Matchbox Superfast MB35-c AEC Merryweather Fire Engine

The AEC Merryweather was designed with regular ´realistic´ wheels and appears as such on its 1969 `F´ box artwork although in fact it was released in time for Christmas 1969 as part of the original wave of the first new SuperFast castings. Regular wheels prototypes exist painted silver with black baseplates very much like the original 1:1 modelled by Lesney which was in fact largely finished as unpainted aluminium as was the fashion of those times.

This toy was designed to replace the #57 Land Rover fire truck which oddly was also converted to SuperFast wheels for just a few months of 1970. The international appeal of this very beautiful toy (even by Lesney standards!) was in fact so great that the 3rd fire appliance in the 1-75 series in the spring of 1970, the #29 Denver pumper was also deleted from the range without any other fire replacement required.

The body casting was changed twice after pre-pros had been cast, with the original design featuring a 2mm wide step under each side roller locker and a central division of the flat lockers underneath the shield of the label. This was revised and replaced with a flush square cross section bar underneath each side roller locker bar. This was clearly still not strong enough so an additional half millimetre thick sill was added which connected the front wheelarch to the rear wheelarch on each side.
At the same time the hinged locker doors under the label lost their central division in order to make a flatter surface for the shield on the label to stick to. Mixed in with the earliest metallic red production are a small number of pre-pro bodies of both of these first 2 varieties which can also feature baseplates without the ´A´ that traditionally indicates the front. A white plastic ladder on the roof completed this fine toy, however pre-production 1969 made black, tan or red ladders exist and some very rare examples have been found on otherwise standard Merryweathers.

The Merryweather was painted with metallic red clearcoat over gold primer for its first few years in the range. It was fitted with a specially designed set of London Fire service labels, blue tinted windows which incorporated the blue roof lamps and a silver-gray plastic baseplate which included the rear panel and side lockers. The Merryweather was recoloured to bright red clearcoat over solid yellow or orange undercoat in 1972.

Standard thin 11x2mm 5 slot SF wheels were fitted, both solid and hollow in all combinations, held on with black or dark red axle clips without any form of sprung suspension. An early metallic red batch was also fitted with the relatively short lived 12.5x2mm thin 5 slot truck wheels. In 1974 it joined the rest of the range switching over to wide wheels, the choice being the same 11x2mm wide 5 slots as fitted to the #45 and #68 Le Mans cars.

In addition to the aforementioned ´F´ box, the AEC Merryweather was also packaged in ´G´ and ´I´ boxes as well as all blisterpacks with copyright dates between 1969 and 1974, with one special issue made by Lesney in 1972 or 1973 printed only with ´Flame Proof Wool´ names and logos on both box and bodywork.

Unpainted components for this toy were supplied to Roly Toys of Brazil for final assembly and painting in colours of their choice.

After a three year rest, Lesney revived the Merryweather for the Two-Pack range, and they decided to rivit on the plastic axle securing clips for child safety reasons so wheel swaps can not be carried out on these without easy detection! These TP2 releases can be found with black (with or without #35) gray or cream baseplates and with wide 5 arch wheels or the wide dot-dash type and occasionally even a mixture of both wheel types. The same bright red candy coat over either yellow or orange or pink primer was used, and earliest examples featured the original stickers which were later deleted. The same 3, maybe 4 slightly different baseplate moulds were all still in use mostly likely triplets or quads in one injection moulding tool.A minority of TP2 issues were fitted with #22 Blazebuster yellow ´FIRE´ labels.

In 1981 for a special Code Red giftset, Lesney cut the centre out of the cab roof and the rear tank, fitted black seating and a Snorkel moulding, before this revised casting rejoined the 1-75 series in 1982 as the new #63 for a few more years.