All Ashore!

 The Missus picked this up for two squid at a charity shop for the Grandkids. 

All Ashore by Waddingtons.

A cute game involving pull-string people and boats. 

The little people were missing two members. 

Say no more! I finagled a couple from beads and caps.

Can you tell which?

WHAT GOES ROUND: Shelby’s Turbines

 

On a recent holiday excursion to the Peak District, I found a great little shop selling vintage toys and just outside was a basket of die-casts. 

After ferreting through the Matchbox, Hot Wheels and Corgi junkers, all labelled £1 a go and all in serious need of restoration, I spotted a plastic model, about 3" long, which I recognised as a Shelby Turbine. 

Digging deeper into the box and holding up foot traffic on the pavement as I sprawled on the floor, rooting about - I found another two, in similar beat up condition. A quick check underneath showed 'Made in Japan' but no other trademark. Nevertheless, all three went in my bag and came home with me. 

The models were pretty scuffed and had the remnants of stickers on them and all three had the cockpit windshield pushed down inside. All three were also missing a front spoiler. They were all freewheeling, being too small for a standard sized friction motor and seemed to date from the late seventies.

My principle interest in these odd shaped cars, was that Hot Wheels had released just such a car in their lineup in 1969. The Shelby Turbine was a real life race car, owned by Carrol Shelby and designed to steal the 1968 Indianapolis 500. 

Shelby had previously shown his expertise in car design with the Ford GT40 and had seen the potential in turbine powered race cars, with a rival entry almost running away with the win the previous year, until an engine fault had put paid to its finishing. As a result, Shelby procured the services of race car engineer Ken Wallis to build a turbine based car and Bruce McLaren and Dennis Hulme to drive it. 

With a massive budget, Shelby set to with Wallis to install a General Electric T58 aircraft engine in a car, which Shelby was aggressively confident in its success.

 However, after building the car and experiencing 200mph record breaking speeds and 'terrifying' acceleration, the Indy race directors and governing body at the USAC reviewed and changed the rules for the upcoming race, having seen the potential of turbine powered race cars over standard piston engines.

A turbine powered engine is reliant on the amount of air that can be fed into the engine and the intake for the Shelby car needed to be 24" or more wide, but concerned that aircraft engine powered cars would render other cars obsolete, the USAC dictated that the maximum intake diameter be just 16". 

As a result, the maximum achievable speed for the Shelby Turbine would only be around 160 mph, way below the speeds reached by standard Indy cars and nowhere near the STP Turbine car that had almost nailed the win the previous year. The regulations eventually led to Shelby giving up on his attempts to create a turbine based car.

Hot Wheels also made a model of the 1968 Lotus Turbine car as well as a standard Indy race car.

So, given that the three plastic cars were in pretty poor shape and did not appear to be particularly valuable or rare, I decided to customise them a little and make them a little more road worthy again.

The green car was in the worst condition and the plastic had become brittle. When I slipped a knife in to separate the two body shells, the side cracked by the cockpit and split in half. It was difficult to reset the windscreen, as I couldn’t separate the two pieces, so it had to stay in place as is. I added a roll bar on each one and for this one, dropped in a bit of chrome engine greenly. 

As all three were missing a front spoiler, I removed the remaining one from the other two and used one to complete one model. I hand painted the body with Revell acrylic paint, to cover the cracks and added orange accents like the classic Gulf Oil livery. Some hand made decals finished it off.

What had been the red car, got two new aerofoil wings on the front, courtesy of a Kinder Egg aircraft, a spray finish of lime green and a coat of lacquer. The windscreen sat a little higher and the chrome parts were touched up.

Finally, I left the cream coloured car as is, cleaned it up and removed both front spoilers for a more classic ‘Shelby’ look. Some white accents and laser printed decals completed the look.

Ed's Trash To Treasure Flagstop Station

Woodsy,

It was great reading the recent series of posts about turning scraps from the parts bins into something useful. 

While my mind doesn't work well enough to come up with ideas for a spaceship or spy toy or action figure, it wants to focus more on what I might be able to do for my train layout. 

