Shite in Miniature II

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

That is extremely lovely 

[bunglebus]

38 minutes ago, flat4alfa said:

All blue Mazda B1600? Another bloody variation to find, thanks I think

[sierraman]

I’ve got the Swiss PTT Vw Polo. No idea how because as far as I know they were export only. That said there’s quite a few new old stock Corgi Juniors in Arabic livery on eBay so I suspect that many didn’t make it to the Middle East, perhaps they got as far as the port and then the order was cancelled and they’ll have been sold off cheap. Completely unrelated but the GWR building in Millbay, Portsmouth ended up with a floor full of Arabic branded Farley’s Rusk tins, again presumably dumped after an order failed to materialise.

[bunglebus]

I went off to eBay to have a look, but instead found this one the spit of @Datsuncog's one - but with a different grille

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Corgi-Toys-289-Volkswagen-Polo-Die-Cast-1-43-Vintage-Mettoy-Playcraft-VW-/334081410549?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Watchlisted...

[Amishtat]

Fairly sure I have one here if you want one. Clean but not mint. 

[bunglebus]

Mine's been Barried by a previous owner

 

[Datsuncog]

16 hours ago, bunglebus said:

All blue Mazda B1600? Another bloody variation to find, thanks I think

I think the all-blue version was only ever a pre-production sample...

More fun* facts: by 1975, with Corgi's sales on the slide, Mettoy top brass gave their marketing team much more influence on the product design and engineering side. Formerly, this had been the preserve of senior management and the design team, with marketing simply there to devise strategies to sell whatever came out of the Swansea factory.

But suddenly consultants and focus groups became more of a thing, and there was a steep rise in demand for prototypes (I think I waffled on about this a few months back) and colour tests, so that marketing could conduct analysis on what appealed to the brand's core demographics - ever younger kids, as it turned out.

Van Cleemput is pretty sniffy about all this, and no doubt he'd much rather have been designing beautifully engineered miniature models with innovative working parts . But it was a harsh reality that while early Corgi toys had been designed to appeal to kids in their early teens, by the 1970s the average age of their end-user customers had fallen to 8-year-olds.

So in a shrinking market, and with their younger customers wielding less purchasing power, less discernment, and the risk of being tempted by fancy custom stuff like Hot Wheels instead, Mettoy put their faith in the hands of the marketers to select sure-fire winners and guide the Corgi brand back to sales success.

While it didn't quite work out like that - some might argue that the development of simpler, cheaper models diluted the brand's values and drove customers away - it did mean that tooling costs decreased, while the shift to 1/36 scale "added value" without increasing unit costs very much, allowing a modest rise in RRP which mostly translated into better profit margins.

The result of some of this (very costly) consumer analysis revealed that kids were most drawn to toys finished in red, yellow, and blue, with lesser appeal from green and brown.

Hold the phone: kids like primary colours best. Money well spent.

So, going back to the #493 Mazda B1600 pickup, apparently some late focus group input indicated it looked a bit too utilitarian and unappealing in the proposed plain blue, especially as its sole working feature was only the dropping tailgate. So a quick 'n' dirty late change was made to add  some additional shelf appeal, in the form of an eye-catching spray-masked silver insert along both sides.

The basic blue and silver Mazda was only on sale for a year before it was joined by a more exciting motorway maintenance version with a cherry picker to the rear, and a yellow gift set version with stickers and pulling a boat.

Still, it sold a respectable 290,000 examples between its launch in February 1975 and its deletion in 1978.

The same casting eventually also gained a detachable camper body, and a hoicked-up 4x4 version appeared  too - but that's another tale best told by someone else...

