A brief history of tanks: period models.

[hottoddy]

For those of you who didn't check out the "distractions" thread, which you should since there are some somewhat obsessive compulsive, yet totally amazing collections, I'm an addict of sorts.

Like many of you, I like tanks. No, I lied. I love tanks. Particularly the early days of their existence, from the crude contraptions of WWI to the wacky, wildly impractical designs the inter war years.

Unlike a sensible vehicle enthusiast, persons who might buy models that are new, shiny, and perfectly accurate ( be it automobiles, aircraft, canoes, or in my case tanks), I prefer my models to be period. Not only do I not like to buy those nice new models, I really don't care for them much at all.

With the exception of certain trench art, there really aren't a lot of "models" from the eras I'm most interested. As a result, I found myself collecting the next best thing, toys. Toys from all over, only really cared that they were cool and period.

I've been collecting them for several years now (along with guns, cannons, trucks, and other military toys), never really thought there were too many people who would be interested in them, especially not in a place full of badass militaria like this place. Apparently I was wrong!

Lets start early and work our way forward. The early pieces are my favorite, so I suppose we'll start out strong! I'll post each (or a few at once) in a new post, just so I don't go crazy in this editor.

As an overview, here are the tanks, as seen in the other thread.


To the mods: please put this wherever you feel it fits best! It's hard to place categorically, sorry

[hottoddy]

So, lets start in the beginning. Likely the first models outside of the workshops and factories mocking up these monsters, was the humble trench art. While it is hard to say if this was actually made in a trench or if it was made in a field workshop, hospital, home-side barracks, or after the war entirely as a memento, the fact of the matter is that these were made by the men who saw them (or pictures of them) and felt the desire to create their own.

I don't blame them, it had to have been an unimaginable sight for it's day. There is little that would impress and terrify us in such a way that the tank would have, rumbling across the battlefield.



This is an amazing little 6 1/2" tank money box that came over from England. I've seen a lot of "trench art" tanks and very few have convinced me on originality as much as this one has. It has everything, patina on the brass hinge, unique hand-made imperfections, old thick grain wood, and most importantly a convincing inscription on the bottom. Even the nails are mismatched, some are brass, others are typical steel. There is faint, yet beautiful gold paint outlining the treads.



The guns have a really neat design where they are suspended from a nail inside round-edged holes in the tank. The soft edges allow the gun to be moved in all directions, even vertically. The hole in the cannon itself is much larger than the nail so it provides a lot of mobility. That is the reason the two on the sides probably fell off, there is only ~1/16th of wood holding it in place.

I had to make replacement cannons for the two sponsons, but I think I did a very good job matching the patina. I'm very pleased by how it looks.



I'm not sure about the inscription yet. It appears to be
E Lou**n
L Dorren
R***

All seem to be slightly different handwriting, which, if nothing else is convinces you, is probably the most significant clue to originality.

I absolutely love this little guy. Once I can nail down the names I might do some more research on them. I'd love to find out who actually made it.

[hottoddy]

Next, we start moving to the home front. These machines captured the public's attention and imagination much the same way that many of the other innovations of the time had, like aviation, dreadnaughts, automobiles, and so on. It wasn't soon after their first appearance one the battlefield that tanks started appearing in the newspapers, and then finally as toys.



The early days were full of many manufacturers, with very little information around on most of them. It is tough to say when exactly this was made, but if I had to guess it was probably made before 1920, when the MK IV style hull was still the nigh universal symbol of tanks.



This colossal juggernaut of a war machine (for a toy) is 14" long, all wood construction, canvas treads with little wooden "tracks". It has a metal crank that powers the spring cannon mounted centrally to the hull (unfortunately that spring is one of the only things missing). Of the FOUR of these tanks I know about, the spring is either lost or broken on three of them. The spring must have been mounted in an unusual and precarious way (held on by two finish nails at most!). My favorite part of it is that, when it is pulled along the floor, the tracks actually move with the tank!



The bottom says that it was "Manufactured by Harley Co. Springfield Mass." Can't find anything about the company. The jump to motorcycles is something that comes to mind, but THAT Harley has nothing to do with Springfield as far as I know.



