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!

Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 65 Sets: Pt 7 Payton No. 2000 Unbreakable Soldier Set Revisited: Did It Come With This?

When I received my set No. 2000, it was a mixed blessing. The box was the single most important part of the purchase as was the 'K9' (clearly a German Shepherd) which is a bear to find in its own right. My box also contained some Eldon vehicles which I sorely needed for that collection, but was missing the two troop transport trucks. In addition, one of the tanks had a broken barrel, and all the 'unbreakable' figures in my box were...

...you guessed it - BROKEN!

The missing / broken pieces were easily replaced and I was able to make a complete set out of it. However, there was one piece included which stumps me to this day. My set included a blow mold sandbag emplacement which looks very similar to a piece on the box top artwork (which I circled in the picture below). I did not include this piece in yesterday's post because I'm not totally sure it belongs to the set. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

The set as purchased (the sandbag emplacement is buried under the Jeeps in the lower right of the box)

Among the hardest Payton figures to find is the K9

The 'unbreakable' figures included in my purchase

Upon first glance this appears to be a boulder, but upon closer inspection, it does resemble a very crude sandbag emplacement.

Here's what a complete (and unbroken) set would look like with the sandbag emplacement as part of the contents.

Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 63 Sets: Pt 5 Payton - Winneco MIB Set with OD Tank (No set no.)

This is essentially the same set shown yesterday but the tank is in the more traditional olive drab colors.

Ed

Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 62 Sets: Pt 4 Payton - Winneco MIB Set with Gray Tank (No set no.)

While Payton didn't necessarily make adversaries for their Little Green Army Men like Marx did, they did offer vehicles and troops in other than olive green which could serve as the 'bad guys'. This set has a tank with a gray hull but the Army guys are still olive green. In a later post I'll show some different colors.

Ed

Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 61 Sets: Pt 3 Payton No. 420 US Troops

Now here's a header bag set from my collection. The prices for MIB Payton sets is outrageous and I ended up losing out on several lately. I had bid over $100 each for several small bags which came up on fleaBay and got blown out of the water! This one however, managed to find its way to me and I'm thankful. It also was an aid in helping me to distinguish Marx from Payton howitzers because at the time I got this, I was still a bit unsure.

Ed

Notice the cut-down hydraulic pistons

First generation howitzer is on the left with full hydraulic pistons (that's what I'm calling it because I have yet to find a specific nomenclature for these)

At some point the pistons were shortened as seen on the right

What they would look like in real life

Credit to author shown on photo