Shite in Miniature II

[egg]

Colour comparisons

Are there four different colours now?

[bunglebus]

The Morrison's where my mate scored the Super Cougar came up trumps for me today

Batmobile is an interesting one as the film's not out yet

[bunglebus]

55 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Any Corgi R16s I've seen usually have the folding seat mechanism somewhat loose, so the seats just collapse backwards unless a bit of Blu-Tac or similar is blobbed onto the the rotator wheels

The drivers seat has to be either in "dogging" position or how my mum has hers - bolt upright 

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, egg said:

Colour comparisons

Are there four different colours now?

Yes

 

[junkyarddog]

Smoll Honda looks great. 

[sierraman]

Trawling eBay has resulted in a Renault 11 3 door ordered. £3.50 plus post. I had wanted the beige one but it’s the metallic blue example instead but at £3.50 I don’t think that’s bad. It’s the proper 3 door as well not the 5 door James Bond later release.

[eddyramrod]

44 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

Yes

 

Oh there's a blue one now?  Better have a look in Tesco, hadn't I?  I have a yellow one still in the bubble, intending to paint it blue to match one my friend owned years ago.  But if it's available in blue from the factory, so much the better!

[bunglebus]

Wiki says 5 - good luck finding this one!

 

[Datsuncog]

4 hours ago, tom13 said:

Wow that superfast Ute is amazing and not one I have seen before. If you do find a nicer one a sell this one put me on the list.

No worries - and I do have one going spare at the minute:

The one on the left's my bashed-up childhood original; the one on the right is the recent find with the motorbikes still in place. They're both staying for now, but the one in the middle came from the market 50p box last year and is looking for a new home, if you're interested?

[flat4alfa]

5 hours ago, bunglebus said:

front seats that recline individually for...well you can imagine. Only seen this feature on the DS Safari rear seat before

Yes Corgi had the rear seat base and back moving together on the Citroen Safari for hot dogging.  Or should that be 'les chiens chauds'.

Dinky had a similar, but singular, arrangement on their FIAT 2300 Station Wagon

Where the rear seat back could be set for 'i cani caldi'

Which reminds Tiny Tom he must get that order off for missing bonnets, boot lids and tyres.

And stop obsessing about dogging.

[Amishtat]

These saw the light of day for the first time since October. 

[flat4alfa]

This Matchbox Holden Pick-Up I’ve owned since I was in short trousers.

Seem to have looked after this one a bit better than some

I think this was Christmas 1980

Cowboy Colin's aussie cousin is singing a song about roos right now.

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, bunglebus said:

Wiki says 5 - good luck finding this one!

There are two promotional runs of 75 green and another 50 in blue, as Premiums, produced by Mattel for the 2019 International Gathering of Friends at Albuquerque

https://matchboxforum.co.uk/international-gathering-of-friends

Very much doubt they will be seen outside of locked attic man caves in Wisconsin.

[flat4alfa]

1 hour ago, eddyramrod said:

Oh there's a blue one now?  Better have a look in Tesco, hadn't I?  I have a yellow one still in the bubble, intending to paint it blue to match one my friend owned years ago.  But if it's available in blue from the factory, so much the better!

The Blue was a 2020 USA release 

The Terracota was 2020 exclusive to Target and there are none of those stores in the UK either

UK got for 2019 the Green and for 2021 the Yellow.

[bunglebus]

There's a surprise - Mattel ignoring the world outside of the USA

[tom13]

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

No worries - and I do have one going spare at the minute:

The one on the left's my bashed-up childhood original; the one on the right is the recent find with the motorbikes still in place. They're both staying for now, but the one in the middle came from the market 50p box last year and is looking for a new home, if you're interested?

It's all about the bikes for me that make it cool. 

[egg]

10 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

The Blue was a 2020 USA release 

The Terracota was 2020 exclusive to Target and there are none of those stores in the UK either

UK got for 2019 the Green and for 2021 the Yellow.

Umm. So getting the full set might be expensive. 

Even on aliexpress, the blue ones are 19 bucks.

[flat4alfa]

There is a fella at Harrogate who will do one for a tenner, offers

[bunglebus]

3 hours ago, Datsuncog said:

Must be quite unusual for a feature to be added rather than taken away. I didn't even realise mine did this until you pointed it out!

Maybe I was thinking of the Matchbox one

 

[bunglebus]

Oh and I found that the yellow Fire Chief Dodge Monaco from the weekend...

...actually joins the red one...

...as well as the one in Autoshite colours

The yellow must be the oldest as it has the Speed Kings base rather than the overstamped Superkings on the other two

[AndyW201]

Shit the bed! I didn't do too badly getting the blue Merc for £4 then.

Just gutted I missed out on this version from the same seller at the same price...

[eddyramrod]

Well it looks like I'm painting the yellow one then...

