1940's (Sometime?); [WWII/Civilian], 500 / 500M / 501 / 502 Motorcycles And Riders

Tipping a nod to Plastic Warrior magazine and their Airfix special for the codes and to the Editor - Paul Morehead - for the original ID, wherein lies a tale we'll get to in a minute, but first a look at the machines and their riders.

A heavily painted machine, and the first I found, although not the first I'd seen, pretty standard 54mm/1:32nd scale compatible machine. Not knowing much about motorbikes I can only obseve that it's not a 'V-twin' although what that makes it instead is up for grabs, and the knee-pads on the tank look a bit like some BSA ones?

Comparison with an unpainted machine, the pink one I will wax-lyrical on in a minute, but for now you can see how it's quite a detailed machine for its age compared with the machines posted on the Home Blog today (5th November 2018) where Pyro, Teixedo, Reisler and later Atlantic were producing machines with hinted-at engine detail, or imaginary engines!

The commonest form you will find these in is a 'primary' coloured, colour-fast, soft 'unbreakable' or 'beach-toy' polyethylene, usually with contrasting wheels and often without a rider, but we see from that reference in the PW 'Special' that they were sold four ways;

500 - Motorbikes & Riders (2 types). Unpainted only . . all unbreakable and removable riders.

500M - Motorbike Only.

501/2 - Riders Only (assorted 2 types)

All trade, per gross.

What any retailer would want a gross (144) of motorcycles riders [without bikes] for is anyone's guess!

Another, with one of the riders, this is the helmeted chap, the other has a peaked 'service-cap', of a rather squishy US style, but I'm not aware of this being a US mould-share or copy and the machine is very British in lines.

The listing given in PW's special is from an un-dated 1940's catalogue and it's not clear which rider is 501 and which is 502, but I favour this as the '2, due to seniority, the other figure having sergeants stripes!

So, to the sorry tale . . .

 . . . I first became aware of these about a decade ago, when working for JB, he got a bunch of them in a mixed-lot from somewhere, and we didn't know who they were by, but liked the look of them, and it happened that Mr. Morehead had come round for a 'working brunch' and identified them as Airfix, heavily painted by a loon, with a spoon! [I made-up the last bit!]

Anyway, JB asked me if I could clean them, and I said "Yeah, sure, I'll take them home and do it tonight". I can tell you it took three dips in Nitromores (this back in the day when Nitromores would take the paint off a car-body in 30 seconds and was worth using - now it's some 'elf-n-safety' affected, watered down, oven-polish with no power to speak of!), and a hour or so with a tooth-pick to get the thick khaki 'mud' off them.

Then, about four/five years later, I found this at Dave McKenna's Birmingham show! I've since seen others and although the catalogue in PW states "unpainted", and while most examples are unpainted, it looks like either Airfix or a retailer painted them at some point, with this thick gloss paint, and that we'd stripped 'factory-paint' off a whole batch! Hey-ho!

As the paint matches some examples of the early mounted (Horse Guard in service dress) and early 54mm figures (Airborne, Japanese and Paratrooper), I think it probably was/is Airfix?

Three parts of the bike and both riders, as [unpainted] riders are usually a different colour to wheels/motorcycle, the fact that the painted one is the same colour as the bike he came with is another sign that they were probably factory-/out-painted and then matched to machines with the under-polymer colours unknown.

There is a variation of the helmeted figure, with his goggles on his helmet, not his face, with the same pocketed tunic as the Sergeant and without the Sam-Brown/cross-belt, whether this was dropped early or added after the PW-referenced catalogue is unknown.

Equally it may be that someone forgot to include it in the catalogue listing, OR that the 'two types' are cap or helmet and that there was 'artistic' variance within a multiple-cavity mould/tool?

My sample to-date (Nov.'18), whatever the truth of the paint/no paint, I'm not stripping my one; just in case! But the one I really like is the pink one . . .

. . . and I can't tell you how much I love this toy - it looks like a fossil, dug from the pink sandstones of the Gobi desert, painstakingly, with a hat-pin and a soft-brush.

By some series of quirks, from the similarly-coloured plastic for the wheels and bike, some factory or home painting at various times, some cleaning and/or weathering/play-wear over time, it has developed a patina of 'antiqued' age you couldn't re-produce in a laboratory with the greatest minds in the universe working on the problem.

This is one of the ten to try and save from a fire! If it wasn't identical to the others in every way, you'd think it was from another company and thirty-year's earlier!

