Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 92 Sets: REMCO Style No. 712 Whirlybird (With Payton Figures and Vehicles)

I have been waiting for years to post this bad boy! I wanted to include it in a Payton series, but as it turned out, that took many years to happen. Well, we've been doing Payton now since January, so it's about time this gets it's due!!

Of course, the prime subject for this is the absolutely awesome H-21C Piasecki Tandem Helicopter, also known as the Flying Banana which entered service in the early 1950s. REMCO's version is large and full of features. REMCO had an unusual nomenclature for their sets, referring to them by 'style number' instead item number or part number. This one is Style No. 712. It is battery operated  and turning it on caused the rotors to rotate and the helicopter to move along the ground. A separate switch allowed you to raise or lower the hoist. Unfortunately mine doesn't work - it's strictly a display piece, however it does display really well. There is a cargo door on the port side, allowing you to fill the hold with the 25 Payton troops that came with it (spoiler alert: they don't all fit nice and neat like). BTW, this is the pre-Monkey Division set. The Monkey Division was a whole series of Army toys REMCO came out with in the 1960s. This set was advertised as early as 1960 in Sears, but I don't know how long of a run it had - either as a regular helo or Monkey Division helo.

My set was missing its full compliment of figures and vehicles, but I had more than enough extras to turn this into a complete set. Like Marx, Payton too would supply products to other manufacturers for inclusion into sets. This REMCO Whirlybird included the following Payton pieces:

-25 Man Attack Force (45mm Army Men)

-1 Tank

-1 Troop Carrying Truck

-1 Jeep

-1 Howitzer

The helicopter measures: fuselage 24" (60,96cm) x 6" (15,24cm) W x 8.5" (21,59cm) H with a 36" (91,44cm) rotor span.

Real Flying Bananas At Work

A couple of photos culled from the Internet showing how these helicopters actually hauled equipment like Jeeps and cannons - they weren't loaded into the belly of the beast. However, REMCO's version does have 

Catalog Extracts

1960 Sears Catalog Extract

1961 Sears Catalog Extract

REMCO's Whirlybird

My box is rough, but cosmetically the helicopter is in decent shape.

This is the set as I received it: missing quite a few troops and an incorrect compliment of vehicles.

Like many plastic toys of the era made with white plastic, mine has discolored a cream-ish color.

After going through my extra figures and vehicles I now have a complete set.

There was no room in The Cave to photograph this beast so I had to take it outside on the patio.

You'll be hard pressed to fit all 25 figures in this cargo hold unless you just dump them in!