In the years after World War 2, more and more trucks were used to col­lect full milk cans from farm­ers and trans­port them to dairies. Milk truck dri­vers did heavy work. Strength and dex­ter­i­ty were required to hoist the 40 liter milk cans onto a truck­’s load­ing plat­form.

Soon after the war, Mec­ca­no France restart­ed pro­duc­tion and began to look for new mod­els to intro­duce to the mar­ket. The pro­duc­tion of new civil­ian French car and truck mod­els had been delayed by the war and many old French Dinky Toy mod­els were still being pro­duced by Mec­ca­no France. A com­plete­ly new range of mod­els was found in the very nice Series 25 Stude­bak­er and Ford trucks. These were very suc­cess­ful and became high­ly sought after by col­lec­tors. This arti­cle cov­ers the Dinky 25o Stude­bak­er Milk Truck “Nestlé”.

The real Stude­bak­er truck on which the Dinky 25O is mod­elled was made in the Unit­ed States in South Bend, Indi­ana. The pro­to­type of the Stude­bak­er milk truck is based on Stude­bak­er’s M Series trucks that were built dur­ing 1941–1948. Like most truck lines, the Stude­bak­er M Series trucks could be had in sev­er­al body styles. The M Series range includ­ed the ½‑ton M5, 1‑ton M15 and M15A, 1½-ton M16 and 2‑ton M17.

Short­ly after the attack on Pearl Har­bor in Decem­ber 1941, the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment shut down pas­sen­ger car pro­duc­tion, although trucks con­tin­ued to be pro­duced well into 1942. As with most oth­er Amer­i­can indus­tries, Stude­bak­er began pro­duc­ing mil­i­tary sys­tems under con­tract to the U.S. gov­ern­ment in 1941. Its two most famous wartime prod­ucts were the Weasel tracked vehi­cle and the US6 2½-ton mil­i­tary truck which went into pro­duc­tion in South Bend in June 1941.

After the war in the spring of 1945, Stude­bak­er resumed pro­duc­tion of M15 1‑ton trucks: an M15-20 pick­up with a 120-inch wheel­base, and a M15-28 truck with dual rear wheels and 128-inch wheel­base. Because the US6 was still in pro­duc­tion, these 1945 M15s were built with the mil­i­tary truck’s mod­el C9 cab with a swing-out wind­shield, met­al inte­ri­or pan­els, and paint­ed bumpers. All oth­er 1941–1948 M Series trucks were built with a C2 cab with fixed wind­shield glass and cowl-mount­ed wind­shield wipers.

Full pro­duc­tion of 1946 M Series trucks began with 367 M5s that were built in Decem­ber 1945. The mod­el line­up was the same as in 1941, along with a new M17 2‑ton export mod­el. The new M15s were dis­tin­guished from the 1945 mod­els with a C9 cab by des­ig­nat­ing them as M15A. The stain­less steel grill trim and some oth­er deluxe fea­tures were no longer avail­able, but oth­ers were made stan­dard equip­ment.

All M5s now had body col­or fend­ers, while larg­er mod­els con­tin­ued to be equipped with black fend­ers. M Series truck pro­duc­tion con­tin­ued with the same dri­ve trains through­out 1946 and 1947 and into March 1948. A few run­ning changes were made in 1947, one of which was the intro­duc­tion of a mas­sive paint­ed front bumper on the M15-28, M16, and M17 mod­els.

I was­n’t able to find a pro­to­type of the 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck with all the fea­tures of the Dinky Toys mod­el. I’ve includ­ed some pic­tures of the real Stude­bak­er M16 that was built dur­ing 1947 and 1948.

Show above is the very last M Series truck (an M16-52) com­ing off the assem­bly line in March 1948. Stude­bak­er built 145,800 M Series trucks from 1941 to 1948 which includ­ed 52,541 1/2‑ton M5’s, 22,923 1‑ton M15 & M15A’s, 61,339 1–1/2‑ton M16’s and 8997 2‑ton M‑17’s. In 1947, a few run­ning changes were made, one of which was the intro­duc­tion of a mas­sive paint­ed front bumper on the M15-28, M16, and M17 mod­els.

The chas­sis of Stude­bak­er and Ford trucks pro­vid­ed Mec­ca­no France with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce many dif­fer­ent mod­els with the same basic chas­sis as a wel­come addi­tion to the French mod­el range. In the series 25 Stude­bak­er, 7 dif­fer­ent mod­els were pro­duced of which the 25O is the only one with adver­tis­ing (“Nestlé”).

