Monday 16 July 2012

Wagon Train in 20mm from 1960

Tying up the last few odds and ends that I came across at the London Toy Soldier show last month, among which were this rather dinky plastic Wagon Train set tied in to the Universal TV show which ran from 1957 to 1965.


Helpfully the backing card carries the copyright date of 1960, which can be seen in the bottom right hand corner.  It amused me that the manufacturer used such a large package to emphasise the media tie in for three such tiny little wagons.


This close up of one of the wagons also catches the manufacturer Morestone's (Morris and Stone) brand mark BUDGIE.  Morestone's were the firm that employed Roy Selwyn-Smith and Charlie Biggs to make the moulds for the old Timpo hollowcast figures, Selwyn-Smith was the sculptor and Biggs engraved the detail into the brass moulds.  Later they both went off to work for ZANG on the Herald range and when that company was bought out by Britains they both ended up as Directors of the company.  I vaguely recall that Morestone's made quite a range of diecast vehicles back in the day.

3 comments:

  1. I was rather impressed by the scale of over-packaging! Not favorably, of course... But those items would be vary handy for a wargames army, especially ACW.

    But I wonder what a mint condition package like this would go for as is? Just curious.
    Cheers,
    Ion

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  2. A similar one was doing the rounds of the toy fairs back in 2006 for £350 Stirling, but 'doing the rounds' means er...not selling!!
    Hugh

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  3. I didn't ask the price and in view of Hugh's comment it's probably just as well. I guess if you want to give house room to something like this you've got to be more a collector of the packaging than of the toy! Sure enough though, you could find plenty of use for those wagons in an ACW game.

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