post it out with the others that are still here from before 

[bunglebus]

11 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

 

The white HW Crack-Ups police car is for Bunglebus, as per last week's request. The blue variant that's missing a wheel (but is otherwise ok) is also for Bunglebus, should he fancy it!

Whoop whoop! Yes please!

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Aah, the Brooomstick Marzal:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Diecast-Matchbox-Superfast-No20-Lamborghini-Marzal-Rare-Yellow/323863657123?hash=item4b67c73aa3:g:jQcAAOSwzStdBM2E

I collected a tonne of these in varying conditions as some kind of obsession. Marzal had minor body and base casting variations but nothing too interesting. I always wanted to find (but never did) a closed rear wheel casting in this colour from the earlier releases. There's nothing to suggest there is one either! Porsche 910 I had an equal amount of but only the glazing shades varied on those which is always a debatable varying degree of sun fade but I did have a virtually clear version which was the 'special' of the bunch I suppose. Brooomsticks came with a general release gold Merc too.

They were't 'remote control' or 'magic'. You stuck a bit of fishing line to it and dragged it around eventually getting increasingly frustrated at the false advertising so then using it as a lasso.

 

 

[Datsuncog]

8 minutes ago, BoggyMires said:

They were't 'remote control' or 'magic'. You stuck a bit of fishing line to it and dragged it around eventually getting increasingly frustrated at the false advertising so then using it as a lasso. 

Having only experienced these Broomsticks through the oh-so-exciting catalogues of the time, I always wondered exactly how they worked...

...basically, they didn't then!

?

[egg]

This was £3.50 posted, which is fine for a 55 year old+ model. It will get new decals and a repainted grille.

[sierraman]

I’ve got a ‘broomstick’ Marzal. It was a unique to the broomstick kit.  Quite a scarce one to find today. I think by this point Lesney we’re trying anything and everything, their product range was massive from the cars to wierd stuff like British Inn Signs, Fighting Furies, Ginny Dolls, the action men rip offs, pre school Live N Learn, AMT kits, colouring  books, the list goes on...

It was the 70’s marketing philosophy of cornering every market.

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

If you see one of these, get it.

One of my favorite castings, a heavy model too... I tried to get to the bottom of this release. If memory serves me right it was designed for some event of which the 1992 event itself or the promotional rights with MB ended very quickly. I had to try hard to remember that though. The majority of this models release has no Tampo.

 

[DoctorRetro]

Charity shop haul... 

One of those multi-bags, usually full of crap models.. 

But I think I got lucky today! 

Astra Mk2. Matchbox 

Mercedes 450 SEL Tomica

Mercedes Ambulance 220D. Corgi

Post Van. Corgi. 

Transit pickup. Corgi

Transit Police. Corgi. 

Mercedes truck. Majorette. 

Mack Fire Engine. Corgi 1:43

Opel Manta. Corgi 1:43

 

Not bad for £2.50 eh? 

[sierraman]

1 hour ago, BoggyMires said:

If you see one of these, get it.

One of my favorite castings, a heavy model too... I tried to get to the bottom of this release. If memory serves me right it was designed for some event of which the 1992 event itself or the promotional rights with MB ended very quickly. I had to try hard to remember that though. The majority of this models release has no Tampo.

 

Not seen that one before, I’ve got it in the various red and tan colours but none has the tampo. 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

I was (years ago) having a phase of boosting my early 90's collection. A load came up for sale in Portugal and this crest Rolls Royce was among that lot, I had no idea until it turned up. There's not much known about it to be honest, only that it ran during 1992 only and I suspect was the first of the red ones. Obviously, finding out why this model release was ever created and the numbers made will instantly make it OMG-RARE-HTF-YOUNOWOTITSWURTH£££.

[bunglebus]

Picked up this HW blackwall Peterbilt locally, apparently he has loads more he wants to sell

 

20190727_101002 by RS, on Flickr

[Amishtat]

There's probably a dozen or more little jobs I could be doing on a Sunday morning so obviously I chose to waste my time thusly. Even the dog gave me one of those scornful/pitying looks. 

 

[Amishtat]

Actually worked better than expected given that none of them are bad enough to be worth restoring. I do have an aerial for the Impala somewhere. 

[paulscavalier]

That's worked well on that

[Amishtat]

Yeah, I can wholeheartedly recommend using 25 year old Halfords polish on your sixties models. It has brought up a shine on stuff I thought to be well past it so it wasn't a total waste of a morning at least. 

[paulscavalier]

Indeed. I have used some good cutting polish  on the glass to bring back a shine

 

[sierraman]

Bought this today. Initially I thought the Duple Bus had been vandalised, research suggests it was part of the late 70’s 999 set where it was meant to resemble a burnt out bus! 

