A couple of weeks ago I picked up this Matchbox no. 18 field car in olive green
I hadn’t payed attention to it at first till I got home and noticed that orange paint was peaking from under the green. At first I thought maybe a kid painted it and slapped on a random sticker but looking at it closely with no olive paint on the base or grill to show it was kid painted I looked it up and sure enough it was released in this color with that sticker.
The inside of the rivit posts and the inner body have the same light orange paint peaking out. My conclusion is that this is a transition piece that instead of them using up all the light orange bodies that where ready to got
They simply repainted them the olive green to save a bit of money. So maybe this is the earliest production run for the olive green colored field car since it has the late production orange color under it. Definitely one to keep in my oddities collection.