Meanwhile, in the showing-off corner...  I've now finished my restoration of my Golden Jacks Rolls Royce, which I've owned from new.

Note the reversal of colour scheme compared to the original!  And while we're here, did I show you my Dinky Ford sweeper?

In Council Yellow, as you can see!  This is how I remember them when I worked on the brushes 40 years ago.

After that, here's what my restored garage looks like today...

[eddyramrod]

Oh and if anyone comes across one of these for next to nothing...

Dinky Studebaker sedan.  This one is my restoration, but I would like one or maybe two in playworn condition, to paint up as film cars.  Fortunately on these old, basic castings, there isn't much to break, so even what looks like scrap is probably not beyond saving.

[sierraman]

@Datsuncog give us a bit of info about the Renault 11 from the Marcel Van Cleemput book?

[flat4alfa]

On 4/25/2019 at 2:36 PM, Datsuncog said:

Another diecast delivery this morning - and another unusual choice of model from Corgi's early-80s lineup:





Yes, appearing in a rather fetching shade of beige that must have had the kids simply hopping up and down with excitement, it's the Renault 11 GTL.



With opening bits.



As catalogue number C384, this model teasingly appeared as a block silhouette in the 1983 Corgi Catalogue billed only as a 'new saloon car' - since, at the time of going to press in late 1982, the Renault 11 had not been officially launched.

Clearly there's been an error in translation here, with the German text rather misleadingly advising a "new English car". At a guess, this piece of text was intended for the Maestro prototype, depicted with a similarly vague description just a few pages earlier.

Just to digress here for a bit about why the company felt the need for this cloak-and-dagger approach: Corgi had a long history of working closely with full-size car manufacturers throughout the late 1950s and 60s in producing toys to coincide with the launch of a new passenger car. Sometimes these came with specially printed boxes, to be used as showroom promotional items.

This concept dates all the way back to the 1930s when US company Tootsietoy produced a range of promotional diecast cars at the request of the premium carmaker Graham-Paige, to be given away to the sons (always sons!) of potential customers visiting their showrooms. Citroen had already used tinplate promo models, but these were beautiful and fragile models for display, and never intended as playthings.

Tootsietoy's Graham-Paiges were available in a variety of body styles using a novel construction method, which consisted of a sturdy two-piece casting riveted together and employing crimped axles fitted with wheel hubs and tiny rubber tyres. Having been shown them by his US importer, model railway and Meccano magnate Frank Hornby was 'inspired' to launch his own rather similar range of Meccano Modelled Miniatures, soon renamed 'Dinky Toys'. Tootsietoy had patented their construction method, and Hornby was extremely lucky not to have been on the receiving end of an international infringement lawsuit.

Naturally, this kind of promotional arrangement required a great deal of trust between Corgi and car manufacturers, who recognised the promotional value of the toys while remaining acutely aware that secrecy was paramount.

Since the design, tooling-up and manufacturing process for these toys could take anywhere up to a year, Corgi factory staff were sworn to secrecy - and random searches were carried out on assembly line workers coming off-shift, to ensure no embargoed castings were smuggled out.

All these precautions ensured that whenever a manufacturer threw the covers off their brand-new product at a motor show, they could be confident that not only would it still come as a surprise to the press and general public, but also that thousands of miniature versions would be immediately available to further stoke the interest of potential buyers and their kids.

Generally this symbiotic process was very effective, although Corgi did get slightly burned when Rover canned their 1960s luxury Land Rover/proto-Range Rover project, the 'Road Rover', at a late stage - by which time Corgi had already allocated it a catalogue code number (212) and was just starting to tool up for production. A single prototype Road Rover toy and mock-up box, kept from the scrap bin by Corgi's chief designer and unwitting archivist, survives. The full-size prototype lives on at Gaydon, I believe.

In the late 1970s Corgi revived this practice, working with Austin-Rover's confidential blueprints (not entirely successfully) to have a model of the Metro ready for the real car's launch in 1980, complete with a patriotic Union Jack box and featuring the same slogans and photography developed for the new baby Austin's print and billboard advertising campaign.

Rather more success was had with their Ford Escort Mk3 the same year, and the gorgeously detailed Sierra 2.3 Ghia in 1982, while the slightly blocky Corgitronics MG Maestro in yellow was depicted in the same 1983 catalogue as the R11 - listed tantalisingly only as a 'new saloon car', to avoid spiking the Maestro's forthcoming launch.



But anyway. Back to this model.

Corgi's 1/36 R11 was initially shipped in a non-standard box which carefully echoed Renault's own corporate palette - but, somewhat misleadingly, the 'Electronic' name on the front referenced the fancy-pants electronically voiced trip computer fitted to the real-life Renault 11 TSE Electronic model. The toy inside the box contained nothing in the way of battery-operated jiggery-pokery whatsoever.