A few years back I wanted a really small flagstop station (I believe they're referred to as 'request stops' in the UK) for my Edge of Town micro-layout. 

Plasticville makes a small passenger platform that looks good, and I used one for a while, but I wanted something smaller still.

 Inspiration came from the Internet when viewing photos of rural milk platforms and flagstops.

 I ended up cutting down an old Plasticville platform that was a bit beat-up, added supports, a new wooden deck, and a passenger shelter made from a Plasticville 2-stall outhouse with the doors and inner dividing wall removed, and a bench added. 

I gave the whole construct a disheveled, 'I need maintenance now' look and am quite satisfied with the results.

From Request Stop Vegas!

Ed

Bill's Action Buddy

 As this round of our MoonBase International custom toys slowly comes to a close, our latest reincarnation is this 1960's Action Man knockoff.

This was Bill's childhood buddy and along with some of the original kit he totally deserves a new lease of life. The buddy that is, not Bill! 

With a good scrub-up and freshly cleaned clothes, Bill's buddy, via the Quartermasters Store, has been sent on one last mission before hanging up his dog tags:

To secure the back garden for the summer!

Mission Status: SNAFU!

After debriefing, The next step in buddy's reinstatement and immediate de-mobbing will be new retirement package, which is currently in pre-production.

In the meantime our plastic chum is off down the NAAFI for some well-earned tiffin.

Special Agent 707's New Case Opened

Just before Easter I treated myself to two Redbox toy special agent attache cases, a classic design that goes back decades: Agent 707 may ring bells with you readers?

One I've bought is an older boxed version and the other unboxed set a newer release like the one I bought at the Ridings Index store in the early 1990's, sadly since sold on.

This later unboxed release arrived this week and I've been busy cleaning it up and replacing the odd missing part, as always great fun messing with special agent stuff. 

This set from eBay was more compete than I thought: all two badges and the key present.

I cleaned everything up, glued down ripped pockets and blacked out any scratches on the case.

Luckily I had a similarly coloured plastic pipe of a suitable size to make a decent ersatz of the missing silencer. 

The black shoulder stock came without a grip fastener, so a couple of bits and some glue later, I whittled a fair enough replacement, that does the job.

All that's missing now are the small brown bullets for the little secret radio pistol (amazingly I found another one of these tiny guns at the local boot sale yesterday!)

All in all it's a great example of this later Redbox set, with it's orange weapons. I'm unsure if the black stock is the right colour - should it be orange? - but it looks good and harks back to earlier Redbox sets.

For the time being, this case, 707, is now closed!

One Man Custom: My Home-Made Johnny Seven

Since childhood and my parents giving me a Johnny Seven one Christmas I've always loved this classic Topper toy rifle.

Like all my old toys I guess it went to Preston's landfill back in the mid-Seventies.

Remembering how much I loved it, in 2000 I bought myself a boxed Johnny Seven at the NEC's Memorabilia show. It was from an affable young dealer called Ian and cost £300, the most I've ever spent on a collectable.

It's tucked safely away in the attic.

 I do occasionally get it out on maneuvers!

I restored another Johnny Seven in 2007 for re-sale, replacing some missing parts with original and repro replacements.

I blogged about it some years back, the post comments becoming a sort of talking shop for J7 restorers! 

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2018/04/rebuilding-johnny-seven-one-man-army.html?m=1

And so to the present. Having finished my Secret Sam rifle recently I was looking for something else to make, when I came across a bunch of old Nerf guns at the Thorpe Arch boot sale. Bingo! £4 later I had my raw materials for making a ........

..... Johnny Seven! 

With a good dose of bits from my bits box and a pair of plastic shoe horns the toy began to take shape.

A couple of home-made missiles completed the look.

Dipping my toe into paint spraying for the first time, I took my mock-off in the garden ......

... And primed it red.

I made a whole armoury of missiles!

And here's Johnny! 

The One Man Army made in the kitchen! 

Hope you like it.

You can see it's a similar size to the original.

Phew! Boy, was it fiddly but lots of Topper fun! 

*

Next up, Redbox Secret Agent.