Monday, 30 June 2025

"Durable, adorable and endlessly entertaining"

 

Google has an interesting program called Canvas which uses AI to generate images and now this can run to website design too, with complete coding supplied, all free. In a matter of minutes something that would have taken me ages is ready to launch. Indeed, I am not sure my coding skills are good enough anyway, no matter how long the ages. My own Corgi website has been pretty much unchanged for many years so I thought I should give Canvas a try.

All I wrote was this:
"make a landing page for my https://corgi.toys website"

For a moment, I felt I should add 'please' somewhere in the request. That's a sign of my age! But then I reminded myself self that I am communicating with a pile of code and, whilst the idea that behind all this AI stuff is a room full of very bright people clattering away at keyboards never quite gets completely erased from my mind and brings a welcome smile from time to time, good manners are really quite superfluous in this instance.

So here are a few pages of what the AI people came up with . . .





Yes, they think / it thinks that I am dealing with some nice toys for corgi dogs to play with!! 

It's so amusing and yet so good in its way that I just had to share it with you. Whilst being of no use whatsoever I have to say how impressed I am with the little touches like the logo and 'what parents say'. Compared to the dreadful and increasingly tiresome and repetitive AI-provided text that we are now having to read on most Ebay listings, this is really quite excellent.

I shall, of course, try again sometime and provide rather more specific guidance for Canvas AI to work with and, if the results are good, I may well make use of them and bring you more news about that in due course.

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Sellotape, twisted wires and Chitty Chitty nearly bang bang

 I suppose  it is only fair to warn you that I am not a fan of the Corgi Chitty Chitty Bang Bang model so any review of the Model Club's latest offering probably wouldn't have been glowing. Indeed, I hadn't planned to do one at all as I knew it would be difficult to avoid bad language or just sounding a little bored with it all, at best. However, here I am and, although, this advice may be a little late as many people will have had theirs already, let me start by saying that unless you really do wish to pretend to fly it around the room or display it sans boĆ®te on a shelf, leave it in its box. Don't attempt to remove it.


Firstly you have to open the flap which I am sure every collector now knows is likely to tear something unless you follow the instructions that several people have now posted in various forums and have various tools handy to release it. I was very lucky; the club had sent me one which was already open at one end. Once you have done so you will find that tugging at neither the card nor plastic protective cover achieves much. I proceeded to try to open the flap at the other end with a view to pushing rather than pulling the contents but, not having the appropriate tools or instructions to hand, I decided not to and returned to make a second attempt.


Although this image doesn't really show the problem very well, the Chinese people doing the packing were clearly in a hurry to head home when doing this one as the sellotape was very haphazardly applied and some elements had attached themselves to the inside of the box, so preventing any movement. I have no idea how this was presented in the original but one would hope it was rather better and I don't recall much use of tape by Corgi in the 60s.

So, with a little jiggling around I did finally get the unit containing the model out on a white plastic cloud. Now comes the really difficult part. The model is attached by two pieces of plastic-coated wire, one piece around each axle and threaded through some holes in the cloud. On this example they were incredibly tightly twisted to the extent that it was not easy to figure out which way to unwind them. After I while I did get them loose but then you have to be oh so careful in unthreading the wire back through fairly delicate cloud plastic and then over the wheels and avoiding the many bits and pieces which stick out on this model and look only too vulnerable to being accidentally knocked.

So finally, it's out and I can run it around the desk and try whatever operating features it has. I look at the box to discover how to operate these and discover that there is actually only one and there are no instructions on the panel headed OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS. I guess that's how it must have been in 1968, though, so I cannot really moan about that. 


It arrives in the box with the side wings out and the front and rear 'stabilisers' fitted. It took me a while but I eventually discovered that you need to pull the lever by the driver to have the wings fly out once they been pushed back. (Later I read how to do this on the back of the Certificate!)

It released them quite satisfactorily the first time I tried but it was decidedly vague on the following attempts and I needed to tug a little more firmly on the lever than I really felt comfortable doing as this model would be heading across the Pond to a customer in the States in a while. But it did work. Several customers have reported this to be a problem. I was surprised to find the lever made of plastic. I am pretty sure the original would have been metal.