Under the patina, the bike is a pale pinky-flesh and the wheels a mauve-purple. The engine seems to have been gold at some point and the patina is probably a sign of the vehicle having been a darker-red with an unstable additive/colourant?

10th Dec. 2018 - Strangely (not! They're always following me!) a machine turned-up in Vichy over the weekend - a month after posting this - with traces of all-over gold paint!

Best of British!

Signs of the front number-plate being painted on the faded one, and a short-shot / miss-mould on the front number-plate of the red one, I also noticed the mud-guard bar on the blue one has gawn-missin'. . . I'll trim it off to make it less obvious at a glance!

A few more riders, all the same pose, they came together, so probably date from the same factory-gate batch, a later (?) stable pigment ethylene run, matching two of my machines, the red and silver exactly, the black a new colour.

The original image I used in a mixed motorbike post on the 'Home Blog' when I was hedging my bets with a 'probably/possibly' I think! Other colours seen in relation to these include a bright apple/grass green and a subdued yellow.

So - I got them out and took the shot a few days later, but I'm not going to announce it on the home Blog, as I've posted a couple of links there (to here) in the last few weeks and I'm sure some people get sick of links to something they've only just read!

Therefore if you're reading this in December 2018 you're getting a 'sneak preview' of something I won't return to until something more substantial turns-up! Not that there's' anything new in it, just a nice picture!

 

Yellow is strangely brittle in the centre

but perfectly fine at both ends, reaction to a PVC rider? Britains?

The pair in the centre foreground have been chopped-about.

 More colours, more riders!

 

Added 2024, these are the findings of shows over the time since the last update (2018), but actually most were found in 2023 I think. But that's twenty-odd years since I discovered these, and it must be ten years since I wrote the relevant line above!

Again, signs of these having been factory painted (and if not by Airifx, by someone with a commercial bent), this being the third time, years and miles apart that they've come into my sphere, both blue plastic, with red wheels, underneath the paint, like the existing sample, so clearly a whole - matching - batch got the treatment.

All three figures as mentioned above, in close-up, the new one (here) is the red one with the goggles on the helmet and no Sam-Browne belt, so I suspect he's meant to be a civilian 'ton-up' kid? With two joining the fleet, they are looking to be as common as the other pair.

 

Just which pair was the catalogue referring to when it only mentioned two types? And why the discrepancy? Probably the art-department were shown all three but didn't register the differences between the two helmeted ones?

1947-1955 (approximately); [Civil] The Zoo Animals & Zoo Brix - No Scale

First advertised (as far as we know) at the same time as the Life Guard/Horse Guard set in 1947, this set and it's subsequent offspring present a few questions once you look at it in detail.

A whole card, when I bought this, the vendor had about 6 similar cards, the animals - which the original advertisement tells us numbered 12 different - were randomly assorted so that while there were never two animals the same on any card, they were not divided into two sets of 6, which would have made far more sense.

My set is of polystyrene plastic, the same as the later Zoo Brix, however it seems almost certain that like the contemporary figures, earlier production would have been cellulose-acetate, indeed . . .

. . . the three brown animals above and the yellow lion in-line with them ARE cellulose-acetate and their bases are the same as the carded ones, so it's fair to assume they are slightly earlier (actual 1947) production.

The 6 animals in the row above them are polystyrene again, however there are subtle differences in the duplicate animals, and the elephant is markedly unalike the carded example. Having only got the 'Brown Bear' in the Zoo Brix Series 'A' (below) this yellow one could be the plain 'Bear' (from the Zoo Brix Series 'C') but without seeing the Airfix animal in the flesh can't know if it's as close to the Airfix moulding as the lion or camel, but given the moulding variations in the Bergen/Beton figures and the early set of 8 soldier poses, it's likely these are all Airfix production or copies of/from Airfix mouldings. Likewise the slightly less defined elephant in pink.

The dogs have the same base style, and could originate with Airfix, but even if they did - I'd put money on their having been sold as playing pieces in a 'Totopoly' style dog-race game. Going to 'The Dogs' was far more popular in the fifties than now, and a fair few dog track board-games exist. The nice thing about these is that they are all slightly different and therefore each - unique. These days you would sculpt one, pantograph it in multiples and produce the same piece/pose in a half-dozen colours!

A close up of the lions and the 'wood-wasp' in the timber-pile; A donkey or ass/mule thing...stripe-less zebra? The dodgy-origin set has slightly thinner bases, however, as the Airfix ones barely stand up, they may be a first effort, but - if that's the case - why didn't the equine subject survive? Also, donkeys and dogs are not really 'Zoo' animals, but rather 'Domestic' animals.

The Logo hiding away in the Jungle foliage, if it's not a jungle, it's a very spacious zoo for the 1950's!! I'm guessing this 'Ape' is meant to be a Gorilla, although it looks more like a Sasquatch I encountered on the Brecon Beacons once!

A Year later the animals were used for Pattern No. 430 Zoo Brix; a boxed set of 6 infant's rattles/bath toys/building-blocks I first covered back in January last here; Bargain! which might be worth a read, however the pictures here are better, I was trying too hard to be clever with the Collage feature last time!

The bases were made wider and glued onto the base of the brick, they were also used in a similar capacity in the end of a baby's rattle/soother. As they would have stood-up better with this wider base, one wonders if they weren't also sold separately, or perhaps supplied as a premium somewhere?

I took these purely to show the size in relation to something more familiar to Airfix fans, one of the dancing para's with his space rifle and pockets stuffed with tissues! What WAS going on with that set, and why did people keep buying it - they must have or they wouldn't have kept churning it out?!

The little granules used to provide the rattle are small pieces of cellulose-acetate raw-material, which was being phased out at Airfix, and what better way to get rid of it than to flog it to the general public a thimble-full at a time! In the words of someone in the industry at the time (I can't find the reference, one of the TIMPO guys?) "Like the little stones in the bottom of a fish tank".

Here's a 'to be updated' chart showing the known poses and their position within the Airfix oeuvre. Which were the other four poses on the original cards? Where does the donkey fit in? Why two Elephant moulds? When - exactly - was the change to all-styrene polymers? Are the Dogs from the same source?

Ist Update.....

Airfix state in their 1947 toy trade advertisement, reproduced in Plastic Warrior magazine's latest 'Airfix Special' issue (2012) that;

"Zoo Set - A new line, 12 different animals. Many colours."

From the same publication, a 1940's catalogue shows the following animals mounting the ramp of a mocked-up card 'export' Noah's ark and disappearing inside;

• • Kangaroo/Wallaby
• • Squirrel/Mongoose
• • Mountain Goat/Deer (with curved horns)
• • Camel (two-humped dromedary)
• • Penguin
• • Elephant
• • Monkey/Gibbon (on all fours)
• • Lion
• • Rhinoceros
• • Hippopotamus (? picture not clear)
• • Pelican
• • Bear (assume brown)

For - indeed - a count of twelve. On my card we have an additional:

• • Dog
• • Ape/Gorilla (on two legs)
• • Ostrich

For a count of 15, but the 1948 zoo bricks give us some further additional animals

• • Crocodile (series 'A')
• • Bull (series 'B')
• • Bear (series 'B' assume Polar?)
• • Sea-Lion (series 'B')
• • Tiger (series 'C')

Getting us up to 20 animals, with loose figure additions in the questionable/possible pirate set (with different elephant):

• • Donkey
• • Cow (if not the same sculpt as the 'Bull')

For a final count, assuming all have some origin with Airfix of 22 animals which is a nice round number if nothing else! But then there's the second Elephant sculpt!

So: the question marks in the table can be disregarded; this turned up the other day (PW's show 2017), and confirms the slightly dodgy yellow set, the white one is the 'brown bear' this one is the 'bear', clearly a polar bear so that puts the bears to bed - just got to clear-up the different elephants, the donkey and the cow question, then hope no other new ones turn up and try to find the other greyhound poses described in the Plastic Warrior Airfix special!

In attempting to answer that last question! 5-06-18 This is the cow (which looks increasingly likely to be also the bull) from the 'Pirate' set, it was covered with a powdery mildew-like coating which came off easily to reveal either a factory-painted enamel finish or a very subtle oil-over-white-undercoat type professional 'flat' paint-job, but it was not damaged by the mould-removal so it's not clear and I wouldn't like to call it either way if my life depended on it, but it doesn't and I'll call for a very good home-paint.

These two came-in via Adrian Little of Mercator Trading at Potter's Sandown Park fair in September ('18), two more 'polar' bears, as per those above, but in two reds. After the pink one turned-up 16-months ago I now have more of these than any other animal!

Further reading;

Plastic Warrior's 'Airfix - The Early Years' again.

Tony over at the Airfix Collectors Forum has the same set (from the same seller!), but has tracked down a few of the other animals; Zoo Brix. Be careful as the Kusan bricks on page two are 'similar' but completely different and there's probably no connection between the two - other than a good idea!