Shite in Miniature II

[sierraman]

I think I’d have gone temporarily blind with excitement at having this as a kid.

[sierraman]

[sierraman]

The sight that would have made most of incontinent with excitement. 

[vulgalour]

Work has been progressing slowly on the Morris Oxford-ing of the Morestone Austin Cambridge.  I've got as much of the body filling done as I think I can now, so I've moved on to constructing the new grille from beading wire, and the bumper ends from Milliput.  When all this has dried and cured I can file it down to the proper shapes and throw some primer on to see what I've got.  There will no doubt be even more filing and sanding to do.

The main differences between Oxford and Cambridge is the shape of the rear wings, the side moulding on the front door and front wing, and the front grille.  For the side trim, I'm going to have to hand paint it because I've not found a way of attaching very fine wire or thread that doesn't leave me with  very visible glue where I don't want it.  The new grille I've made will be trimmed down on the lower edge, and filed, to tidy that up.  The bumper ends are massively oversized right now and will more closely resemble the rear bumper when I've done.  This has been much more challenging than I'd anticipated.

[bunglebus]

10 hours ago, sierraman said:

 

 

I had the convoy truck stop, loved it! Wish my mum had kept stuff like that but it probably went to a jumble sale

[sierraman]

In a life parallel to yours it seems I had the truck stop and it also ended up binned. 

[Split_Pin]

Seems they recycled the Truckstop et al many times over up until the 1990s as the Electronic Service Centre as they all look very similar.

My favourite toy car related accessory was the Corgi Juniors 4-in-a-row garage because they looked just like council lockups everywhere.

[eddyramrod]

22 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

the Corgi Juniors 4-in-a-row garage because they looked just like council lockups everywhere.

I had at least one set of those garages when they were branded Husky.  In fact I think I still have one block, though it may have suffered some damage.  Just like the real thing then!

 

 

ETA: I suppose now I have to find and photograph it for you pervs!

[Tenmil Socket]

12 hours ago, sierraman said:

The sight that would have made most of incontinent with excitement. 

I remember a similar display for Majorette's in the plastic cartons in the early eighties...

[Tenmil Socket]

That object on the parcel shelf reminds me of the type of graffiti you'd find on toilet walls ?

[Tenmil Socket]

It would be great if Matchbox brought out a modern 'Superkings' range...

[Split_Pin]

33 minutes ago, Tenmil Socket said:

It would be great if Matchbox brought out a modern 'Superkings' range...

As a 10 year old in 1989, I always wished they would bring out a white Metro 'Surf' special edition and fitted with the same wheels that adorned the white Sierra Cosworth which was released that year.

[sierraman]

3 hours ago, Split_Pin said:

Seems they recycled the Truckstop et al many times over up until the 1990s as the Electronic Service Centre as they all look very similar.

My favourite toy car related accessory was the Corgi Juniors 4-in-a-row garage because they looked just like council lockups everywhere.

Yeah, I still have the rather unlikely sounding Emergency Centre that’s based on the Truck stop. I used to like the car wash they did. Actually worked, in fact mine still does, the kids like playing with it. 

Had the lock up as well, sadly not got it anymore. Might have to make one from MDF...

[Datsuncog]

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 5:09 PM, bunglebus said:

Bought a bunch of Yat Mings, mostly they're Christmas cracker quality stuff but there are some nice ones that made it worth it;

This was the one I really wanted - looks to me like a copy of the Matchbox Mach I Mustang? It has a loose rivet at the front but I can fix that

20191111_145424 by RS, on Flickr

 

That does look suspiciously like the Matchbox casting, right down to the bonnet having a rectangular section where the Lesney original had a cut-out... hmmm.

I hadn't actually realised until you were putting together the Vantastic/Piston Popper just how different the Matchbox Mustang castings were right across the board; I'd assumed they were all broadly the same casting with some tweaks.

