#1089 BLUE-BOX – PEUGEOT 205 (Around 1992)

I have never seen this mechanism anywhere else in a toy car of 3 inches size. The base of the miniature includes a plastic ratchet that will turn together with the wheels, so, when moving it, it will produce a RR-RR-RR-RR sound, as if the engine or the motor were working at full speed. Such a simple idea and such a nice implementation with almost no costs.

I also like a lot that they represented the Peugeot 205, a car that became very popular in the late 80s and the beginning of the nineties. Many other brands made it at the same scale (for example, Majorette or Guisval). It was even done as a Raid car, such as the Scalextric STS model in Paris-Dakar decoration. It was a very popular car, cheap, families could afford buying one of these, so it was a common sight in the countries where it was available. Unfortunately, the detail level is not very good, but you still can recognise the car without any problems. The paint is also not the best.

This was a rare find, as Blue-Box is quite rare outside of the UK. I do not have many toys made by this brand, and all I have have already been presented in the blog, so, if you are interested in this particular toymaker, you can check its history in this entry, or see other plastic vehicles here.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: PEUGEOT 205
• Scale: Around 1:64
• Year:  Around 1992
• Company: Blue Box (Hong-Kong)
• Size: approx. 7 cm

#1005 BLUE BOX – PENNY RACERS and TRAFALGAR – COIN CHARGERS (Around 1989 and 1982, respectively)

The Penny Racers (or, in Japanese, Choro-Q) are best known under the Takara brand, which is also the company that introduced them in 1978. They were based on a previous toyline called Mame Dash which was discontinued in 1980.

They are miniature pull-back cars with superdeformed dimensions (Choro is an abbreviation to the Japanese word for “cute”), in whose rear part there is a slot in which you can insert, if you wish, a small coin (f.e. a penny) and the car will drive on two wheels, making nice acrobacies on its way. There were a lot of tracks to go with and the variety was enourmous, as they encountered great success both in Japan and outside Japan. The license has even make it up to a dozen videogames and some Transformers sub-lines are also Penny Racers, not to forget the licenses awarded to Blue Box, Funrise, Tonka and others. Even it may seem strange, the original Japanese line was aimed to adult collectors, whereas Tonka version (called the Turbo Tricksters) is intended for children. There were all kinds of vehicles made, and they are still being sold in many countries, so it is a line that is still alive and producing many different models per year. 

 

The blue and yellow buggy is my only Penny Racer, I bought is for one euro in a fle market around 4 years ago. It is a nice model with a decoration and colour combination that was usual in the 90s. You can read more about Blue Box Toys here.

Another model which fits into this category of toys, but it is actually a knock-off is this Coin Chargers by the Hong-Kongese company Trafalgar. This one is clearly older (probably from the early 80s) and represents a fire truck. It was a gift from Steven and it is still carded, which is always nice to see. The instructions are in simple English and include some errors. The backcard shows other 5 models, but you can observe that the Coin Chargers were probably sold for very little money, as the quality of the package is rather low, although at the time, most products of its kind had (more or less) this quality.

UPDATE (May/2023): I got this model from my friend Steven, and it is matching exactly the first model shown in this entry. It is also made by Blue Box.

FACTS AND FIGURES

• Name: BUGGY and FIRE TRUCK 
• Scale: Approx. 1:90
• Year: Around 1989 and around 1982, respectively
• Company: Blue Box (Hong-Kong) and Trafalgar Toys (Hong-Kong) based on a license or copied from Takara's Choro-Q
  
• Size: approx. 4 cm

#846 TOYS FROM THE PAST - MUSEUM (IX)

See more of these entries here: http://toysfromthepast.blogspot.com/search/label/TFTP

See you next month!

Important notice: The items on display are NOT for sale.

 

 

 

 

#801 BLUE BOX – MORRIS MINOR (Ref. 7434) (Around 1960)

MONTH OF THE BOOTLEG AT TOYS FROM THE PAST!

This is a plastic car with a size smaller than three inches, it could actually be confused with an H0 1:87 model, although I guess it is just small because the original Morris Minor was a very small car.

The car is marked “Nº 434 Hong Kong” and it took me a bit to find out which manufacturer is behind this Matchbox knock-off. The answer is Blue Box, a company that has already appeared once in my blog, and whose story is kind of paradigmatic for a Hong-Kong company that started copying toys from England, and later became a great and powerful toy company.

Compared to the Matchbox car, I would say this one is based in its own cast, since there are many big differences to come from a cloned cast. The toy is quite fragile (note the broken window frame on one side, and the missing part in the chassis), so it is quite surprising to have found this item still in such a good shape. Its previous owner was surely a very careful guy. It is a nice substitute for the
Machbox model, since this is one of the hardest to find.

This last picture shows the Bue Box model among others in a very nice blisterpack with the characteristic blue label. The car was also available in single boxes, and other multi-packs including 8 or 6 cars.


Picture from Vectis.co.uk

 

Picture from planetdiecast.com

 

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: MORRIS MINOR (ref. 7434)
• Scale: Around 1:64
• Year: 1960
• Company: Blue Box (Hong-Kong)
• Size: approx. 6 cm

#658 BLUE BOX - TRANSPORT TRUCK and FORK LIFT (Around 1970)

The communist takeover of China in 1949 also brought a lot of refugees travelling to the nearby colonies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau or Singapore. That meant very cheap labour to work in factories and this fact brought economic growth to all these regions.

One of the goods manufactured was plastic toys. Starting as early as the 1950s, these cheap toys would arrive to Europe and America and would put in serious trouble other traditional toymakers.

Many of these Hongkongese toys were copied from British and American models. In a high percentage, they are not marked other than "Made in Hong-Kong", so identifiying them is quite difficult. The brand name and logo was shown often in the box, but, as we know, very few boxes survive after 10, 20 or 30 years. In addition to this, most manufacturers were rather small, and some didn´t even used a brand name. Instead, they worked for some foreign distributors that would sell these items under their own brand.

This distributors were sometimes the ones that took the toys to Hong-Kong and asked the local manufacturers to copy them. Some british distributors that produced toys in Hong-Kong were: Telsalda, Clifford Series, Fairylite, OK, Emu Series, Laurie Toys... Classic toy manufacturers created second brands for cheap toys, like Cragstan from the US and Woolbro, the cheap brand for Woolworth markets.

Some European makers had to leave out plastic toys, that were not profitable anymore and developped more complex toys. Apparently the paradigmatic example of this is Tri-ang, that started producing slot cars.

Some of these small manufacturers actually progressed to become independent, most notably Lucky Toys and Blue Box.

There are not much details about this brand. Most companies that have survived to the present day try to hide their humble origins. Blue Box was founded in 1952 by Peter Chan Pui. They started making dolls but soon they started producing toy cars, most of them copied from Matchbox, Corgi and the rest of major European manufacturers, only in plastic.

The rest of the story is already known, European and American makers would finally start their own factories and facilities in Asia, to save costs over the years. Now it is not Hong-Kong anymore, but China.

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: TRANSPORT TRUCK and FORK LIFT
• Scale: Around 1:55 and 1:100
• Year: Around 1970
• Company: Blue Box (Hong Kong)
• Size: approx. 7 cm