I seem unable to resist toys that carry no maker's name for some reason, and here are a few that I have gathered recently. I welcome any knowledge and/or suggestions you have!
Firstly, here's a couple of racing cars. They have identical castings but as you can see the blue one has metal wheels and the unpainted one has hard rubber or plastic wheels, at least on the remaining axle. They are very small at around 1.75 inches in length. A few weeks back Ghosthunter, toysnz and myself had a wee chat in 'The Lounge' about definitions of casting methods and these are the cars I had in mind when I used the term 'hollow cast' rather than 'slush cast'. I'm sure these cars are hollow, and as they are completely enclosed I can only guess that surplus metal was poured from the axle holes whilst still molten. This to me seems similar to the technique used for hollow cast soldiers etc and different to slush cast cars where the molten metal is tipped out of a very open underside.
In the listings at the back of one of my Norman Joplin books there is a racing car attributed to Pixyland-Kew (catalogue number 250) and another to Philip Segal (catalogue number 42) who also made a saloon car. I have not seen any of these so they are possibilities or they could of course be by a manufacturer unidentified.
Finally, there are these 2 petrol pumps and an oil bin. They are quite similar to Crescent items I've already posted but with a complete lack of oil company branding and different globes on the pumps. There isn't any fatigue either!
Early Cast Toys by Unknown Makers
- robertnewson
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Re: Early Cast Toys by Unknown Makers
I believe the hollow-cast racer is Crescent again, but it is post-war model. Here's the evidence: a post-war garage set which includes the model. I think this was on eBay, it doesn't belong to me. Note the Crescent logo on the roof of the card garage building.
The pumps and oil bin are also Crescent, see this carded set:
The "Metal Figures" card is definitely Crescent, and the pumps are in 1950s Crescent catalogues.
Re: Early Cast Toys by Unknown Makers
Thanks again for the info here. There seems to have been a spate of these little racing cars on ebay recently, including a blue one with the black wheels. After a recent showing on one of the other Crescent threads of the DCMT/Crescent trucks with both bare metal and black plastic wheels I did wonder if the racers may be Crescent too.