I mean, I'd always thought the Piston Popper was just a Rolamaticisation of the original Boss Mustang, but the front ends are totally different:

The Piston Popper has much larger headlights, a better-defined grille and a completely different bonnet and wing profile from the earlier Boss Mustang.

And, as you noticed during your build, the Vantastic is very very similar to the Piston Popper - but quite not the same either, with the base casting being a smidge wider on the Rolamatics version. Never would have guessed it either.

The widebody IMSA Mustang, meanwhile, seems to have taken the bonnet casting from the Boss Mustang but has a slightly different light/grille treatment yet again.

One of the things I enjoy most about this thread is that it's got me looking at my familiar old toys again, but I'm seeing them now in a whole new way.

 

Quote

Camper van …

20191111_145803 by RS, on Flickr

20191111_145820 by RS, on Flickr

20191111_145834 by RS, on Flickr

That's really nice - and weirdly, as someone who spent an awful lot of time browsing the Majorette spinner racks in pharmacies and newsagents, I don't ever recall seeing this casting. Nicely bought!

Opening rear door is a nice touch; though the luckless fly may argue otherwise...

 

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 10:58 PM, flat4alfa said:

arghhhh

Ran low on money last month, took the 5-pack back, amongst other things

Having pangs of regret!

I mean, just look at it

Mmm, I am very partial to the Chevy Van in all its forms... watch this space!

 

17 hours ago, egg said:

Let's have some close ups on the newly arrived Mercedes 300SE. 

This version may have originally been part of the ferry set, has anyone got one of those by the way?

I've always wanted one of those, but they do seem to be a clean fortune.

Appears there's three main variants: 

I think the blue and white version in your pic is the early type, then the all-grey 'Commando' version which came with some army vehicles. The red  and white version seems to be the later 1970s type.

The selection of vehicles included seems to have been a bit arbitrary, although the motorboat and trailer seems to have appeared in most sets.

Although the box illustration maybe looks more impressive than the actual ferry, I'd like to see one properly detailed...

 

14 hours ago, Bren said:

Oh and by the way loaded with cars they don't float.

Matchbox Ferry Disaster Playset? Hmmm... controversial.

That said, I did own a cheapo plastic moulded rear-loading car ferry (by Honeywell?) which I used to 'anchor' (string/big stone) in shallow water at the seaside, and then bombard from a distance with compressed balls of sand, to see how long it would take before it sank or capsized...

I'm sure I lost more than one or two of my Matchbox cars that way (the boat could carry about 9, if memory serves). War is hell, kids.

Dunno where it went - by the end I'd painted it up with rust streaks and glued on various bits of broken plastic kits, to make it look intentionally horrible like some sort of abandoned ship. So possibly it was quietly binned while my back was turned.

 

I also had a Bruder ro-ro ferry which I sold on last year, but it was only good for HO scale cars (and it was very toy-like).

[Datsuncog]

Talking about playsets, the only one I had from new was the Motor City 500 set:

It was an impressive bit of kit, and I liked the way it could be reconfigured into different sorts of buildings, a bit like Lego.

I also coveted the truck stop and service centre, but never had 'em.

I did have the Hot Wheels Construction Site (portable carry case thing) mentioned a few pages back, so I wasn't doing too badly, mind.

The 500 set was no doubt flogged for a pittance (still in its box!) at a car boot sale sometime in the mid-90s. Ah now...

 

Does anyone remember Corgi's ill-fated efforts to muscle in on this multi-level playset market in the late 1980s?

I have a 1988 trade catalogue giving this whole spiel about fantastic opportunities and brilliant mark-up, followed by pages and pages of... really weird, really grey, really bland plastic sets that don't make any sense, and which I couldn't imagine any child wanting to own.

In fact, they look more like the dashboard out of a base Metro than a child's toy. Really odd.

I know Corgi did an Eddie Stobart depot set in the 1990s which was similar to the Matchbox Convoy truck stop, but these pre-date all of that.

Must scan some pics of that catalogue later on, as I can find nothing online about them.

