Back in January a funny thing happened during one of my marathon picture taking sessions. Prior to me taking photos, I try to clean up the toys a little. I spritz a little 'Armor All' on them and use a 5/8" flat artists brush and rag to get the dirt and dust off and get it out of the nooks and crannies. It was during one of these pre-photography cleaning sessions that I noticed something peculiar; among the hard plastic and soft plastic ships (an obvious variant to notice) there seemed to be variations within variations. This piqued my interest and I began looking at all the toys in the box and kept discovering more differences.
Over the course of several photo sessions I would identify seventeen variants which have been presented here on Toys & Stuff from April 20, 2013 until today. In addition I've given names to the two major body types. The ships with the longer, narrower fuselage I've coined as Darts while the shorter, fatter fuselages I've coined as Wide Body. The Dart designation comes from recollections of the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet being referred to as a 'lawn dart' early in its operational life. When you look at these they do rather resemble a dart:
There is one variant I believe probably exists but I haven't yet seen an example of it - a 3" Wide Body soft plastic ship. So far I've only seen 3" hard plastic versions. Also, it was apparent by the somewhat not-so-stellar quality of the soft plastic toys that they were most probably knock-offs of Premier Plastics original hard plastic products.
So, for those of you who - like me - like lists, here's the master list of all known variants - Enjoy!
9” Variants
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 9 windows behind cockpit
- 3 free rolling wheels in tricycle landing gear
arrangement
- Backward #2 underneath fuselage
- Soft Plastic
- Knock-off
- 9 windows behind cockpit
- 3 struts instead of wheels
- Backward #2 underneath fuselage
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 8 windows behind cockpit
- 3 free rolling wheels in tricycle landing gear
arrangement
- #1 underneath fuselage
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 8 windows behind cockpit
- 3 struts instead of wheels
- #1 underneath fuselage
5” Variants
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 1 strut underneath nose and 2 free rolling wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- Backward #2 underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
5” Darts v.1a (Not posted. Same as v. 1 above except there is no stiffening ribs and no number underneath fuselage))
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 1 strut underneath nose and 2 free rolling wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- No stiffening ribs between windows
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
- Hard Plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 1 strut underneath nose and 2 free rolling wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- No platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
NOTE: All soft plastic variants appear to have platform
over nacelles
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
- Original exhaust
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 3 short struts (stumpy legs) in place of wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
- Original exhaust
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 7 windows behind cockpit
- 3 short struts (stumpy legs) in place of wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
- Whistle exhaust (aka ‘Whistle Butt’) – only appears on
soft plastic variants
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 6 windows behind
cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- No stiffening ribs between windows
- Platform molded above engine nacelles to accommodate
spaceman
- Original exhaust
NOTE: 5” Wide Body’s
actually measure 4 ½”
- Actually measures 4 ½”
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 6 windows behind cockpit
- 1 strut underneath nose and 2 free rolling wheels in
tricycle landing gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Original exhaust
- Actually measures 4 ½”
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 6 windows behind cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Original exhaust
- Actually measures 4 ½”
- Soft plastic
- Knock-off
- 6 windows behind cockpit
- 3 short struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Whistle exhaust (aka ‘Whistle Butt’) – only appears on
soft plastic variants
3” Variants
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 5 windows behind cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics (or….?)
- 6 windows behind cockpit (modification by Premier or
knock-off?)
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- No number underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 4 windows behind cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- #3 underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Original exhaust
- Hard plastic
- Made by Premier Plastics
- 5 windows behind cockpit
- 3 tall struts in place of wheels in tricycle landing
gear arrangement
- Backward #4 underneath fuselage
- Stiffening ribs between windows
- Original exhaust
3” Wide Body’s v.3
???
I have no 3” Soft Plastic Wide Body’s in my collection