[bunglebus]

I must have had a dozen K50-53s over the years, and finally found a good one with the ladder intact

Of course it's not staying there, it's gone on my immaculate (if slightly dusty) example

[Amishtat]

A closer look at the contents of Saturday's hotly anticipated and much appreciated Cogbox. I knew there were four cars in there but could only remember what three of them were, the surprise being a Corgi Jaguar which is another for the needs paint line up. Will try to salvage the rear numberplate if possible, it looks like it'll come off with some care. Making up a Corgi trio was the Mini and Mercedes 220, both in better nick than I'd expected. Headlight and a polish and the Mini will be good enough. The roof on the Merc is very slightly flattened with concomitant bowing out at the top of each screen pillar. This also explains the cracked glazing and it transpired that the spare tyres I had were oversized. Still, if Cold War Motors has taught me anything it's that the wrong parts are better than no parts, so that'll do for now. I'd had it in mind to paint it but now it's here I really like it as is. 

The lone Dinky (car, at least) in the box was the Rambler which I didn't realise was needed for the sake of completeness until Eddy more or less accidentally brought it to my attention in a chat about something else entirely. Again, perfectly happy with it as is, it'll get a light polish to see whether the yellow will come off the bonnet and the red daubing from the roof pillar. 

But none of that was responsible for the weight of the box.. 

[Amishtat]

This was 50% of the heavy metal. With the numberplate, speed limit sticker plus the loading ramp, it's slightly nicer than the one I had already but will complement it nicely. Those rear tyres though, the poor driver's going to need a BMX inner tube to sit on once VOSA have finished with him. 

[AndyW201]

23 hours ago, egg said:

At least it was a better engine than the MK4 1.6D - 50-60 bhp?

You do make a good point there! The first car I drove as a taxi was an Orion 1.6D. Hopeless. The fact it was comprehensively rogered didn't do it any favours either...

I cut my (professional) motoring teeth on low powered diesels and still have a soft spot for them, GM 1.7Ds, Ford 1.8 n/a Enduras and XUDs. Though the Peugeot 405 1.9 TD is still the best car I ever taxied in.

[Noel Tidybeard]

On 19/07/2021 at 16:50, Datsuncog said:

A further recent arrival (and probably the last one for a while) - 1979 issue Corgi Volkswagen Polo, in very of-its-time metallic green.

I formerly had one of these, boxed, and sold it for something stupid like £3 in the mid-90s.

I like the slightly rubbish illustration on the back; strange that sometimes Corgi used press pics of the real car to illustrate their boxes, sometimes photos of the toys, sometimes 'artist impressions' like this one, and sometimes ads for other stuff in the range entirely.

The eBay seller claimed this one had "never been out of the box".

They could be right, as the box end flaps were very crisp and showing no signs of wear, but it's out of the box now.

Clear plastic strip thing keeping the bootlid up could be original, it's true.

Side profile's not bad.

I think these Polos looked better balanced than their Juniors counterpart, which always looked a smidge wide and underwheeled.

Fun fact: diecast toy manufacturers didn't just measure up a real life car and then scale everything down by, say, 1/36. According to the Great Book Of Corgi, this would only ever produce a model that looked far too skinny, because people are used to seeing real cars from eye level, but toys are seen from above. So most toy cars were modelled slightly wider than they were in reality, and how much wider was down to the designer and whatever they thought looked 'right'.

The Corgi Juniors Jag XJS was an example of where maybe they went a bit too far the other way...

But anyway.

The paint masking's been quite well done on this one, too.

It's kind of a pity that Corgi didn't really go in for number plate stickers the way Dinky did; a pair of GB plates on a T-reg would certainly have made this one really pop. Though as a left-hooker, was Corgi chasing export markets?

Base moulding is reasonably well detailed and all.

Corgi produced this one in various imaginary rally liveries too, and later cast in a deeper front air dam, but I'm quite happy with the boring version.

More fun fact: £2.39 in 1979 equates to £12.36 in today's money. Dear enough...

not a really early one then- mine had the sticker for grill/lights

[bunglebus]

Today's episode of The Shiny Show is brought to you by this Dinky Gran Fury

And supported by the Tonka Fairlady 

Going to need a few coats of primer on that one 

[andrew e]

31 minutes ago, AndyW201 said:

You do make a good point there! The first car I drove as a taxi was an Orion 1.6D. Hopeless. The fact it was comprehensively rogered didn't do it any favours either...

