In the old days — you know, the 1980’s — there was an interesting mix of licensed toys and more traditional, “generic” toys found on the shelves. An aisle or so away from the Transformers, Masters, G.I. Joe and Super Powers, there was often a section full of molded plastic goodies, often cheap. These comprised the usual mix of toy guns, yo-yos, sports toys, and of course the classic green army men, with their accompanying tanks, airplanes, and so on.
Tim Mee Toys, a stalwart of this genre, always had some of the best of the bunch. The C-130 and later AC-130 aircraft carrier, and legions of tanks, trucks, and jeeps, filled out the ranks of many a backyard battle as they have for decades.
Occasionally, though, you’d find some of those vehicles with an interesting feature: they were big enough for a 3 3/4-inch figure to use. Particularly in the early ’80s heyday, there were many 1:18 lines that came and went, and some of these older companies recognized those lines were serving as the “army men” of the era, and starting making larger toys to interact with them.
While not always exactly 1:18, like G.I. Joe, 1:24 scale vehicles with roomy cabins worked as well. And as you would expect, there were some larger Tim Mee vehicles that could easily accompany the bigger action figures.
One of my personal favorites was always this processed plastic M60 (Though really M41) Bulldog tank. Molded in several colors, this woodland one being particularly cool looking, this tank was the closest thing I had to an army builder as a kid, since they were cheap enough to get a few to flank your Mobat.
This Combat Defender Helicopter, based on the McDonnell Douglass LHX Helicopter concept, is one I had never seen during it’s production. It can fit two 3 3/4-inch figures in the cockpit with a fair amount of space. I recently acquired one, so we’ll get a better look at this maybe next week. But just looking at the pictures, you could easily mistake it for a proper G.I. Joe vehicle.
And another I’ll need to track down again is this F-15 from Gay Toys Inc, sometime in the late ’80s-early ’90s. Also a two-seater, it featured retractable landing hear and removable missiles. I got one as a kid in true 1980s fashion: I was staying over at my grandparents’ house and after going to dinner, we stopped by the video store (which I think was Video Vern’s, for those that care) and rented a copy of Iron Eagle. On the way home, we stopped at a Shopko to get popcorn, candy, the usual. Because going to the store with your grandparents always meant a trip to the toy aisle, I was pointed to this F-15, which my grandpa handed to me and said, matter-of-factly, “You can’t watch a fighter plane movie without a fighter plane.” Words to live by. God, I miss him.
(Images from Vectis Auctions UK)
But as some of you might know, the molded/processed plastic toys didn’t just fill out the 3 3/4-inch ranks. A generation earlier, Palitoy, Cherilea and Irwin did the same for the 12-inch figures. Irwin gave G.I. Joe his first jet in the Grumman F9F Panther, along with some jeeps and other light vehicles. Cherilea in particular cranked out an impressive amount of product for Action Man, some of which I own and have shown here before. Obviously, some of these were bigger, thicker, and more involved, but at their heart, they are simple, molded plastic vehicles.
It’s unfortunate in some ways that we may be a victim of our own success: action figures are a very license-heavy business these days with a lot of attention put on being “collectables.” This is a positive thing in many, many ways, but it does mean that the market for non-licensed, “cheaper” toys like these has diminished greatly. But I’m hopeful that things like home 3D-printing might make it possible someday to crank out designs like these simple processed plastic ones, replacing the injection-molded with some precision cut-outs. Until then, though, Tim Mee toys is still out there alive and kicking, and Mego repro giant Classic TV Toys/ Figures Toy Company has done some very cool reproduction vehicles I’ll be looking at in the near future.
** Special thank you to the resources at Hisstank.com and the TimMee Army Blog for their archived pictures and discussions.