The soldiers are made by Barclay. The tank pre-dates them by a few years, since they were made in the 30s. All the same, they look good with it.

[hottoddy]

As time passed, more sophisticated toys were designed and produced. The favorite of the era was either tinplate or pressed steel. Some of the early inter-war examples are quite extravagant.

Even the "average" toys were still quite nice, many with heavy clockwork motors.



This one was produced by the Walbert Manufacturing Company in Chicago. This wonderful 14" tank is made out of pressed steel with wooden wheels and rubber-on-canvass tracks.



Again, hard to say when it was made. I've only ever seen a handful of other pieces made by Walbert, so I can only guess they were short lived. Further proof of this is the near-exact copy of this toy made by Wolverine (a Pittsburgh company). There was a lot of absorbing, selling of companies and designs, etc going on. But another likely case of late teens to early 20's.

The original box has fantastic graphics of a MK IV female running down some Germans in their pickelhaubes.



When I fist got it, it wasn't running. I had to file down a lump of solder on on the drive axle (leftover from an old repair), but most of the work was done by the miracle worker known as WD-40. I was so excited to see it run!

[hottoddy]

One more for today

With victory came the convenience of spending money on things you didn't necessarily need. Thank god for that, otherwise we would never see extravagant playthings like this!



This 11" long behemoth represents (to the best of the creators ability) a Mk IV style tank, probably right out of the newspapers of the day. Unlike the "male" versions which had two larger 6 pound guns, the "female" tanks had only machine guns and different sponsons that accommodated the smaller machine guns.



The construction is mostly steel sheets, but also what looks like a heavy aluminum panel on which the brass geared clockwork motor is mounted. The wheels, copula, sponsons, and guns are all aluminum, many of which are cast. This was obviously an early attempt at using cast aluminum fittings for a toy since they are fairly crude (by today's standards at least).



The copula opens to revel the massive motor. The key is screwed onto the motor before winding can actually begin. There is a break lever on the top of the motor, which keeps the rather heavy flywheel from spinning. The flywheel is so heavy, that it takes a few seconds for the clockwork to get it up so speed; it really sounds like an engine revving up! The motor itself powers a chain that goes from around the middle of the tank back to the rear drive wheels. It is really a fine, high quality piece of craftsmanship powering something as humble as a toy.



Vectis suspects that this was made by Bedington, Liddiatt & Co of London with a possible date of 1919, but looking back at old English catalogs, they seem to primarily be a retailer, and not a manufacturer. I would love to know who made this little marvel, but I enjoy it none the less.

This by far one of my favorites. There's nothing quite like the quality on this one.

[Ron P]

Post some more of your collection!

[Kondor]

FANTASTIC I love that 2nd tank made of wood with the hand crank! Kids today wouldn't know what to do with it!!! Keep them coming!!

[reichenberg]

Great collection. My all time favorite tank is the German A7V of 1918 but I have never found a model of one anywhere. I'm not sure if Airfix may have done a kit years ago, but I don't recall seeing one.

[hottoddy]

Thanks so much you guys!

Ron: Glad to see another NJ resident who enjoys these! I'll be posting more for sure. I've just been busy these past few days. I work at a movie theater so incidents with Batman have been... interesting.

Kondor: While I'm not an old man by any means (22), I still think of myself as a mature individual. That being said, I can still be reduced to giggles over how cool these things are. Kids today don't know what they are missing! I'm not going to lie, I've put some of these together with my soldiers on more that one occasion for pictures!

reichenberg: You have no idea how awesome it would be to find an old model of an A7V, I don't think I've ever seen one either. I'm sure there is some trench art or post war memento out there somewhere; there has to be!

I do know that there are plenty of modern model kits available for the A7V. You are right in that I don't think airfix made one, but other companies certainly have.

Here is a 1/72 Emhar. Also, here is a paper version if you want immediate results!

