blue 51b barrels ?

[kwakers]

Thank You Jim for verifying the gray color of the original 1964 pre-production barrels that Ray mentioned to me. It is in fact a very small world Jim, Ray was very opinionated some times, but the BEST! Because Ray had several sources in England sending all the Mokos they could find him, he had quite the stock of them to re-sell at the shows he attended with his friend Bob. He did get several pre-pros right from Fred Bronner's, my 51 Trailer being only one of them. Ray and Bob were at our Albany N.Y. area shows 35 years ago with some very nice Lesneys, and always attended Charlie Mack's Conventions yearly.
Off to drive, more later when time allows....kwakers

[matchboxkiwi]

I thought the blue barrels came with the early K20 Cargo truck and folk lift?
As shown in the catalogue.

Cheers Steve
Matchboxkiwi

[Idris]

I thought the blue barrels came with the early K20 Cargo truck and folk lift?
As shown in the catalogue.

Can anyone post either a scan or a photograph of the relevant page?

[fixer]

that's the one I was thinking of there's a few images mixed on here but all have yellow barrels https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=match ... 66&bih=622

[Idris]

I thought the blue barrels came with the early K20 Cargo truck and folk lift?
As shown in the catalogue.

I've found my catalogues (Ah! The luxury of a partially sorted collection!) and, as far as I can see, the first appearance of the K-20 Cargo Truck is in the 1973 catalogue where it is shown with yellow, rather than blue, barrels.

[Idris]

Managed to find a Vectis photograph of a K-20 with blue barrels (see below). So, the question now becomes, are the K-20 barrels the same moulding as the 51b barrels?

[fixer]

they look the same to me , tried to get some close ups so you can see more detail hope they are clear enough

[numi]

...do you know if he thought they went with the trailer or a later addition knowing Graham I think he would have been confident that they were right

if Graham sold them with a 51b, then he must have been confident that it was a valid pairing, but whether this was because they were bought in like that or simply because he obtained the barrels sperately and noticed that they were the same moulding as the 51b barrels, I cannot say.
My gut feeling on these is that they were probably produced for use with something other than the 51b trailer, probably as a very limited trial run and, when that project was aborted, the remaining barrels leaked out of the factory via employees pockets rather than in 51b boxes. I'm not sure about the timelines, but the ubiquitous open-head plastic drums used by industry are always blue and usually have a barrel-type shape (as opposed to the 200 ltr two-hole steel drums which, although often painted blue, are parallel sided). Could these blue barrels have been meant to represent chemical containers for use with e.g. a King Size lorry perhaps?

Hi Idris your gut-feel was correct and the same with Matchboxkiwi.
My interest is why would Graham want to pass this as a pre-pro or as any alternative coupled to a #51 JD Trailer boxed set.With his vast MB experience im sure he could have easily picked up that these blue barrels came from the K-20 Cargo Hauler set or other.
By the looks of things,these blue barrels would be on a different type of sprue with the 4 or 6 barrels closely attached in the form a square or rectangle respectively as opposed to the normal 3 in-a-row yellow for the #51 JD trailers.
Thanks Idris for checking out these blue barrels.
numi

[tjlglass]

In Graham's defence he is more a 1/75 specialist so could easily be overlooked like it was on here for several days. I'm not into Kings, Superkings or Majors and I thought they were pre pro colours. Sometimes these larger mainly uncollected models take on a world of there own and it's moments like these where we really miss the knowledge of Wolfie.

[Idris]

In Graham's defence he is more a 1/75 specialist so could easily be overlooked like it was on here for several days. I'm not into Kings, Superkings or Majors and I thought they were pre pro colours. Sometimes these larger mainly uncollected models take on a world of there own and it's moments like these where we really miss the knowledge of Wolfie.

I think Tim's hit the nail on the head here. Whilst pairing the blue barrels with the 51b trailer was a gaff on Graham's part, there is no good reason why he should have been aware of an obscure SuperKings plastic component colour variation. (How many of the Forum's 1 -75 specialists could claim that they knew about these blue barrels prior to this thread.)
We all make mistakes, and I'm sure that Graham, as always, acted in good faith.