What we have here, gentlemen (and lady or three), is a big-ass mystery.
I am constantly prowling for vehicles, as you can imagine. eBay, thrift stores, yard sales, pretty much wherever I have time to look. Everywhere except retail, anyway. I’m getting pretty good at identifying this stuff in the wild, but when I came across this rolling fortress a little bit ago, I was stumped. Stymied. F’n mystified.
Some of this is obvious- Clearly, this is based, very accurately, on the US Army Main Battle Tank, the M1A1 Abrams. I know it’s the earlier version from the turret. And this is obviously intended for a 1/6 scale figure, hence the big-ass fiddy cal on the coaxial mount next to the hatch. And it’s very much a toy version- as opposed to maybe a RC tank or a model kit- thanks to a spring loaded cannon and rolling treads and wheels.
The seller was equally clueless, having picked it up at a convention some time ago from an equally clueless owner.
Here’s what I can tell you: at over 2ft long, 8in tall and nearly a foot wide, this thing is almost dead-on accurate 1:12 scale. And even intended for a larger figure, it’s not hard to see why they went this size- it barely fits on a shelf as it is. The Abrams is one of the largest tanks currently used in the world, so any larger scale version is appropriately massive.
There are rubber treads, a rotating turret, traversing main gun, rotating coaxial pivoting machine gun, and closing hatch. It has a big hollow interior, so it’s surprisingly light for the size. There are excellent molded details top to bottom, like tow cables, lights, smoke launchers, and rivets. Only paint holds it back, and even the made-up desert camo ain’t that bad.
So, it’s enough that I am in love with this thing, and that it dwarfs my HM Armed forces tank and even my vintage Viper Sheridan tank, but I still want to know where the hell it came from. There’s no stamped copyrights on the outside, and there’s not a single maker’s mark I can find.
But, this is the internet age, so I was able to find at least something. I’m not 100% on this, but my best guess is that this tank came from JC Penney in the early 2000s.
For a brief period, JC Penney was offering a ton of off-brand figures and accessories for 1/6 scale. Among them was their own Apache (!) a tank very similar to this one, and a F-22 Raptor (!!!!!) that eventually sold for cheap on the website.
As some of you might remember, JC Penney made a bit of a rush to get out of the “war toys” game, on account of this:
As a toy collector, in addition to being a history buff, and working with the military for a brief time, seeing a bombed out barbie house elicits a little smile and a nod. Hey, war is hell, and it tends to come home, even if you live in a dream house. And I know for a fact that a generation of young men well before me used their sister’s dollhouses as firebases for GI Joe, and I do happen to have a playset built of 6″ dollhouses, covered in men with guns, robots, and all kinds of manly toy stuff. But to the thin-skinned, stay at home Floridian moms of the world, they saw an excuse to write angry emails. Sound familiar? Yeah, so you know how that story ends.
But you know who bought me my first Batman, GI Joe, tank, helicopter or plane? My mom. And she could totally beat up those moms. If you gentleman (or ladies) need me, I’ll be in the backyard. With my giant tanks.