[Datsuncog]

On ‎7‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 9:24 PM, Jon said:

Took another trip to my favourite Auckland dealer for a fix a couple of weeks back...

Jon, thanks for another cracking round-up - and oh, those pics! Next-level stuff, for sure!

Quote

Although I like collecting 1/43s, I somehow don't really see BBuragos as willing subjects and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the fact that I like 1/43 scale because I didn't had very few as a kid, though I did have a few Bburagos. But then I've also collected stuff I did own, so who knows - I just seem to have a slight aversion to 1/43 Bburagos, even though their detailing is quite nice. Maybe it's the stickers most of them came with - I'd much rather them without. In this case though, I really think it was the box that sold it to me.

I'm also curiously ambivalent about Bburago 1/43, and I used to have quite a lot of them - both when I was very young, and in more recent times. I think I find the generic chunky wheels a bit off-putting, and some earlier ones seemed a touch crude, maybe. I also tended to gravitate towards bog-standard models, and ones with loads of garish rally stickers tended to put me off - another tendency for Bburago in the 1980s. The chod-worthy selection of vehicles modelled is excellent, though - and in later years I had the Fiat Bravo, Renault Clio 2 and Citroen Xantia in civilian colours, including special boxes which suggested some sort of manufacturer launch tie-in.

I vaguely pondered whether I could somehow replace the wheels and axles with something more appropriate, but in the end I moved them all on to pastures new.

I had that Saab 900 Turbo in black, and once the tatty-looking rally stickers were removed it was a nice wee model. Yours looks good as it is, though!

Quote

Bagged a couple of gems from the 50p tub, even though I must admit that these aren't very good renditions of their subjects. I think the 17 has been flattered by this casting but I wonder what BMW thought of this re-imagining of their CS?! That said, they're both pleasingly orange and notable that they're not the same shade, either. Also nice that someone peeled the stickers off back in the day, as I don't think I could've but would've wanted to. I'm not sure either why I'd place so much value on hypothetical 40+ year old paper label remnants but there you go.

I have a sneaking appreciation for both those models, even though they're a world away from the crisp precision of 1960s Lesneys… and I'd never realised that they were slightly different shades of orange.

They do look better without the stickers, yet I would also be inexplicably loathe to remove them if they were still in situ (as per the tatty and unlikely 'Red Cross' decals on that white Mira Citroen CX earlier in the year, which I couldn't bring myself to peel off).

Quote

Defo have this Aspen skiing truck in my childhood stash and quite probably in better condition too, which makes me wonder why I dropped another half quid on this? Probably had the feeling I' d lost the top on my UK-based one and that somehow justified it but in reality, it stems more from the fact that I seemingly have 0% control of my adult being, when it comes to this kind of thing.

My self-control is also sorely lacking, as evidenced over the preceding pages... 

On ‎7‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 10:20 PM, Jon said:

...searching for 'Corgi Whizzwheels Ford Escort' just now led me to learn of 1980's Brazilian issued Corgi Kiko Juniors and some fantastic versions I'd not seen before...

I've never heard of those at all... kind of like Corgi's version of the infamous Bulgarian Matchboxes. They're so awful they're brilliant - and of course now I want them too.

 

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 12:16 PM, auld_ALS said:

I have the more common Police version. I believe there were several issues because I got my original example in the late 1980s which was 'West Mercia'. This was swapped some years later but fast forward to 1997 and my friend was selling some diecast so I bought his one which had more of a 'jam sandwich' stripe as opposed to the yellow and blue of the earlier one. I made a new roofbar from plasticardb, touched in the paint and applied matt black to the pillars.

One oddity of both models is that the bootlid wouldn't stay shut. I think it was catching on the lower edge of the back window. A brilliant model from my childhood.

 

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 12:32 PM, Amishtat said:

I had (and presumably still have somewhere) both the silver and police versions of that but until now had completely forgotten about the bootlid that wouldn't close. Never seen a pale blue example though, that looks lovely. 

Hey, glad you liked the blue Rover Sterling - I've never seen one properly out of the box (though the police version was in the range for long enough and the model shop I worked in sold them, so I could have easily acquired one).

I suppose the downside of those very fine shut lines around the bonnet and boot mean that any small deviation in castings/mouldings knock the geometry off... the boot on mine closes very nicely, but a shift in a quarter of a millimetre around the hinge would cause the glazing to foul it quite badly. Most vexing.

