Thursday 6 August 2020

Signs of age

There are many indications of someone or something being old. Greying hair, memory loss, aching joints. They’re all familiar to many of us wargamers. For old toy military vehicles there are things like chipped paint, missing tyres, dents etc. One of my 14 year olds found a new sign of age this evening. She dug this out of a cupboard and said this must be years old.......



It’s a Dinky Toys (i.e. Meccano Ltd) Armoured Command Vehicle, code 677. It was previously my brother’s and before that I think it might have belonged to my uncle (only about a dozen years older than me so it might date back to c1960, but I could be wrong).

The sign that convinced my daughter it was old? Underneath it was embossed with ‘Made in England’.

8 comments:

  1. Toys made in England? That must have been back in the old days.

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  2. An archaeologist in the making, an ancient artefact indeed. Purpose,ritual?
    Reminds me of my father’s Dinkys from the 1930s . I really enjoyed looking at them as a boy and they would have been great to Wargame with. Sadly they got lost in a house move I made.

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    1. It’s a real shame they got lost. They were certainly solid toys so would have lasted a long time. We had a few other Dinky military vehicles: a couple of armoured cars, a Saracen APC, a 25pdr and tractor spring to mind. We got many hours of war play out of them but we became conscious that they were out of scale for our Airfix soldiers so they got relegated to the out house with other unused toys.

      The vehicle in the picture was subsequently played with by my nieces and nephews but somehow stayed at my parents’ house long enough for it to get transferred to my eldest who handed it back to me when he ‘outgrew’ it.

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  3. Good looking command car! Made in England is a bit unusual these days, although Perry, warlord and GW are,but maybe that should be made in Nottinghamshire!
    Best Iain

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  4. Binns Road, Liverpool - I visited their factory twice as a kid. I was fascinated watching them spray-painting some "Supertoy" lorries. The vehicle bodies were put inside dirty great masks, with maybe a couple of holes for silver lamps - they must have wasted a lot of paint. The lady who took us around asked at the end if we had any questions, and I asked her why the GP Ferrari (model #234, original vehicle circa 1952) was painted blue and yellow instead of Italian red, and she was a bit cross; she said they had enough red racing cars in the range already, and they weren't interested in making their toys realistic. I never saw that in their marketing literature. And all those camo green military vehicles must have been a bit samey, you would think. Why not a pink Centurian tank?

    Now I think about it, I'll have to decide what colour I'm going to paint my French soldiers - I already have quite a few blue ones.

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    1. You lucky boy! That must have been a great day out, bar the company’s lack of interest in veracity.

      ‘Why have you painted your tank pink Sergeant la Rue?’
      ‘You said we should aim to surprise the enemy sir.’

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