Sunday, April 30, 2017

#804 JUNIORS – HARROD’S SCENES OF LONDON - DOUBLE DECKER BUS and LONDON TAXI (P334 and K510) (Around 2010)


MONTH OF THE BOOTLEG AT TOYS FROM THE PAST!

Honestly I don’t know if these two qualify as a bootleg or a knock-off. I found them at a flea market not so long ago, and I bought them because I had never seen this brand before. Later, when searching information, I found out they were very recent (around 2010) and that they were sold together in some kind of souvenir pack, I guess at Harrod´s (London).


The London taxi is identical to the one made by FEVA (see #456) and the bus is also identical to the one made by Playart, and which is at the same time a scaled copy of a Matchbox Super Kings bus.


I know this is a great souvenir for children, and it probably sells very well even today in tourist spots in London and other cities, as similar sets have since decades. It doesn’t matter if the bus and the taxi are already a bit off (there are newer models in the streets since many years ago), but this is a minor detail. Apparently this set is exclusively sold in Harrod’s, although I would have expected something better from this famous department stores in London. Note the stickers on the bus.


I was observing the blister pack in which these two toys were sold and I noticed that on the back card that this same set is made exclusively for Harrod’s by Juniors, but in older blisterpacks, I notice that instead of Juniors, it says FEVA, and both blisters share the same address, so we could affirm that Juniors is the same company FEVA after 2008, when it had to close. The two following pictures have been taken from eBay.



And I say they may not qualify as knock-offs because the cast were acquired legally from Playart (or from themselves, after the closing of FEVA in 2008). Probably the Taxi shown in the referred entry is part of a similar set.

FACTS AND FIGURES:
  • Name: DOUBLE DECKER BUS and LONDON TAXI (P334 and K510)
  • Scale: Around 1:100 and 1:64
  • Year: Around 2010
  • Company: Juniors/FEVA(Great Britain/China)
  • Size: approx. 7 cm

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