A CONVOCATION OF EAGLES

More Dinky die-cast photos, and this time its the turn of the mega popular Eagle.

The Dinky Eagle came out in 1975, and continued production until 1980.

Although there were subtle changes in tooling, struts and coloured plastic variants in the passenger pod windows, these are generally considered to be five variations,

Of the five there are two types of Transporter. Both have green bodies, the first releases had chrome engine bells and landing rockets, red rear chemical tanks and yellow reaction control thrusters.

The second Transporter variation had red engine bells and landing rockets, self coloured chemical tanks and red reaction control thrusters. Both of mine have chrome thrusters beneath the passenger pod, although I believe later versions might have had just red plastic.

There are three freighter variations . Two have white bodies while the later one is blue. The first version has chrome engine bells and landing rockets, red chemical tanks and red reaction control thrusters. The freighter pod is red.

The second freighter version has  red engine bells and landing rockets, self -coloured rear chemical tanks and red reaction control thrusters. Again, the freighter pod is red.

The third Eagle Freighter is blue. The engine bells and landing rockets are red, the rear chemical tanks are self-coloured, and the reaction control thrusters are red. The freighter pod is white.

The transporter came with red striped decals to convert your passenger pod to a rescue/medical Eagle and the freighter came with stickers for the radiation barrels, the lower set replacing the more authentic top version, apparently  because of a safety issue, however that could be just an urban myth, and it could just turn out to be another cost cutting exercise.

Although these are the versions that came out of the Dinky factory, there's nothing stopping anyone from mixing and matching, and getting the colour right for once.