MAC Forum

When I picked up this hard-to-find toy helicopter some years ago, I at first assumed it was the product of some Japanese toy manufacturer's imagination.

The toy is made by Bandai and is pretty impressive in it's flowing design:



I was a bit surprised to find that it's modeled from an actual aircraft developed and flown by a company called Monte-Copter from 1953-1960. The aircraft transitioned from the Model 10 to the Model 12 with a final designation as the Model 15. Even crazier, the aircraft was called a "Triphibian," as it was designed as an amphibian helicopter.

Check out these vintage clips and photos:





Here's one of many websites that feature the helicopter:

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng ... ter-15.php

The toy has a lot of cool actions including motor-driven wheels, engine noise, spinning rotor, lights, and sliding canopy dome. I'm not sure why Bandai went with the Air Mail livery, but that's always popular with collectors.

In fact, toy collectors get pretty excited over this toy since it seems to have had a very short manufacturing run. It's not seen often, and the last example I saw sold for $1400!

Wow ... I agree that it looks like a caricature but that is a very interesting tin toy I have not seen before ! Thank you for the history lesson.

Only reason I have heard ofthis helicoptrer is another Japanese company, Marusan,had a model kit of it. Never seen the kit accept in a book and it is worth quite a bit of money.
The scale was listed as 1/24. I always thought it strange a Japanese company made a model of the copter,and now with the toy you show,made another.

Thanks for your post and giving us the full story!

Monte-Copter, WOW!