[sierraman]

Yeah Corgi did the Autocity Range, the road with the bridge was good, still have that, the multi storey car park was less convincing however. 

I’ve got a shit load of off cuts knocking about, I often think it would be great to knock up a showroom or something. Or a dodgy used car lot. 

[flat4alfa]

21 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

I know Corgi did an Eddie Stobart depot set in the 1990s which was similar to the Matchbox Convoy truck stop, but these pre-date all of that.

I was too old by then for this.  Discovered cars and girls, you see.

[flat4alfa]

27 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

In fact, they look more like the dashboard out of a base Metro

Talking of dashboards, you've just reminded me of this

Don't think I ever saw one outside of the catalogues....

[flat4alfa]

I had this playset as a young child.  I wish I'd looked after it.  Still have the figures and some of the vehicles, but everything else gone

[bramz7]

I had some BP branded multi story when I was 5 or so, it used to collapse with alarming regularity. My brother had a better one, think it was a Matchbox thing circa 1997....which I very nearly broke and had a meltdown over on the day he got it all those years ago. Funny how the utter terror I felt then is still burned into my head. 

[sierraman]

Anyone remember those cheap multi storey car parks you got at Woolworths, it had a sort of central lift and parking slots either side?

[flat4alfa]

[junkyarddog]

I picked up a few sets of these knocked off Matchbox roadways,during the summer at a car boot.

Note all the matchbox cars on the box.

The delights contained within.

 

[155V6]

I've got the Corgi lockup garages,in red rather than the usual yellow.I'll get a picture when I get home.

It was also recycled into the Coastguard set,and this garage sold by Avon the cosmetics company.I saw it last week on eBay but forgot to bid.Avon sold a couple of sets of Corgi Juniors too,that's where some of the unbranded Corgi Juniors come from.

[Datsuncog]

Coupla new arrivals yesterday.

These have been looking at me for years, from their glass case over at the model shop in Belfast's Smithfield Market.

And yesterday I finally broke, and bought two of them. US releases, both.

 

While the plain black Thunderbird is obviously superior as a model, the tampo printed cream and red one appealed because nostalgia...

Yes, this is a mint/boxed version of a toy I received back at Christmas 1985, and plainly I it gave some hard use over the next lot of years.

I'm not quite sure why I like comparing my battered one side-by-side with an as-new example, but I kinda do...

Maybe it's something to do with the lived-in physicality of the changes I wrought on my childhood original: running it over walls and up and down driveways; firing it off flights of steps (in best Dukes of Hazzard stylee); burying it in the sandpit (and forgetting it was there until the next summer); and yes, loading it onto a plastic boat at the beach and then sand-bombing it until it sank.

There's stories there, I guess. Sort of like a before and after. And despite rolling off the factory lines in their millions, I like to think that no two battered Matchbox cars are exactly the same - the chips and scuffs will always be slightly different. I fondly imagine I could recognise some of mine by their unique patina.

 

Funnily enough though, this Thunderbird does have an actual story attached. A written one. 

 

So it was January 1986.

I was in Primary Two, which due to the peculiar way in which the education system works in Northern Ireland, meant that I'd already enjoyed a year and a half of formal schooling, despite the fact I was only five years and six months of age.

I was one of the youngest in the year. A wee June baby, as they're apparently known in the profession. Children who start school just after their fourth birthday, and are noticeably smaller and less able to adapt to the rigidity of a school environment. It was a fairly big primary school too, with nearly 600 kids.

In common with most of my class, I did not particularly like my P2 teacher, Miss Finlay. She was old-school in every sense, having first come to the school not long after it opened in the 1950s. 

However,  the one upside of Miss Finlay's room was that she had a big box of cars. Old cars.

I don't know if they'd belonged to some family member of hers, or if they'd been donated, or otherwise acquired from jumble sale cast-offs, but they mainly consisted of 1940s and 50s Dinkys together with 1950s and 60s Lesneys, many of them King Size.

