New Series: Payton Products, Inc.'s Little Green Army Men - Pt 1 British Centurion Tank Olive Green SP

This series has literally been years in the making. Waaay back in 2016 I made several posts, one each for the tank, the truck, and the Jeep / cannon combo, but then stopped. After that came the 'buying' phase - gathering toys and info to flesh out a proper series. Not that I was active in buying all those years, but with so many other things on my plate, this kept getting put off. As it is, there may be days when there are no Payton posts simply because I still need to edit photos taken months ago or still need to take more photos. But man-oh-man, knowing me, if I don't get this going now I never will!!

Here's a bit of Payton history from Kent Owen Sprecher  (Toy Train HQ):

Payton mainly sold figures in header card bags. Payton may have been taken over by fellow Brooklyn, NY concern Winneco Industries in the 1970s. Winneco was formed in 1972 as a shell company to manage the take over of Palmer Plastics also located in Brooklyn. By the late 1970s Payton, Winneco & Palmer were all absorbed by H-G Toys.

In addition:

Payton military vehicles sometimes come with decals (US and or German)

The earliest reference I have for Payton is from the 1960 Sears Christmas Wishbook which shows REMCO's Whirlybird with the Payton vehicles and figures (I'll be covering the Whirlybird in a later post).

1960 Sears Wishbook extract

The Payton vehicles are also well known in the toy train collecting world by train guys who don't otherwise know a tank from a halftrack. As a  toy train collector as well, I can only shake my head when a fellow collector is under the notion that these tanks were specially made only as loads for Lionel flatcars in sets carried by Sears and J.C. Penny's. While Payton may have provided the tanks for Lionel, there's nothing 'special' about them. The same tanks could be found in bagged header sets, boxed sets, or included with toys made by other companies (like Remco's Whirlybird). Additionally. there's far too many of them on the market for them only to have been included in a few limited run train sets.

This article was culled from the Internet and was written by Robert Caplan for the Train Collector's Quarterly, the Train Collector's Association (TCA) publication. It speaks mainly to the differences between original and reproduction tanks. The article stated that the tank saw service from WWII through the '60s, however, while it entered service in 1945, it came out too late to see combat during WWII.

The tank started development in 1943 but didn't go into production until 1945 and first saw combat in 1950 during the Korean War. 

Culled from the Internet (Google images)

The Payton toys were personal favorites of mine when I was a kid. The figures were 45mm near-exact clones of Marx, and the vehicles were sized appropriately for the era. Back then I couldn't figure out why the tank looked odd - it didn't look like any American tank I was familiar with. I do find it odd that with the other equipment, as well as the little green army men, being American outline, Payton decided to throw a British design into the mix! As well, unlike Marx, Payton never offered an adversary group of figures to be the bad guys, the closest being the minty green figures offered later by Miner Industries.

The tank hull measures: 5" (12,7cm) L x 2.25" (5,71cm) W  1.75" (4,44cm) H overall. It is 6" (15,24cm) L to tip of the barrel. Payton made their vehicles in several colors: olive green, olive drab (or dark brown), and gray. In addition, at some point during the '70s I believe, Miner Industries either bought Payton, or at the very least acquired the tooling. They then became available in shades of mint green to go with the olive green and gray. Original Payton header bag sets often contained tanks with different colors for the turret and hull. We'll see that when I start to cover the sets. Unfortunately, the plastics on these old vehicles become brittle over time and I have far too many that have fallen apart in my hands! Never fear, if you don't want to fork over the money for originals that may end up falling apart on you, Victory Buy sells repos in a variety of colors for very reasonable prices and all made here in the USA. That said, I haven't yet bought any of the repo tanks but probably will in the next couple of weeks just to get comparison photos.

Several views showing Marx, Payton, Auburn size comparisons

(L) Marx (M) Payton (R) Auburn

(T) Marx (M) Payton (B) Auburn

(L) Auburn (M) Payton (R) Marx