Pages

Monday, March 18, 2024

Linemar 'Elegant Miniatures' Diecast Moon Buggy

Okay, well, this isn't actually a bunch of old photos I found on the computer and finally edited for the blog. Nope, this is a recent acquisition that intrigued me when I found it up for auction. I knew Marx or Linemar had put out these little vehicle's because I see them from time-to-time but really paid them no attention. Sooo, when this became available, I bit the bullet and picked it up and was a bit surprised at just how small it was. It's design is similar to other Marx Moon vehicles used in their playsets, but not an exact copy and is diecast metal, not plastic. The radar dish does rotate but is a bit wobbly and it measures:  1.625" (4.12cm) L x .75" (1.90cm) W x 1.25" (3.17cm) H.   I'm guessing these were made to compete with Matchbox diecast vehicles as there seems to be a fairly wide array of cars and trucks. Apparently it didn't work out because, 'Elegant Miniatures' died a quiet death in the marketplace while Matchbox continued on. Overall though I like this little gem and it can be used as a background piece in any photo shoots that I eventually cobble together. Enjoy! Opa Fritz


Size-wise it seems to be larger than N-scale but smaller than HO scale.


















Saturday, March 16, 2024

NASA Tracking Vehicle #01-00-54 in Box

Good grief, I believe I am finally to the point where nearly all my old photos have been edited to where they're usable here on the blog. The recently completed "Small World" series started, in part, as a way to post photos that have been sitting on my hard drive for what seems millennia. After perusing my files, I found a bunch more unedited photos. Case in point: this Matchbox NASA tracking Vehicle. Way back in 2015 I posted the #014 NASA Tracking Vehicle on blister card and had actually taken photos of today's toy a year earlier in 2014! The photos sat on the hard drive until just the other day when I got around to editing them!

Okay, fine. So leave us take a look at this nifty little NASA support vehicle from Matchbox. The toy apparently was a conversion by Matchbox from an earlier mobile home piece and it makes sense to have used the that to cobble this together because in real life, a mobile home would have been spacious enough for equipment and crew. I tried looking up mobile tracking stations on Google and got bubkis, so either this is a fantasy piece or NASA is not releasing photos of this hardware. That being said, even if NASA didn't have gear like this, the various news outlets certainly did and would enable them to file news reports from remote locations. For now though let's just concentrate on the toy. It has a rotating radar dish (not motorized) on the roof and an operating door on one side which is activated by a red lever below the frame. The graphics are in blue on a white body and, like other Matchbox toys, would be 1/64 scale. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Here the tracking vehicle is staged alongside a Hardee's Apollo 13 pog collector case (blogged in 2015)








Door closed

Door opened


















Friday, March 15, 2024

Space Art: Exploration

I've been dormant long enough, time to get back in the swing of thing's. After the "Small World" series came to a close I've been searching for something - anything - to post, but my energy levels were low and my Give-A-Shit O-Meter has been pegged at zero. During the lull I came upon a whole butt-load of space toy photos that I took last year but had to be re-taken due to their really crappy quality. So, that's what I've been doing: going out in The Cave and retaking pics. I've also latched onto some other space toys that I can post here as well. But before we get into all that, here's a little something I whipped up on the 'puter I call "Exploration". Enjoy! Opa Fritz



Friday, March 8, 2024

It's A Small World After All: Wrapping Up The Series

I think I'm gonna call it a wrap on this 'It's A Small World' series which has been running now since Dec 7, 2023 - a good run for the blog. There are still things out in The Cave that remain to be photographed (if I can find them), and things I've already sold off that never got photographed. This last portion of the series dealt with Marx HO scale buildings and accessories. Marx introduced their buildings and accessories before they introduced the actual HO scale trains. In the 1952 Sears Christmas Wishbook, Marx offered the #6552 "Guid-A-Traffic" set which included several buildings, figures, and scenery pieces all in hard styrene plastic, plus a too-large-for HO scale windup car. In that same catalog, a few pages away, Marx packaged buildings, figures, scenery items, and smaller sized vehicles in their 'Paint-A-Village-set. The set also included a small, non-functioning train set along with a set of paints and a brush for youngsters to decorate their village. Fast forward to 1961 and the same buildings offered nine years earlier could be found on a ready-made layout board which included an HO scale train, buildings, figures, etc. 

After years of collecting Marx HO scale buildings and think maybe I would get back into the scale after many years being absent from it, I decided to throw in the towel. I kept the Guid-A-Traffic set as well as some odds-&-ends and sold the rest. However, prior to getting rid of them, I placed them in a set-up to photograph them, the results of which are shown below. I'll have a couple of straggler pieces that didn't quite fit into this series that I'll post in the next day or so. AND, should I find any more HO stuff, I'll get those photographed and posted as well. Enjoy! Opa Fritz


1952 Sears Wishbook


Also 1952 Sears Wishbook


1961 Sears Wishbook featuring ready-built HO scale layout boards complete with an HO scale train and buildings. This was the only catalog I could find that showed these ready-made boards. I couldn't find them in any other year, nor were they in any of the Wards Christmas wishbooks that I have. Mind you, back in the day consumer's had a pretty good choice of Christmas catalogs to choose from: JC Penney, Spiegel, Lord & Taylor, Montgomery Wards, Simpson-Sears (Canada), Sears, Western Auto and there were probably more. It could be that Marx layouts were featured in other catalogs that I don't have. 



Here's the set-up featuring all the buildings in the series as well as the figures, vehicles, etc. A few things shown didn't get posted because the photos turned out bad and the item was sold off already. Other things - like the train - I thought were photographed but...?


I really thought I photographed this train - and maybe the pics are somewhere on my hard drive, but I haven't been able to find them yet.