Series 25 Ford trucks com­prise 9 body vari­ants, of which a total of 12 dif­fer­ent mod­els were pro­duced, includ­ing 6 mod­els with attrac­tive adver­tis­ing, includ­ing a 25O Ford Milk Truck “Nestlé”. In the Dinky Toys 1949 French cat­a­log, the Series 25 Stude­bak­er appeared for the first time with 7 mod­els, and Ford with 3 mod­els.

The Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck with “Nestlé” adver­tis­ing was pro­duced from 1949 to 1954, of which I’ve col­lect­ed the three main ver­sions. This mod­el was released before the Dinky 25O Ford Milk Truck that has the same milk can load­ing bed. It’s one of my favorites and I’ve done a lot of research on it. It has many inter­est­ing cast­ing details and dif­fer­ences that I describe and show in the pic­tures that fol­low. The first ver­sions in par­tic­u­lar are a bit rough­ly fin­ished, but despite that, I find it to be a rather nice and inter­est­ing mod­el.

Shown above are my three main ver­sions of the Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck. From right to left are the first, sec­ond and third ver­sions.

Shown above is the front view of my 25O mod­els. From right to left are the first, sec­ond and third ver­sions. Note the dif­fer­ent cutouts for the win­dows. I like the design of the cab with its robust nose and many inter­est­ing details such as the promi­nent head­lights, hood orna­ments, mold­ings, chrome grills, head­lights and bumpers.

The Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck was released with two types of cabs, three dif­fer­ent chas­sis and a body that was always light blue. The car­go bed was ini­tial­ly beige, then appeared in dif­fer­ent shades of ivory and white, and was spe­cial­ly designed for the trans­port of milk cans. It fea­tures a “Nestlé” logo on the top of both sides applied with a stick­er or stamp.

The mod­el comes with ten loose milk cans. On both sides of the bot­tom row of the load­ing plat­form, five milk cans are beau­ti­ful­ly cast in relief into the side­wall. They are metic­u­lous­ly paint­ed sil­ver using mask spray­ing tech­niques and look rather nice. Above that, on the upper row of the divid­ed load­ing floor, five milk cans can be placed for a total of ten cans.

A round recess is present on the bot­tom of the load­ing floor for each milk can, into which the can can be placed as shown on pic­tures above. The “NESTLÉ” logo is applied in bold blue cap­i­tal let­ters at the top of the out­er side­walls, with two embossed cast cross­es on either side At the rear of the load­ing plat­form is cast a cross in relief on each of the two sep­a­rate load­ing floors. All these details enhance the appear­ance of the mod­el and make it very attrac­tive.

Ear­ly ver­sions of the mod­el had all black met­al wheels. Around Novem­ber 1949 they were adorned with con­vex light blue hubs with black “M” rub­ber tires. The mod­el is equipped with a tow­ing hook which is riv­et­ed to the chas­sis along with a spare wheel and the load­ing plat­form.

The two types of cabs have inter­est­ing cast­ing dif­fer­ences which are fun to dis­cov­er and share with fel­low Dinky col­lec­tors.

The body of the very first mod­el was issued in lighter blue and the chas­sis was equipped with a closed crank hole. It’s quite remark­able that for a very short time the first ver­sion of this mod­el was equipped with a plate with a hole for the crank, which was then omit­ted from lat­er mod­els. This ver­sion is very scarce and hard to find in com­plete and good con­di­tion with all the milk cans and box. I was lucky enough to acquire this ver­sion in good con­di­tion.

Shown above are the first (right) and sec­ond (left) type cabs. Note the dif­fer­ences in the cut out win­dows, the thick­ness of the cen­ter hood mold­ings, the hood orna­ment and the cut out bumpers. The round recess­es at the bot­tom of the load­ing bed for each milk can are vis­i­ble in the pic­ture above. The right load­ing bed is beige in col­or while the left one is more ivory.

Shown here are type 1 cabs with dif­fer­ent tool­box­es embossed on the run­ning board and dif­fer­ent short side mold­ings on the hood. On the left is the lighter blue first ver­sion and on the right, the sec­ond ver­sion.

Shown above (on the left) is the sec­ond ver­sion of the mod­el with a type 1 cab with a large tool­box and short side mold­ings on the hood and (on the right) the third ver­sion with a type 2 cab with a small­er tool­box and longer curved side mold­ings on the hood, as well as larg­er side win­dows. I could­n’t find a real Stude­bak­er M series truck equipped with a tool­box on the run­ning board under the door, so its pres­ence on the mod­el is a mys­tery to me.

