BIG BROWN PI-EYED PIPER SUGAR BANGER!!!

[TOYRFIC]

I am not clear on the exact history of this model.
My own assumptions are that when the Roman Numeral series VII Brown Sugar was produced in 1978 the factory had some extra number 26 Big Banger bodies. These were mated purposely or in error to a bunch of number 48 Pi-Eyed Piper bases, then sent to the U.S. packaged up in Brown Sugar blister packages. It seems they also packaged up some normal red Big Bangers with the correct base in the Brown Sugar blister package.
Any more info or history would be appreciated. Please and thank you, or cheers!

[Idris]

My own assumptions are that when the Roman Numeral series VII Brown Sugar was produced in 1978 the factory had some extra number 26 Big Banger bodies. These were mated purposely or in error to a bunch of number 48 Pi-Eyed Piper bases, then sent to the U.S. packaged up in Brown Sugar blister packages.

That tallies with what I have heard.

[Rob]

The handful that I have seen were all in blisterpacks like you show and indeed mine was acquired at the time in one from USA, they are very rare and hardly ever seen. The brown bodies have quite a few variations with different glass colours and also different label variations, so it is reasonable to assume a fair amount of the brown bodies were issued and feasible they did run short for a spell and made do with red bodies to keep production going.

[motorman]

Very interesting to see this in a brown sugar blister. I have wanted to add one of these hard to find big bangers on a Pi-eyed Piper base to my collection for a few years but they can get expensive. I do believe that this is an example of Lesney using the available pi-eyed piper baseplate when they ran out of big banger baseplates during production, rather than it being an error. It’s the first that I can recall seeing an example blistered on a brown sugar card.