I cut my (professional) motoring teeth on low powered diesels and still have a soft spot for them, GM 1.7Ds, Ford 1.8 n/a Enduras and XUDs. Though the Peugeot 405 1.9 TD is still the best car I ever taxied in.

I don’t want to derail the thread, but try the above engine in a loaded N/A Escort 55 van version - I used to go 5th to 4th to sometimes 3rd going up hills - it wasn’t even knackered it was new 😂

[Amishtat]

Last by but no means least.. Every Tat Friday box I've received has been a pleasure to receive and savour the opening thereof, but this is what made this one  the best yet. It's huge, heavy and I will probably bore you more with pictures of it loaded at some stage before it hits the cabinet. I'd been regretting not buying a Corgi Bedford TK transporter that I saw in a junk shop in Cullen last October (incidentally, anybody going/living near there?) and was keeping a beady eye open for something similar with no success. The Dinky Bedford is nice and easy to find, but I'd wanted something slightly newer for the mid to late sixties cars to go on. 

Thanks Tim! 

[andrew e]

Hey @Amishtat you don’t fancy an equally battered ramp, but olive green version of the transporter do you?

What colour on the Tonka? Gunmetal or metallic brown with a flake laquer would look ace 👍

[Amishtat]

16 minutes ago, andrew e said:

Hey @Amishtat you don’t fancy an equally battered ramp, but olive green version of the transporter do you?

What colour on the Tonka? Gunmetal or metallic brown with a flake laquer would look ace 👍

Might well do, got any pics? 

[bunglebus]

25 minutes ago, andrew e said:

What colour on the Tonka? Gunmetal or metallic brown with a flake laquer would look ace 👍

Haven't decided yet. I might attempt to make a front bumper of sorts out of plastic card, I'll have a look through my colours once I've sorted that out. Think the slot mags demand a 70s custom colour

[andrew e]

40 minutes ago, Amishtat said:

Might well do, got any pics? 

Sure do 👍 £5 each if your so inclined (plus the Royal Mails cut!)  One careless owner since new 😁 the AEC missing ramps and a slammed front axle…

[andrew e]

Had an eBay delivery recently for a long lost love and thought whilst on a Corgi tangent I’d dig my polo out too, bought for me as a kid probably 40 years ago 👍

The incoming eBay Corgi was a much cherished (but no clue where it went!) Mercedes 307D , I need the BF Goodrich one to compliment it too now (speak up if your trading one!).
My dad had a red company one that oddly had a hand throttle on the dash, ideal for creeping along in traffic along the north circular.

The Corgi one featured 3 opening doors and the 240 rally’s roof rack and sand mats. It’s still a lovely model today.

 

[RoadworkUK]

That's beautiful.

[eddyramrod]

This arrived in the CogBox the other day...

I've drilled it out this morning so it can be stripped; it's going to be blue.

Meanwhile, remember this?

Well now...

I had to buy a gold marker pen, fine point, to signwrite it.  I haven't quite got it right but considering I'm only guessing at the livery anyway, it'll be good enough.

[Datsuncog]

19 hours ago, Noel Tidybeard said:

not a really early one then- mine had the sticker for grill/lights

Nope, not that early - my Polo's box says 'Mettoy 1979' and I'm fine with that. The one I previously owned and sold also had the later cast-in grille and lights, rather than the sticker at the front, so I'm happy enough with a like-for-like replacement.

I'm still not quite sure when Corgi changed the Polo's tooling to a cast-in and painted front end, rather than applying a sticker to the flat front panel - the catalogues of the era always seem to show it from behind, to emphasise the opening hatch, so it's hard to know when the switchover happened.

