This has taken a few weeks but finally I’m posting the mail find from IDM3. Long story short I made a comment on a post about an old Lesney/MBX Dodge Dump truck (can’t remember who’s post it was sorry). Anyhow Mr IDM3 mentioned he had one that was in need of some work. After about a week and an email or two back and forth a parcel arrived. There were some great casts inside as well as the Dodge Dumper.
First up we have the MBX Badlander. Not a cast I was familiar with but I like it. It has some nice details around the cast and most I didn’t notice until viewing these pictures. Please excuse the dust.
CARGO!!
Next up we have the Honda Ridgeline by MBX. The 1:1 isn’t sold here but I have seen a LHD test vehicle locally. The headquarters for ARB aren’t to far away and living in an off road paradise you tend to see this kind of thing occasionally.
Next up is a HW Lotus that according to the cover letter that came in the parcel was issued in 2000! 16 years ago already!!! If this was sold here at that time I was at the age were Happy Meals were not on my radar.
This is another Happy Meal toy, this time from 2004. I have seen this featured here on LaLD recently and thought at the time I’d probably never see one in person. I seem to remember it was US & Canada sale only?
No it’s not a Gremlin! It has an awesome light up feature, the head lights, tail lights and sills all light up red with the flick of a switch!
MBX Mercedes-Benz Truck. Not many German mechanics around here so I’ll fix this myself at some point. This cast and the Dodge dumper below have indirectly cost me a lot of money. More on that in a (near) future post. Seeing these old casts instantly sparked some old memories to life. As a young boy I played with a lot of casts of this era and style of MBX. Something about the look and feel of these takes me to a happy place. The details are amazing and if you take time to run your eyes over the old stuff there is a surprising amount of realistic detail built into them.
IDM3 was kind enough to send a set of donor wheels and axles to replace the ones needed on the the vintage MBX trucks.
That hook may look a bit heavy but over 40 years of apparent hard use has not affected it.
So this is the cast that started it all. The Dodge Dump truck. It looks like it’s carried a little more than it was rated for over its long life. I’m not sure how I’ll tackle this, either a close to factory restoration or something else. Time will tell.
It looks great, despite or maybe because of it’s patina.
Amazingly enough the chrome plate is still present! Take a modern HW/MBX out of the card and it doesn’t take long or much effort at all for the chrome plate to rub off. They just don’t make them like they used to...
So thanks IDM3! I’m not sure when but I’ll definitely improve the vintage casts at some point soon.