Midgetoy Eng.Electric/Martin B-57 Canberra

[Tone]

Midgetoy Canberra

Has anybody got one in a color other than green?

I think it's a neat toy not because of its detail - it does not have much - but because of its attractive plan form. Also, it's a toy model that not many makers attempted to make.

[grwebster]

Interesting comment Tone. I hadn't thought about it but now that you mention it, I don't have one in any other color than Green.
here are some sets


I have seen some bare metal Midgetoys on ebay on stapled blister packs and they do not have landing gear, but the Canberra was not among them. I had heard that the brothers who founded the firm after WW2 and sold it in the 1960s, bought it back later on, discover a huge amount of unsold inventory, and then sold off the old inventory for years. I think these blister packs are from that effort.
I did find a 'salesman sample' box which was quite nice as it had mint Midgetoys that I had never seen, and 2 aircraft, but again no Canberra.
Here it is


I haven't looked at this set in a quite a while and when looking at the photos, I am surprised to see a toy of a VN era truck, the 2 1/2 ton which we called a 'deuce and a half' in the service. There is also a 155 self propelled howitzer, very neat. As some of may know I have three military trucks from VN era, full scale, that is. Two Jeeps {MUTT M151} and a Mule M274, so the set has a nice additional interest. There were the same series of vehicles I had in VN. All are fully restored and operational.
as I posted this I found this site which gives some more info on Midgetoys- did you know the founders wanted it pronounced 'midget -oys', but I have always heard it pronounced as 'midge toys'
http://www.mrrc.info/MIDGETOY/Midgetoy/History.html

[dasimperator]

I have that silver travel trailer, though mine's pretty scuffed up...

Midgetoy_trailer.JPG (64.6 KiB) Viewed 15959 times

[MichaelB]

There were some very late issues of the B-57 in "metal".
Not my pic!

[grwebster]

Michael, the ones you showed on stapled blister card are without the landing gear and I think are from molds modified after the brothers bought back the company - obviously eliminating the gear made them easier to produce, required less parts and the bare metal didn't need painting.

[MichaelB]

10-4 on all that, but they are still legitimate Midgetoy issues.

[grwebster]

No argument there. I have some too.

[MichaelB]

My "regular" Midgetoy B-57s are in that same olive drab, or whatever shade you want to call it. They are pretty shabby, so I'm sure it's original.
So - would this be all the Midgetoy issues? I've now revised the list to include the "variants".

B-57
707
Cutlass
Cougar
F-86
F-86 with wing root intakes
F-86 with tip tanks

[grwebster]

there is another one, with wing tip tanks

here it is again in bare metal and OD.

I figure the OD variants were issued in an Army set with military vehicles during the Korean war just after or perhaps for the VN war. I realize that the B-57B became operational after the Korean cease-fire and was not used in the conflict and while the F-86 was not used in VN {A variant of the Cougar and the B-57B did serve }, the final version of the F-86 Sabre family, the highly redesigned and renamed FJ-4 Fury also served. At toy scale the Midge toy F-86 were acceptable stand-ins for the Fury.

[MichaelB]

Fascinating...you made me go take a look. While the MT F-86 does indeed look much like an F-86, it has a pair of wing root intakes rather than the single nose inlet. Still...obviously...an F-86. The closest thing to that was the RF-84 Thunderflash, but that's no Thunderflash!
The one with the tip tanks looks like the original USN Fury, with the straight wings - but MT has swept them back. Looks like they married an early Fury feature onto their F86.
What really strikes me is how much they resemble the Tootsietoy pieces from that same time: F86, Panther, Skyray. They could almost be from the same factory. I wonder if they were trying to keep up with Tootsietoy yet avoid obviously copying their molds? ...not that the TootsieToys were anything to crow about in the accuracy and detail department!