Playing With My Toys - Military Convoy 14 Oct 2017

Soooo, I've got all these toys I've been blogging just sittin' around doing nothing! In a rare period of  'me' time last week I decided to pull out most of my smaller military vehicles and see what I could do. Using the display base originally built for my American Civil War toys, I re-purposed it into a convoy route. There's approximately 135+ vehicles shown here (I didn't even bother to include the larger MPC stuff) and, using the photos, decided to put together a short video as well. It was fun being able to pull these out of boxes and off shelves and just play for a change - I mean, looking at 'em is cool and all that, but sometimes even collector's just wanna play! Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Barclay (BV5) #151 Army AA Gun Truck

I've picked up a few pre-war Army vehicles lately from Barclay and TootsieToy. These vehicles all came out either just before or shortly after the start of the Great Depression and I wonder if it wasn't a way to provide kids with low-cost toys because back then, many toys were simply built large. Girls played with large doll houses, boys played with large Lionel trains or Buddy L trucks and many middle-class families lived in large houses with parlors that were perfect for playing with large toys. That's not to say all toys were big. West Bros made small tin-litho buildings as containers for their line of candy, Cracker Jack had tiny toys in their caramel popcorn boxes and then there was the German 'penny toys' - small and very desirable today.  When Barclay, Manoil, and TootsieToy started producing die cast/slush cast toys it was a trend that continues today with Matchbox and Hot Wheels. So, without further ado - Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina