In the pre-WWII days of diecast­ing, many Dinky Toys, espe­cial­ly trucks, were a blend of sev­er­al makes that result­ing in nice look­ing mod­els. How­ev­er, these were impos­si­ble to link to a par­tic­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­er.

My first exam­ple of this is the 22c Motor Truck, first made around 1936, dis­con­tin­ued in 1941, then re-intro­duced in 1946 for a few more years.

Many ardent col­lec­tors have tried search­ing for a match­ing pro­to­type, such as a Bed­ford, to no avail. Head­lights, which were sep­a­rate fix­tures in those days, were espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to mod­el, so in some cas­es, Mec­ca­no sim­ply left them off. This par­tic­u­lar mod­el is a very, very ear­ly 1946 issue, as it is still using the pre-war style white tires, the smooth, non-ridged black wheels, and the use of black fend­ers.

The next one is anoth­er very ear­ly post-war mod­el from around 1945, of the 25s 6 Wheeled Cov­ered Wag­on. This mod­el was first intro­duced around 1938, in a mil­i­tary ver­sion as the 151b Trans­port Wag­on, and is a some­what gener­ic design, based on a cou­ple of Eng­lish trucks from that era. The rea­son I know it is from 1945:  the smooth, non-ridged black wheels, and the very light­ly tread­ed tires… a pre-war item. They used up left­over stock for a very short time after pro­duc­tion resumed in 1945.

About the ear­li­er mil­i­tary ver­sion, one of the 1938 issues of the “Mec­ca­no Mag­a­zine”  stat­ed that this mod­el was “based on sev­er­al vehi­cles made in the 6 wheel con­fig­u­ra­tion for the gov­ern­ment”.  Dinky col­lec­tors have found many dif­fer­ent pho­tos of sim­i­lar mil­i­tary trans­port wag­ons of that era.  Two of the clos­est may be a Ley­land Ter­ri­er (pho­to) or a Cross­ley FWD Air­field crash ten­der (pho­to).

Even though these lit­tle mod­els have no true iden­ti­ty, I still love the look and charm of a bygone era.