There have been a number of posts recently about ships and boats, but the definitive boat toys for me have to be the Deluxe Reading or Topper Toys range. Topper were responsible for the Johnny Seven gun, the Tiger Joe Tank, Johnny Astro and Johnny Speed toys, but also the wonderful Cape Canaveral Rocket Base and Armoured Battalion sets. All the toys were big, substantial and made to appeal to boys! All the space and army toys bristle with cannons, rockets and missiles and almost all of them launch or fire in some way. The Task Force set is no exception and the stand alone destroyer toy, the U.S.S Battlewagon was the ultimate in boat toys.
The Battlewagon is a huge toy, a good three feet of battery powered plastic, which rolled along on wheels, blasting off rockets, planes, shells and torpedoes. You can see it in action on this You Tube link:
The downside of this amazing toy is that it is a horror to try and photograph, as it’s massive! You can see it below in my fully featured studio, complete with microwave, that it takes up all the worktop!
But just as the Topper adverts proudly proclaim, “You get all this!” A bank of firing cannons on the front deck, torpedo launchers, jet catapult and anti-aircraft missiles to the stern.
The missiles on the back are the same ‘Nike Hercules’ type that come with the Cape Canaveral Missile bank, discriminated by red nose cones, rather than black.
I was really lucky to find all three ships in a loose lot many years ago on eBay, with almost all the accessories included. I have never tried to start up the Battlewagon, as it takes the really hefty C cell batteries, but all the wiring looks intact. The Anson signal light was missing along with the battery cover, too.
Next we have the Task Force, which consists of a destroyer, motor patrol boat and a target float.
The Destroyer was in good shape overall, even coming with original shells and depth charges. However, the little landing craft was missing, so I had to build one out of an old Aurora ‘Anzio Beach’ model.
The Destroyer has launching depth charges at rear and a large turret on the front, along with a crane to hold the landing craft. All models come with a full crew of figures, each about 1/55 scale, around an inch or so high.
The Patrol Boat has a large red missile on the front and two gun turrets. This was missing part of the central mast, but was otherwise in good order.
Earlier last month, I spotted a pair of Topper boats on eBay, both looking a little weather beaten and forlorn, so I grabbed them and took them home to the shipyards!
As the destroyer was missing quite a bit of the main bodywork, I fashioned a new cabin arrangement and funnel, then replaced the landing craft bay with a new crane and a mini-sub pen. An old Action Man Anson lamp formed a searchlight on the rear. The sub comes direct from Bluebird Zero Hour, which is just a slightly smaller scale at around 1/65.
The patrol boat was again, a bit of a blank canvas, as a lot of the surface detail had gone. I was able to attach a large torpedo bay from an old army playset and reposition the frigates depth charge launcher on the front. Zero Hour accessories in the form of oil tanks made excellent cannisters and some of the small boxes and other parts were used as detail.
The torpedoes were mounted on the sides in classic patrol boat style, but can only be launched from the rear. A few spare radar arrays and aerials completed the outfitting of both vessels and my daughter kindly fashioned some new vinyl decals for both ships, including a new Submarine Hunter designation for the destroyer.
The second boat had slightly different colours too, which made it easier to give it the look of a different model.
And of course, what’s the use of having all these submarine warfare vessels on hand if there’s no enemy vessels to hunt? So I took another playset toy, in the form of a submarine and used that as the quarry!