At a guess, the sticker was a cheaper, more cost-effective way to add detail rather than having to spray-mask the front end twice, once for black and then once again for silver. I suppose it sped up production to cut out yet another painting and drying step - the model's shell already needed silver spray for the bumpers and red for the rear lights to give the shell a bit more detail. Possibly a newer process was later devised to speed up the painting process, or maybe someone senior commented unfavourably on the stickered front end and asked for it to be changed, despite the added hassle. There's no clue in The Great Book of Corgi, and since ol' Marcel's long gone to the Great Toyshop In The Sky, I guess now we'll never know why.

Just to ruminate further, spray-masking's one of those things that Corgi continued with for much longer than other manufacturers, possibly because it was how the Swansea factory was already set up and there wasn't the money to change the production lines.

It was a messy and time-consuming process though, with a cut-away mould needing to be pressed close against the part-finished model before spraying with the contrast colour.

The mould needed to be washed after every five or six uses, so it was a bit of a faff for the painters. It was also very easy to smudge or otherwise damage the paint during the process, and paint blemishes became the most common reason for models failing quality control. One side of the two-tone Toyota Supra I bought a few years back is terrible (and, of course, the eBay vendor was careful not to show that side in the pics).

Originally waterslide transfers were used to provide lettering or rally-style decals, but these were notoriously messy to apply at production line speeds, and  seem to have been phased out in the early 1970s in favour of paper-backed stickers. Corgi persisted with these well into to 1980s, by which time Mattel and Lesney had switched to tampo-printing processes for model decoration. Paper stickers didn't bode well should the toys get wet - although others in the range such as the AMC Pacer X did come with slightly hardier translucent plastic stickers, as did the Motorway Maintenance Mazda B1600, and the Ford Capri 3.0S.

As far as I can see, Corgi's first mainstream tampo-print model didn't appear until January 1981, when the Rover SD1 appeared in Triplex touring car livery, combining spray-masking with tampo-print for the sponsor logos. Other models followed, often with eyecatching rally or racing logos such as the Datapost Metro and BASF BMW M1, although the yellow and black first version of the Renault 5 Turbo still wore paper decals.

The automation of the decoration process did away with what Van Cleemput called the 'armies of girls' previously employed in the Swansea factory to apply stickers, and by the time of the management buy-out in 1985 - and the advent of models like the fantastic Kremer Racing Mercedes van above - sticker decorations were becoming a thing of the past.

[Noel Tidybeard]

the 1st version renner 5 had pastic stickers á la professionals crapi

 

one can't help but wonder if corgi were contempating the original Aldi 50 version of the oloP hence the stickeroony

[bunglebus]

I had a box arrive ( as it's Wednesday) with some Road Blasters. Some of which I didn't know were part of the range

also in the same job lot were this tidy pair

and a Mod Tractor - not really better than the one I have but at least still has its towbar

Finally in another box is this Sunnyside SS-901, sadly missing the rear panel but otherwise very nice. What is this a model of?

[Dick Cheeseburger]

54 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

I had a box arrive ( as it's Wednesday) with some Road Blasters. Some of which I didn't know were part of the range

also in the same job lot were this tidy pair

and a Mod Tractor - not really better than the one I have but at least still has its towbar

Finally in another box is this Sunnyside SS-901, sadly missing the rear panel but otherwise very nice. What is this a model of?

Noice. If you're looking for a home for the 

I'd be keen...

[bunglebus]

Ah the tidy pair, I get it now. When it's a lower temperature than the centre of the earth in my loft I'll go through and sort out my doubles. In the meantime, here's the remainder of the job lot - a trio of Planet Scouts, with a colour variation! Bet no one asks if they can have these...

[Dick Cheeseburger]

4 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Ah the tidy pair, I get it now.

Negative. 

I was after this one...

 

[bunglebus]

Big Banger indeed. Better when you have two in my experience 

[flat4alfa]

21 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Finally in another box is this Sunnyside SS-901, sadly missing the rear panel but otherwise very nice. What is this a model of?

1971 Matra Laser by Michelotti