 

On ‎7‎/‎26‎/‎2019 at 1:53 PM, RoadworkUK said:

I have that precise 800, because of course I do. Bought it MIB from a local charity shop that went through a phase of having quite incredible diecast stuff in it – up to the point when they realised just how good a revenue stream it was and put prices up tenfold.

Anyway, I love all the opening bits, but it saddens me that there's so much flashing and shonky paint everywhere. Makes a nice stablemate to the Corgi SD1, incidentally, which boasts the same strange headlight treatment.

Aye, it's always slightly annoying when someone in a charity shop discovers eBay... while I don't begrudge them maximising donations, sometimes they can go a bit too far the other way in terms of over-grading, or failing to recognise that an example on sale for £££££ online is some sort of ultra-rare variant, and not quite the same as the chipped, tyreless toy in front of them... (see also: vinyl records).

I'll be looking for an SD1 to keep it company soon! Unfortunately my childhood original (metallic blue with tan interior) accompanied me to beach quite a lot, and ended up looking like a real SD1 with rampant corrosion and blistering paint. Ooo-er.

On ‎7‎/‎27‎/‎2019 at 11:51 AM, TheDoctor said:

Charity shop haul... 

One of those multi-bags, usually full of crap models.. 

But I think I got lucky today! 

Astra Mk2. Matchbox 

Mercedes 450 SEL Tomica

Mercedes Ambulance 220D. Corgi

Post Van. Corgi. 

Transit pickup. Corgi

Transit Police. Corgi. 

Mercedes truck. Majorette. 

Mack Fire Engine. Corgi 1:43

Opel Manta. Corgi 1:43

 

Not bad for £2.50 eh? 

That's a total bargain - nicely done! The Tomica Merc in particular is quite a find.

Makes a nice change from cheapo Poundland-grade no-name diecasts. There's another fella in the Friday tat market who sometimes has small bags of diecast too, but I'm disinclined to take half a dozen cheap 'n' nasty generic sportscars just to get one playworn Lesney… well bought!

[Datsuncog]

15 hours ago, sierraman said:

Bought this today. Initially I thought the Duple Bus had been vandalised, research suggests it was part of the late 70’s 999 set where it was meant to resemble a burnt out bus! 

That's fantastic... I'd only ever seen a pic of the 3021 'Emergency 999' Gift Set with the blue 'smoked' Mercedes minibus, though with a Duple shown on the box illustration - it seems that there were many many variations made of this set, but your bus is from one of the early ones.

Love the box art to the rear of this one.

 

Seems that after a few years the 'emergency scenario' was downscaled slightly to involve a Mercedes bus and a Land Rover towtruck, rather than the big Holmes Wrecker.

New boxes by the late '70s saw the end of the Duple on the box.

Apparently, smoked and unsmoked versions of both the Duple coach and the Mercedes are known to have been included in the sets.

Really unusual one, and yours looks in excellent condition. 

Superfasts Mod Rod looks in decent nick, too. Good finds!

[sierraman]

Good job I didn’t set about trying to get the black stuff off! 

[bunglebus]

I got the back of the K-2001 to go with the front I already had. Slightly broken on the missile launcher and of course the tracks are missing - small black drive belt may suffice.

The front fires out with a satisfying "ping"

 

20190730_113025 by RS, on Flickr

 

20190730_113641 by RS, on Flickr

 

Also saw these pre-production versions on Facebook

 

FB_IMG_1564472361390 by RS, on Flickr

 

FB_IMG_1564472368738 by RS, on Flickr

[bunglebus]

Thought it might be fun to do a couple of comparisons while I was going through my collection - large and small, Corgi Vs Matchbox, old and new

[Datsuncog]

4 hours ago, bunglebus said:

I got the back of the K-2001 to go with the front I already had. Slightly broken on the missile launcher and of course the tracks are missing - small black drive belt may suffice.

Also saw these pre-production versions on Facebook

FB_IMG_1564472361390 by RS, on Flickr

FB_IMG_1564472368738 by RS, on Flickr

That's impressive - I've never seen the big K-2001 with both parts joined together to make one vehicle. 

A shuffle through my old catalogues also indicates that the K-2004 Rocket Striker first appeared as the K-111 Missile Launcher in the BattleKings range in 1976, the year before the Adventure 2000 range was launched.

(That's your scan from the 1979/80 catalogue I've drawn on, BTW! But it does also appear in the '76 catalogue.)

I wonder whether the Adventure 2000 toys came about as a logical extension of these 'fantasy' battle vehicles... hmmm.

[bunglebus]

Yes I'd noticed that as sometimes the darker green ones turn up.

Have another little n large

[Frogchod]

Another addition to my reverse rake window collection.

A Lincoln Continental.

Modified from a Chinese Dinky Lincoln Premiere.