The same thought comes to mind for most of the other elements which appear all over this model. The front lamps, for example, whilst appearing to have slightly better 'jewel' material for the lamps than past Club models are mounted in plastic holders and arms, the same material also being used for the radiator surround. This brown plastic will, I am sure, have been gold coloured metal on the original so this will be a disappointment for many. It also suffers from being rather more bendy than metal. OK, so it may not fracture if you happen to brush against it a couple of times but it does result in the headlamps not necessarily pointing in the same direction. I suspect that very careful heating of the arm and resetting them would be possible but I'll leave that to someone else to try. As it is they look reasonable and I doubt another model will be any better so it's not something worth returning it for.


There's a strap on the bonnet, as the Certificate also reminds us, which I gather was left off in the 90s re-issue and we're also told that the wheels are now as per the original. And so they should be.


I do wonder about the dashboard - surely that would not have been silver plastic? You do feel that these elements would have been worth doing properly in some metal. The windscreen too is in brown plastic. again, I am sure many of the originals will have snapped and this will put up with a little more bruising than metal but it still strikes me as rather unsatisfactory.


I did not attempt to remove the front or rear 'stabilisers'. There are simply too many little things here and there which could be damaged so I decided not to take any risks.


I expect the characters and the main body of the model are not too different. Here are some closer images for your perusal.





Underneath there is no 'Made in China' text which is surprising. However no-one is likely to be fooled into believing this is anything other than a re-issue. What they may wonder, though, is which re-issue this might be if they're not well-versed in straps or wheels. That is because it has a base attached by screws not rivets, rather like the Yellow Submarine which we saw a short while ago.



Perhaps this is to enable more rapid repairs back at the Club should they find a lot getting returned. It is, nevertheless, not likely to go down too well with many collectors. For my part, I would quite like the re-issues to have screws in place of rivets as I could then have fun changing parts and repairing windows or whatever.


All in all, though, the box is well reproduced and the model looks good from a distance, in the box, where I recommend it stays.





Sunday, 1 June 2025

Corgi Toys @ 60: A Jeep on the farm and two Chevrolets

 


June 1965 brought us an American trio. I suspect the left-hand drive Jeep would not have been something you'd have seen on many farms at the time but it was another marvel of Corgi engineering. In the box was an attractively illustrated inner tray carrying the Jeep with a farm hand slotted in a corner and four brown sacks. 

This was another re-working of the FC-150 model, now with suspension and an interior. Always in red with a bright yellow conveyor frame, I am not aware of any variations. The wheels appear to be shaped free-spinning and, whilst it stayed in the catalogues until 1969 when other Jeeps got cast wheels, I have not see any of these with that type.

The conveyor mechanism also gets mounted on a trailer and towed by a Ford Tractor next year!

The other two models were the first of the revised Chevrolet Impala castings. It was in December 1959 that the first Impala appeared, only the second Corgi with suspension, and it proved very popular. The classic style with the sweeping rear fins was about the change on the real car but Corgi extended its life in their catalogues by slicing the casting in two and inserting a chromed plastic element which ran the whole length of the model, creating splendid shiny chrome grille, bumpers and a rather fat side lining. Otherwise it had the same interior and suspension and no more features, just fresh colours for the new Police Patrol Car as #481 and the Taxi as #480.





Both models will be found with shaped wheels and cast wheels, although cast wheels on the Taxi are quite scarce. This model was really not around for long, being deleted from dealers' lists almost as soon as it was listed, available for less than a year. So not many had a chance to be fitted with the cast wheels.

The Patrol Car, however, stayed in the lists until 1969 and the majority have cast wheels, with shaped wheels being the slightly less frequently seen. Aerials tend to get broken on these models and I have just noticed that both used in these illustrations have suffered in that respect!

  

You will note that, despite a 6 year period elapsing, the fares didn't change! The same transfer has been used on the new model. The Police Car has stickers on the doors, as did the preceding issue but this time they're quite different. Neither the old nor new Police stickers strike me as being very well done.

I am not aware of any other variations for these two.