With Corgi expanding their actual Corgitronic range of electronic feature vehicles, it's quite likely this caused a degree of confusion amongst young customers who were at a loss to understand where the advertised 'electronic' element was hidden. Just to confuse matters further, the toy was clearly badged as a GTL both on the base and on the bootlid - whose full-size counterpart boasted no such 'Electronic' functionality. This was only an option on the top-spec TSE model.

However, I wonder whether this was done at Renault's insistence - they were, after all, so busting with pride at their top of the line R11's voice synthesized dashboard that they actually moved the real car's launch forward by a few weeks just so they could pip Austin-Rover's Maestro VDP and be the first to market with this reliable* and much-loved* feature/gimmick.

Looking at the actual model - well, it's perhaps not the very best of renderings, portraying the three-door French hatch as a little more dumpy than it appears on the road. But the proportions aren't awful, and it's certainly a nice solid model with a chunky feel to it.

The front end is also curious, with no Renault 'diamond of doom' badge, and a strange lick of silver paint used to define the grille. It looks to my eye rather more like a reworking of the Fiat 128 3P than an R11. But again, it's possible that Corgi's designers were working from some early or unclear blueprints from Renault, and simply did the best they could to model a car that didn't yet exist.



The plastic mouldings on the lower flanks have been neatly done too - as with the Matra Rancho, Corgi opted to use an all-in-one moulding for the bumpers and lower plastic panels, with rivets holding the same features onto the opening doors. It certainly gives a much neater and crisper finish than simply spray-masking a section of the body in black - although attaching these additional mouldings undoubtedly added to the cost of the model.





As well as the beige version with a very red interior, it seems that a metallic blue version with a dark grey interior was also produced in 1983:



The R11 finally appeared with its own name and a proper picture in the 1984 Corgi Catalogue, wearing a somewhat more appealing bright red finish and with a brown interior.



But even as these catalogues were being printed, Mettoy was on the verge of bankruptcy - partly due to its heavy investment in the doomed Dragon Personal Computer project - and in October 1983, the official receivers were called in. The Swansea factory stood idle until March 1984 while rescue packages were concocted.

By the time a rescue deal was finalised and the doors reopened following the protracted management buyout process, the re-formed company's primary focus was on converting the warehouses of dead stock into hard cash. Hence Corgi's mid-to-late 1984 output tended to be somewhat chaotic, with mix-and-match boxes and inserts and all manner of haphazard colour and decal combinations produced simply to use up whatever they could find in the stores. I haven't yet seen any red examples of the R11, and since most books on Corgi's history fixate rather on the 'Golden Years' of the 1960s, with the early 1980s output warranting barely a mention, I've yet to uncover an analysis of what appeared (or disappeared) during this turbulent time.

I believe these lucky-dip assortments were sold on via wholesalers at rock-bottom prices, with the model shop I used to work in still carrying NOS from 1984 well into the late 1990s - often with stickers obscuring the 'wrong' code or model name on a box. With that in mind, the R11s which appeared on retailer shelves in generic black and yellow outer boxes, in either the beige or the blue colourway, probably date from this era.



The 1985 Corgi Toys catalogue marked a fresh start, with all-new packaging and a new 'dynamic' corporate logo which was to last well into the 1990s - even if many of the models themselves were becoming somewhat long in the tooth.



1985 also marked a noticeable change in Corgi's business priorities, with the company focusing heavily on promotional tie-ins with the likes of BP, Mobil and Fina, rather than relying solely on a dwindling toy shop network to shift their stock. The popularity of Lledo's 'Days Gone' promotional range had not gone unnoticed, with the (wretched) Corgi Cameo Collection soon introduced to paste any old livery onto loose approximations of 1920s commercial vehicles. Despite the questionable authenticity and poor detailing of these self-described 'collectables', they proved roaringly successful as on-pack giveaways and certainly made excellent business sense.

As well as the expanding Corgi Juniors line, the 'Turbos' range of smaller 1/43 rally and racing cars was also introduced, their pocket-money prices possible through using plastic bases and simple castings with no opening features. Featuring some quite unusual models (including that well-regarded* rally car, the Saab 9000, plus quite a pretty BMW 635i), unfortunately the Toyota Corolla TE71 Liftback never saw production, eventually appearing on shelves in the later Corolla AE86 'Twincam' form instead.

Alongside old favourites like the James Bond Aston Martin and Rolls Royce Corniche, other new castings appeared with a sporting international flavour - such as the Toyota Supra (fortunately a much better casting than the catalogue prototype suggests) although the 'Magic Top' Mercedes 500SEC appears to have been stillborn, as I can find no reference to it anywhere.