All of them were beyond fucked, with many just reduced to indescribably bent and battered shells, often with no roof or axles. Something like this would represent the absolute best condition available:

The one I remember best of all, for some reason, is the Lesney K-12 Foden Breakdown Wagon. Like this one, only with the tyres gone, no paint or glazing, and the crane on the back snapped off.

I mean, as playthings they were total rubbish, but I absolutely loved these moments of respite during what was called 'free play', when we had half an hour to muck about with whatever toys we liked from the boxes in the corner. I always made a dash for the box of cars.

So anyway. January 1986, not long after term had started again after the Christmas break. I was sitting there at my tiny desk, probably daydreaming as usual, while Miss Finlay outlined our next task. And all of a sudden my classmates reached into their schoolbags, and it suddenly dawned on me with a sense of rising horror that I'd forgotten something.

We'd been asked, as a topical writing exercise, to bring in a toy we'd received at Christmas which did something, and then write about whatever the thing it was that it did.

For some reason, I'd completely forgotten about this task.

But! All was not necessarily lost.

As ever, I had a car in my pocket. I usually always had a car in my pocket, to fiddle with, or run along the top of a wall. Sometimes the car would get confiscated if it was noticed by the teacher, and then I wouldn't have a car in my pocket. Not until I brought another one in the next day, anyway.

And today, that car was my new Ford Thunderbird.

I glanced around, warily.

Some of the girls had dolls that emulated various bodily functions, as well as those pretend babies' bottles that look like milk is being drunk from it. These were not particularly useful to me.

One or two had those squirty water-filled Tomy game things, where you frantically pushed a plunger button to try to get plastic hoops onto hooks, in soporifically slow motion. Again, not much help.

But I could see a lot of boys with Star Wars stuff, especially those Speeder Bike things from Return of the Jedi, which broke apart when you pressed a button at the back. And Masters of the Universe figures, that did things like show battle damage or 'power punches' and the like.

I was annoyed because, had I remembered, I could have brought in one of my prized Hot Wheels Crack-Ups, which emphatically Did Something. I had two of those. But neither of them happened to be in my pocket today.

But really... who was to know that wasn't what I had in front of me? I just had to fill a page in the book.

Okay. I could wing this.

We'd been told to call the story  "A Christmas Toy' and start with the words "My toy is __________" before going on to describe it.

So I set the Thunderbird on the desk in front of me, opened my story book, and started to write.

 

I hadn't got very far when I realised Miss Finlay was bending over me, reading what I'd written. And, before I knew what was happening, she'd whisked both my book and my Thunderbird away from me and held them up to the class.

"What's this?" she bellowed. "Smash Cars?"

There was a silence from the class.

She started to read out loud, from my book.

"My toy is Smash Cars. They smash and if you smash it - "  she finished and threw the book back onto the desk, then glared down at me.

"Smash Cars? What does it do? You were told to bring in a toy that did something."

I felt the blood run out of my face. She had my car, and I didn't like that.

"Erm, well it does - it's a Smash Car, you can smash it into things and it smashes up - "

"So show me." She threw the Thunderbird back down on the desk. It skittered off and hit the floor, and I dived after it.

Even though I could be a destructive little bugger with my cars, this one still retained its soft newness. I was horrified to notice a chip in the front bumper's bullet overrider, where it had smacked into the scuffed parquet floor.

"Well, the thing is you can only do it once, and it's just new..." I rubbed at my injured car, increasingly aware of how unconvincing my lies were sounding.

"He means Crack-Ups, not Smash Cars."

That was Gareth Murdoch, across the table. 

"No, that's not what it is!" I shot back at him, stung, my face no doubt reddening.

"It's Crack-Ups." Gareth seemed unperturbed. I don't know whether he genuinely thought he was trying to help, or dig me even deeper into a hole.

"Crack-Ups are made by Hot Wheels, this one is by Matchbox. It's a Smash Car. They're COMPLETELY DIFFERENT."

