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Ghost what can you tell me about this? It says Japan on its base but no other markings!

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Models such as these are difficult to identify and often comes down to studying the style of the letters used in the printing of words such as 'POLICE' and the 'JAPAN' on the base. Your particular model is clearly very crudely designed and made so is at the cheaper end of the market and Two companies that produce such basic tinplate cars are 'NOMURA' and 'ICHIMURA'.

Both these companies had wide product lines catering for all sectors of the toy market. Ichimura was also making toys for many of the well known Japanese brands such as 'YONEZAWA', 'SSS INTERNATIONAL' and even that mighty toy company 'BANDAI'.

The American 'CRAGSTAN' company marketed Yonezawa and Bandai toy cars in slightly reprinted boxes. They used the brand name, 'Gragstan-NGS' for Japanese exports (Nipon Goraku Shokai) made by Ichimura among others!

There is every chance your model above is by 'ICHIMURA' (Ichimura Shoten' being the actual stock supplier), but not carrying their brand name or logo as it has many of the basic hallmarks of a cheaply made toy for use by a general toy distributor and we may never know who that was, but at least we had a good guess at it!

Ghosthunter.

There's one here, a few years back on Vectis.

http://www.vectis.co.uk/Page/ViewLot.as ... 6&Start=60

Thank's Johnboy, nice bit of searching. 'TN Toys' is 'Toy Nomura, one of the brands I mentioned in my assessment, so I think we have cracked another mystery toy for "braintrust"...

Ghosthunter.

Ghosthunter Johnboy
Todays Sherlock Holmes and DR Watson
Gary

Most excellent work chaps
I'll do a little research on the wknd and see if I can put a date to it, well at least a decade.

Thanks oh and GH how about a pic or two of your tinnies?????

just realized the machine gun sparks when wheels are pushed and it has a siren!!!!!!

There were many cool "Sparking " toys produced in that era.