However, there were casualties as part of this restructuring - more niche, less sporty 1/35 scale models like the Peugeot 505, Triumph Acclaim and Honda Prelude, plus the Renault 11, found themselves deleted from the range. The R11 had barely a year of full production. The Corgitronics range was also sacrificed in its entirety, presumably as a cost-cutting measure, killing off the relatively complex MG Maestro with working lights.

While not quite a common model due to its limited production life and a somewhat 'grey porridge' subject matter, perhaps the lack of kiddy-appeal is what kept so many R11s safely in their original packaging by adult collectors. As a result they're not hard to find for sale online, should you desire one, although the blue variants do seem to command a premium. MIB examples appear more common than played-with ones, interestingly; the opposite of models such as the long-running Fiat X/19, which are quite easy to find in a state of total dereliction but seem much harder to pin down in a factory-fresh state.

Incidentally, this model appears to share no components with the blue James Bond 'A View To A Kill' Renault 11 in Parisian Taxi livery, which Corgi produced in the early 2000s in the same approximate scale. I think we had a discussion upthread about toymakers producing totally different castings of the same basic model?



I had hoped to have another unusual Corgi of the same era to share as well today, but the eBay vendor has since cancelled the sale and refunded me as, apparently, it turned out to not be as mint as he'd described it. So the search for that one continues...

^ A previous Renault 11 article by van Cogput

[flat4alfa]

On 3/12/2021 at 11:14 PM, Datsuncog said:

And on that subject, raised earlier...

Another example of early 2000s Corgi make-do-and-mend - a reworking of the short-lived C384 Renault 11 casting from 1983/84, that popped up in their 'Definitive James Bond Collection' from 2001.

I've been after a later version of the 11 for a while, just to see what similarities, if any, the 5dr taxi has with the earlier 3dr.

Mmm, phares jaunes... and quite a bit of commonality in the overall shape.

The very earliest versions of the 11 have the weird grille like mine, with no Renault badge and a strange lick of silver paint. Since Corgi were producing their model to coincide with the launch of the real car, their designers were somewhat hobbled by not having a real version to refer to. Seemingly this was rectified soon after, as I've seen other cream versions with a grille more like the blue car.

Obviously, the newer one is a 5dr with only the rear hatch opening, while the original is a 3dr with opening doors and hatch. It does indeed appear that the Bond version is a reworking of the original casting.

The later version is also much more detailed with its painting around the glazing. The glazing to the hatch looks the same, though has gained a wiper. Bonus.

Oddly, the boot badging has been deleted from the Bond version too.

Same wheel inserts which, like the ones on the Sierra Ghia, I believe were only used on this one model. The metal axle is visible on the early version, but has been covered over on the later one - changing toy safety regs, maybe? 

The base is the clincher - although the 'GTL' nomenclature has been chiselled off, along with 'Made in Gt Britain' and an updated Corgi logo, it's unquestionably the same casting.

So there we have it - some major revision to the body casting and bumper insert, of course, to reflect the number of doors, and every other part has been tweaked to a greater or lesser extent - but I believe this blue car to be a direct descendant of the cream one.

I can rest easy now.

^ Another in-depth  Renault 11 article by Marcel van Cogput

[Datsuncog]

4 hours ago, sierraman said:

@Datsuncog give us a bit of info about the Renault 11 from the Marcel Van Cleemput book?

There's not all that much info in the Big Book on the Renault 11 - at this time, the man himself had stopped working directly for Mettoy after they shut their Nottingham HQ, and instead he was doing design work for them as an independent contractor. But the book has this to say:

I hadn't twigged that because the R11 and MG Maestro were both launched in March 1983, with Renault moving their launch forward by a few weeks so as to pip Austin-Rover on being first to market with a talking dashboard, of course the Corgi models were launched at the same time.

44 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

^ A previous Renault 11 article by van Cogput

Heh, that saves me a fair bit of typing - thanks for finding that!

On re-reading, it seems I was a bit hasty in dismissing the later Bond version as having no link to the original casting - but hey, you live and learn...

Still never seen a factory red one, though.

[bunglebus]

If any Hot Wheels hoarders are in the Basildon area, Entertainer have just restocked and I'm a bit overwhelmed!  Never seen so many new ones in one place, report to follow once I've escaped...

[andrew e]

Had a Sainsbury’s impulse purchase myself….

[flat4alfa]

On 4/25/2019 at 2:36 PM, Datsuncog said:

The 1985 Corgi Toys catalogue marked a fresh start

However, there were casualties as part of this restructuring - more niche, less sporty 1/35 scale models like the Peugeot 505, Triumph Acclaim and Honda Prelude

Ballade/Acclaim measures to 1:33 scale

Prelude measures to 1:35 scale

Which is why Prelude looks a bit weedy in this company

Even more so, as in real life the Prelude is based on the larger Accord, not Civic platform

That is all.