Unrecorded Phantom Gems

Blue tender, not at all.

This EF-58. A turquoise box is known, but a yellow box with the label is not recorded.

You might have heard of these before, especially if you live in UK.
But these are not seen by the Japanese community before. These are the UK exports of Plarail, made in the 1970s.

That's not all of them, see:

https://sunstomyandfriends.weebly.com/to...-sets.html

All the pictures above are from Ebay UK except for the first one, which is from a specialist toy auctioneer site (sale in 2015).

There are always a few Merry-go sets on Ebay UK. The Train and 'Copter are quite common, Zoo less so, and School Bus is rare. You almost always need to replace the friction-drive rubbers, Vio's o-ring solution works fine, though the cigarette filters that Vio gets them from don't appear to be available over here.

The Palitoy Merry-go sets were branded in the USA as "Playrail by Tomy".



Then there's this... https://minkara.carview.co.jp/userid/240.../35659649/

[Super]

I have seen the black boxes that Chrisjo shows but I hadn't seen or heard of the red boxes Vio shows before. Interesting, might the two different boxes released in different countries?

I believe 'Playrail by Tomy' was a US brand.

Palitoy (the red boxes) was a UK company, it manufactured some of the most popular toys in Britain, some original items and others under licence. Its products included Action Man, Action Girl, Action Force, Tiny Tears, Pippa, Tressy, Mainline Model Railways, Merlin, Star Wars figures, Play-Doh and the Care Bears. At the time these red-box Tomy-licensed products were released, Palitoy was owned by the US company General Mills, which also owned UK brands Airfix and Meccano (bought from Tri-ang) at various times.

I know about the Playrail ones, thanks to your threads some months ago.

Playrail = USA, Palitoy = UK, Geyper = Spain, Straco = Hong Kong

I too have never seen the red boxes before so everyone in my community had quite a shock yesterday.

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Thank you Dr Chris & Vio

Chris have a doctorate, that is why he is Dr Chris?

Oh dear, more 4th generation boxes. Which I like to repeat, is the rarest generation of all 6 vintage Plarail generations due to being manufactured for only 2/3 years in 1977, and my favourite generation of Plarail because there are so many unseen boxes. The yellow box Subway Train and the blue box EF-66 with yellow label is newly seen.

[Super]

I love those boxes. Wouldn't it be cool if the next time they re-released a vintage train it came in a nostalgic box like these?