#1074 GINGELL – BMW 323i CABRIO, FERRARI TESTAROSSA and PORSCHE CARRERA (Around 1993)

I have to admit, that, despite collecting toy cars since my childhood, I have no idea about most of these cheaper, made in China, brands that popped-up in the early 1990s. I usually get advice of Steven from the Motorcade, or I visit his webpage directly. 

The models themselves are rather uninteresting. Not bad casts, but lots of plastic, black windows and also bad tampographies (although I appreciate the racing numbers, as they help, or, at least, helped me as a kid, to organize races at home). The BMW seems to be a poor copy of a Matchbox model, but otherwise, there is nothing remarkable about them. 

The cars have been spotted in sets of many cars, and with different commercial names, but the company behind them is Gingell (Gingell Die-Casting Mfy. Ltd.). This company operated either with a big “G” logo or with a second logo that represented a rhinoceros, so Gingell is sometimes called Rhino, too (we will come to that in our next entry). Those logos appear in the boxes, not on the bases of the cars or anywhere else, so it is difficult to identify these miniatures loose. At HobbyTalk.com there are some threads that try to get a list of these models and investigate in which sets they were available. 

Both logos have been retrieved from HobbyTalk.com

Something noteworth is that the bases seem to be prepared to carry a pull-back motor, but this is not present in any of them. They do not have a reference number or any marking on the base other than "Made in China".

I bought these three cars together with other things, so I didn't have to pay for the shipping. The interesting part for me were the stickers placed over the roofs of the cars with the logo of Wüstenrot, an Austrian company for financial services, real-state and insurance. They were probably intended as a give-away to the kids who came to their offices together with their parents.

FACTS AND FIGURES: 

• Name:  BMW 323i CABRIO, FERRARI TESTAROSSA and PORSCHE CARRERA
• Scale: 1:64
• Year: Around 1993
• Company: Gingell/Rhino (China)
• Size: approx. 6 cm

#1073 G.I. JOE – COBRA TROOPER and COBRA VIPER (1982 and 1986)

When I deal with the most popular toylines of the major toy companies, my blog receive almost no visits. Of course, everything I could say here about G.I. Joe has already been said somewhere else, or, if you are looking for some information, you have yojoe.com or many other sites to read for hours.

Still, I love to write about lines such as G.I. Joe and taking my figures out for a photo session, so this time I´d like to talk about the main characters of Cobra´s armies: the Cobra Trooper and the Cobra Viper. They are the infantry soldiers of the terrorist organisation, and where always present in the comics and the TV series. First the Cobra Trooper, who was one of the figures in the very first wave in 1982, then updated in 1986 to look less human and more like a sci-fi character. There is a second version of Viper from 1994, but this one is much rarer and I still don´t have it. In any case, the really remarkable ones are these two.

The Cobra Trooper was released, as I just said, in 1982 with straight arms, but then “updated” the following year with swivel arms, which is the version in the pictures. It came with a black machine gun only. It is not to be mistaken by the Cobra Officer, which is a very similar figure, whose more remarkable difference is a silver emblem in the chest. Since we are going today for the “cannon fodder” only, I'll reserve the Cobra Officer for some other day.

 

The Cobra Viper looks much more menacing with its silver visor or helmet and has a much more detailed body sculpt. It seems to be wearing a special jacket (maybe bullet-proof), protective gloves and googles. This other figure came with a grey rifle and a black backpack. The dark blue is the same, as it is the corporate colour of Cobra and suits well for night actions or city guerrilla.

 

Both figures are highly interesting for collectors, as you cannot have only one, you need a bunch of them! In the community in which I used to participate many years ago, there were many advanced collectors who had 10, 50, 100 of each of these two for armybuilding. Crazy! Fortunately, they are not so scarce that they are impossible to find, with some effort (also economical effort), you can find one complete and in good shape. And if, not, they has been cloned and can be bought new, almost indistinguishable of the original ones.

Here is the Spanish fullcard of Viper (Víboras)

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: COBRA TROOPER and VIPER
• Toy Line: G.I. Joe
• Year: 1983 and 1986
• Company: Hasbro (U.S.A.)
• Size of the figures: 10 cm approx.