Husky / Corgi Juniors by Mettoy #46a Jensen Interceptor ( Rockets #906)

The Jensen Interceptor was planned initially as a 1969 Husky model but actually released in 1969 as a Corgi Rocket and then in 1970 as a Corgi Junior. The first Juniors issue featured a plated metal baseplate with a smart ´Corgi Juniors´ legend in the style of the 1970 blister artwork. All of these first run Jensens were painted with a burgundy candycoat over silver primer, fitted with blue tinted glazing, yellow seats and 11.5x3mm inset wheels with inserted chrome plated hubcaps.
All Juniors Jensens had 2 opening doors and 2 lengthwise suspension wires crimped to the baseplate.

The second Juniors issue featured a baseplate with a smaller version of the ´´CORGI JUNIORS´´ name with a larger ´´WHIZZWHEELS´´ logo prominent in the middle and was made in raw unplated mazak initially.
The first ´´WHIZZWHEELS´´ issue had new all black 11.5x1.5mm 5 triangle pattern wheels but aside from these baseplate differences was otherwise the same as the first issue.
The 3rd Juniors issue was a giftset special the same as the 2nd except fitted with red instead of yellow seats, very rare indeed!. The 4th Juniors issue featured a plated baseplate and the 5th issue had hot foiling on the the same 5 triangle pattern wheels, both otherwise unchanged from previous issues.

In 1971 a short run colour change to deep orange was issued, and this is much harder to find than either burgundy with yellow seats or metallic green issues. The final run was another colour change to metallic green, all of which also featured the new standard wide 11.5x4mm 5 slot wheels that would appear on most Juniors models for the next 9 years.
These metallic green issues came with either green tinted or untinted glazing.

All Jensen Interceptors were packaged in Corgi Juniors picture card blisterpacks but only the ´WHIZZWHEELS´ issues were in blisterpacks with this legend. 1970-71 blisterpacks are known as longcard and can be printed with or without US ´55c´ cent prices. For 1972-73 shorter cards still with the same picture card were issued with the ´WHIZZWHEELS´ logo positioned below the picturecard instead of above.
The Corgi Rockets Jensen Interceptors were clearly based upon the same master model however as an economy measure the doors were cast shut meaning a different body tool was used. However seats which were always white and glazing which was always yellow tinted on all Rockets issues came from the Juniors tooling.
The original production run of Rockets Jensens featured a plated baseplate with ´CORGI´ in the 1969 box stylised logo typeface however the tooling was altered in 1970 for the bulk of production to have a smaller ´Corgi´ name in a common rounded typeface.
A detachable black plastic chassis which retained both wheel & axle sets clipped onto the baseplate and could be removed with or without the aid of a gold plated key supplied in the blisterpack which was always the common standard Corgi Rockets blisterpack.

The vast majority of Rockets Jensens were chrome plated and then sprayed with red clearcoat to give what Corgi referred to as ´´Solarbrite´´ paint and it was much brighter than Hotwheels ´Spectraflame´.
The earliest Rockets Jensens were solarbrite pink, a shade that could be mistaken for sun faded solarbrite red on a photograph but very obvious once in the hand. A solarbrite pink Jensen was used in early Rockets publicity material and a small number are known to survive today so it was at the very least an iniatially approved colourtrial and perhaps even shipped to stores in small volume.
At least one run perhaps two of the minimum size production run of 50,000 was made between solarbrite red runs in dayglo pink over white primer and these pink cars were often packed into tracksets as well as being sold singley.
The sills between the wheel wells on the casting were thickened during the dayglo pink production. Final Rockets production of solarbrite red Jensens came with white painted baseplates and hot foiled 5 slot wheels. The Rockets ceased production during 1971 following loss of a court case brought by Hotwheels for trackset patent infringement. .