[streptile]

Wow, these are amazing. I can easily see how one could get obsessed with collecting them. Great items, great pictures -- thanks for sharing them and bring on the rest

[hottoddy]

streptile: Thanks! I was wondering when you were going to drop by. Unlike most militaria, the odd ball, unknown maker, unusual stuff actually sells for less than the well known pieces. This gives me the chance to get some really cool early stuff with out breaking the bank. I'm always searching for something I've never seen, which is a lot of fun.

There are many many pieces that I don't have examples of, most of which from well known makers (Marx, Marklin, Tipp&co, Gama, etc, etc), but most of them you can find and purchase at will (if you have the cash).

All I need now is a good WWI Tank corps uniform to go with everything!

[hottoddy]

Today we'll move from the Allies over to what you are all probably waiting for, German stuff!

The immediate postwar period was not as kind to toy makers as it was to the allies. The State had much bigger problems to deal with and there simply wasn't money for such luxuries.

After things stabilized somewhat after 1923, however, German exports kicked back up much faster than anyone expected. England was particularly upset that Germany was making much nicer model trains than the English so quickly after being defeated. Even with anti-german sentiment costing German manufactures mush of the American market that they had once dominated, the legendary toy makers of southern Germany once again started producing.

The early German tanks I have are some of the more whimsical that were made.



This First example was made by Hausser, famous for it's composition soldiers like that of Elastolin and Lineol.



Even though it had been more than a decade since the start of WWII, the German makers clung to the basic design of allied MK IV tanks well into the 30's.



10" long (plus crank) It has unique, beautiful hand painted camouflage (airbrushed against a rough card or paper). Each side mounted sponson gun has a spring so that it can shoot peas, though the gun on top has it's own little surprise. You load the top hatch full of peas/bbs/ball bearings and when the crank is turned a trap door allows a pea to drop into the barrel while the crank is also pulling back a spring. After the trap door closes, the spring releases, propelling the projectile! It'll shoot as fast as you crank it!



The motor was a bit of a mystery to me. I was under the impression that it wasn't working when I first received it. I took the side off to see what was going on in there and I found an unexpected design. In order to get it going, you need to depress the small lever next to the top crank (picture 3, vertical line next to flywheel in picture 4), then the front crank can be pushed into the tank (horizontal line in picture 4) which connects directly to the flywheel's axle, at which point you can crank it to get it moving. After you have spun the flywheel up to speed, then you pull the top lever back up which pulls the front drive wheels into contact with the spinning flywheel gears. Only after all that does the tank's wheels actually turn!

As a toy guy, let me tell you; the quality you expect from Imperial awards is the same quality expressed in things as humble as toys. These manufactures took great pride in the things they made. The complexity of this motor (even though it is a "simple" flywheel motor) should give you a good idea of that.

[hottoddy]

Next we have another legendary Bavarian toy maker. Gebruder Bing of Nurnberg had been around since 1863, and started making toys in the 1880s. They were the comapny that perfected the "Nurnberg style" of construction, that which used lithographed metal sheets which were assembled by tabs and slots. Their quality was well known, and this tank was no exception.



11" MK IV style hull with multi-gun turret, like that of armored cars of the day. The side sponsons open, which gives a slightly better view of the inside. The tank's hull is made with no less than 13 different pressed tinplate pieces. There is a faint yellow Bing stamp on the bottom, but is otherwise unmarked.



There are two levers on the back, one is the on and off switch, the other defines the path the tank will take. All the way off, and it will go in a straight line. All the way on, and it will make 90 degree turns every so often.



Rather than wheels, this tank uses rubber belts as tracks underneath the hull. This is a trend that would be widely adopted by many companies in the 30s.

[hottoddy]

Not to say that there were not simple models being made as well. So called penny toys were very popular, in just about any country.



This one is another odd ball without a clear maker, but still a charming example.



Very simple mechanism, feels like no gear exchange present, but it still gets the job done. Still quite sizable at 7 1/2" long. If you look close you can see the embossed sponson guns on the sides and rear. In the one other example of this model I've seen, it had graphics to coincide with those features, I'd love to find one of those.

[gregM]

Here is an oldie---

Molded hard rubber.