About Me

My photo
No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Y is for York

A lot of the Hong Kong 'toy' production consisted of copies of Matchbox, Dinky and other European manufacturers core range die-cast toys, but in plastic. York Toy was one of them.

These are both copies of early Matchbox 1-75 series toys; the Road Roller and the Cement Mixer, the boxes are near enough the same size as the Matchbox originals but more colourful and less like an actual matchbox, dimension wise.

Close up of the road roller, these machines were made by many companies and the design was similar for most, this could be used for war-games, the figure is about 20mm, and diesel rollers were used by the engineers. I would never take this out of the pack for such a Philistine act, but from time to time this type of thing appears on eBay in large numbers as ex-shop stock (only recently a large box of the Blue Box versions went for £80-odd quid), and with a number of spares, you could indeed cut-up or paint a few.

Box end Illustrations suggest that scenic items and building bricks should also be out there and findable, with the York moniker, for the more general toy collector?

No comments: