The Toybox of Nostalgia

Over Easter I was asked by my parents if I minded them disposing of a couple of boxes of old toy cars from my childhood that they had in storage, and if I would mind having a look through first in case I wanted to keep anything.

I came home with these...

The green Matchbox shunter was always a favourite as we were were aware when I was little that it was rarer than the yellow versions. It has gone into my display case as a bit of nostalgia. I did consider bringing one of the three yellow examples home for future use but decided against it in the end, whilst they do offer some conversion potential I have plenty of other ideas that involve no die-cast butchery!

The skips are Matchbox and I justified stealing them from their skip lorry as it was a little damaged. They are a good moulding and pretty much 7mm scale (and of course the real thing vary in size).  The caravan, well, I had to keep that, it would have been on 'Shifting Sands' if the Cararama one didn't come to my attention at the time.

The forklift did not last the course. I suspected it might be a little bit too small for 7mm use and whilst posing it a Knightwing pallet proved that whilst the forks were OK, the figure dwarfed the seat and had no legroom. I seem to recall reading somewhere it was closer to 1:55 or 1:64 scale - it might have been Chris Ellis writing in 'Scale Model Trains' who identified it as such.

What was interesting to see in the box were a few Siku vehicles that although of a similar vintage to the Matchbox ones were far superior in detail. A childhood favourite was a Mercedes roadsweeper, but despite being close to 7mm scale I couldn't justify keeping it as it is quite big!

Colin