I could feel the situation was rapidly sliding away from me, and my head started to throb. I'm sure my voice was becoming rather shrill, too.

 

But to no avail. Miss Finlay may well have had an encyclopaedic knowledge of diecast and therefore knew I was lying, or she might have just been looking for an excuse to pour out some bitterness on a bleak January morning when retirement still seemed impossibly far away. Either way, she roared at me.

"Enough! This is just an ordinary toy car that doesn't DO anything. It is NOT a Smash Car. YOU are a LIAR."

She cracked me over the knuckles with the wooden ruler she carried expressly for this purpose (yes, this was early 1986 and corporal punishment was still just about legal in state schools, although thinking back I'm astonished to believe it was ever considered appropriate in a class of five-year-olds).

Then she put her blue pen through what I'd written, and drew a line under it. 

"Right! You are going to start again. Write about your car this time, not this stupid Smash Cars lies. Make sure your writing doesn't run downhill. And start it MY TOY IS______"

She wrote the word 'My' in pen, to start me off, and then stalked off, muttering.

I squeezed my sore hand between my knees under the desk, trying not to cry. Like it made any fucking difference whether the car did anything or not. It was a thing of small beauty in its own right, and I was more than capable of describing it. I rubbed at the chipped bumper. I wanted to run out of the classroom, away from Miss Finlay, away from all this bollocks.

 

But I didn't. I did what I was told. And my writing didn't go downhill, not that much anyway (why didn't they ever give us lined jotters?) And I finished it, almost.

I didn't have time to complete the phrase 'left hand side' before the bell rang and we had to hand our books in. That annoyed me.

But at the same time, she didn't notice that I'd inadvertently defied her by restarting my story with the words "My car is..."

Still. I'm quite sure Miss Finlay's long gone by now (if not, she would have to be knocking on 100) - but the Thunderbird is still here.

 

And despite what that crabbit old witch might have thought, I was right, after a fashion - it was a Smash Car, insofar as I did smash it into quite a number of things over the years, clearly.

I was also correct that you can only smash it up once, and you can't really put it back to the way it was. That's kinda it.

But that was enough for me - it didn't have to DO anything else. Although I owned 'action' diecasts like Key Cars, Crack-Ups, Colour Changers, Light 'n' Sound, Flip-Overs, Insiders, etc - these novelties never really appealed to me as much as a good miniature replica of a real-life car. Still don't, really.

So, like my beat-up Cortina MkIV a few weeks ago, every scratch tells a story - for good or for ill.

[egg]

11 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

(yes, this was early 1986 and corporal punishment was still just about legal in state schools, although thinking back I'm astonished to believe it was ever appropriate in a class of five-year-olds).

Crikey DC, what a tale. Took me right back to infant school myself. In my school the headteacher occasionally administered the slipper to your backside. In the early 80's that threat was able to keep me on the straight and narrow and I avoided it!

[vulgalour]

Nearest I ever encountered to corporal punishment in school in the 1980s was some ancient old teacher complaining he couldn't administer it to sort out 'the rough uns'.  I mean, I say ancient, he was probably only in his 50s or 60s, but to pre-teen me, he was practically a dinosaur.  I do remember the kid that brought really big, expensive, NICE diecast to school just to smash up.  Bburago, Dinky, Corgi, that sort of thing.  He'd get new ones at the start of the week, spend the week demolishing them, and turn up the next week with another new one and repeat.  My friends and I didn't much like him.

[junkyarddog]

So much for letting toys fuel your imagination DC,miserable old biddy.

[155V6]

My Corgi garages

[quicksilver]

All this talk of Matchbox and Corgi playsets brings back memories. The Matchbox car wash must have stayed in the catalogue for a long time as I got a brand new one for Christmas some time in the 1990s, which probably came from Argos as most of my presents did in those days. I also had the Corgi Motorcity multi-storey car park and the thing I remember most about it was the showroom on the ground floor with a rotating turntable and working spotlight. Oh to go back to that simpler time when such basic things would impress me.