Today's Pushing Tin segment on Toys & Stuff is a neat little tin-litho jet from Linemar, Marx's Japanese subsidiary. I believe it to be an F-86 Sabre jet, albeit a caricature and not an exact replica. The '5thAF' marking on the wing stands for '5th Air Force' which was headquartered at Yokota Air Base, Japan. The F-86 Sabrejet was one of the aircraft flown by the 5th AF during the 1950s. Like many jets put out by Japanese toy makers during The Age of Tin, this one has the basic lines of the original but there are some differences, like a nose and tail which are too pointy for the real F-86 among other things, but that's really not much of a detractor because it's such a nifty '50s toy. It has the same break-apart construction seen on most tin litho airplanes, aka separate fuselage and wing assemblies, and has the obligatory sparkling mechanism in the wing. The jet measures 6 1/2" (16.5cm) L x 5 1/8" (13cm) wingspan and so is not a very large toy. For the collector this is a bonus - it takes up less shelf space! Enjoy!