Here’s a close up front side view of the Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck. On the right is the type 1 cab with a short curved side hood mold­ing and a large hood orna­ment, and on the left a type 2 cab with a longer curved side hood mold­ing and small­er hood orna­ment. I was also unable to locate a real Stude­bak­er M series truck with side mold­ings, which makes for yet anoth­er mys­tery.

This pic­ture shows dif­fer­ences in the “NESTLÉ” logo and col­ors of the load­ing plat­form between the first ver­sion (on right) and third ver­sion (on left). Also note the dif­fer­ences in wheels and the “M” tires on the mod­el on the left. Both ver­sions include milk cans in attrac­tive relief on the low­er sides of the plat­form.

In the above pic­ture we see the top view of three ver­sions of the open chas­sis of the Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck, with the first and sec­ond ver­sions using a type 1 cab and the third ver­sion a type 2 cab.

The pic­ture above shows the bot­tom view of the three ver­sions in order from left to right. The first two base­plates have a hyphen between DINKY and TOYS, which is miss­ing in the third ver­sion. And only the third ver­sion has a pair of ejec­tion mark­ings below the rear axle.

Although this arti­cle describes the three main ver­sions of the Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Van, there are more vari­ants. For exam­ple, my sec­ond ver­sion chas­sis with type 1 cab has black met­al wheels and an open crank hole, but this ver­sion also exists with a closed crank hole. I also have a mod­el with a sec­ond ver­sion chas­sis with open crank hole, but light blue ridged hubs and black rub­ber “M” tires as shown below. This ver­sion rep­re­sents the tran­si­tion from black met­al wheels to light blue ridged hubs and black “M” tires that occurred around Novem­ber 1949.

For the sake of com­plete­ness I should also men­tion the fol­low­ing curios­i­ty:

• Ver­sions 1 and 2 have a smooth inte­ri­or roof with three ribs.
• Ver­sion 3 has a com­plete­ly smooth inte­ri­or roof with­out ribs, but these fea­tures aren’t real­ly nec­es­sary to deter­mine the main ver­sions.

The Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck was deliv­ered in a unique lux­u­ry stur­dy red plas­ti­cized card­board lid box with a beau­ti­ful, fine and shiny check­ered pat­tern. The box has an inge­nious three piece card­board inner pack­ag­ing in which to store the truck and ten milk cans.

A yel­low card­board pack­ing piece bent into shape cov­ers the floor, with space in the mid­dle to store the truck. In each of the two side sup­ports, five remov­able milk cans can be stored. A pair of loose inner box­es under the sides of the pack­ing piece serve as sup­port for the card­board con­tain­ing the milk cans, and are lam­i­nat­ed red on the front.

The front of the box has a flex­i­ble flap that can be low­ered, allow­ing the truck to be dri­ven in and out of the box between the two side box­es as if it were dri­ving in and out of a garage. This, along with the remov­able milk cans, pro­vides high play val­ue.

A round red French qual­i­ty con­trol stamp is placed on the inside lid of the box. The first box was issued with a unique blue tri­an­gu­lar label on a cor­ner of the top of the lid, on which “DINKY TOY (with­out the S) 25o CAMION LAITIER c’est une fab­ri­ca­tion MECCANO” is print­ed in white. The sec­ond box had a rec­tan­gu­lar yel­low label on the front lid on which the name “DINKY TOYS” is print­ed cor­rect­ly.

The Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er and Ford were the only mod­els in the 25 series issued in indi­vid­ual lux­u­ry box­es. All oth­er Stude­bak­er and Ford mod­els in the 25 series were issued in a trade box of 6 units. The only oth­er mod­els assigned these French lux­u­ry box­es are the Dinky 27AC Tracteur Massey-Har­ris avec épan­deur d’en­graisand and the Dinky 14C Char­i­ot à fourche Coven­try Cli­max which were both import­ed from Eng­land. These box­es are described in my arti­cle 6 UK Dinky Toys repack­aged by Mec­ca­no Paris for the French mar­ket (1950–1951).

Shown above are my three main ver­sions of the Dinky 25O Stude­bak­er Milk Truck “Nestlé”. The one at the top right is the very first ver­sion in lighter blue with a closed crank hole.

• Dinky Toys en Franse Dinky Super­toys 1933–1981 by Jean-Michel Roulet (in Dutch lan­guage, but also avail­able in French).
• Les Dinky Toys et Dinky Super­toys Fran­cais 1934–1981 Jean-Michel Roulet edi­tions Atlas.
• Dinky Toys Series 25 et 500 Thier­ry Redempt et Claude Wag­n­er edi­tion Dri­vers.
• The Fab­u­lous Dinky Toys Ency­clopae­dia by Jacques Dujardin.