Corgi Toys @ 60 : Jaguar Mk X and two big Gift Sets

 

September 1962 brought the magnificent Jaguar Mk S Saloon to our local toy shops! This was an exciting model with an opening bonnet as well as an opening boot in which there were two suitcases and one of them was huge and could be opened! I never actually put anything inside the big one but there was something nice just about the fact that we could open it. There were also four jewelled lights at the front and a design which produced a silver metal front bumper section. This was never particularly bright but it was solid and stood up to the occasional crashes better than the chrome or silver paint.

Illustrated above is my own Jaguar, purchased as soon as it came out, and you'll see that it was a weird shade of green and a solid colour. There was also a pale solid blue at the outset.

When I was a little older and had pocket money to spare I bought the cerise model - a much classier metallic finish - as I had never been very happy with the pale green for such a quality car in reality. This was the only other colour that I knew about until I started looking at Corgi Toys afresh in my 60s! Now I realise that there was a large range of metallic colours issued during the mid to later part of this model's production. I have done my best to obtain and illustrate here as many as I can find but no doubt one or two more will appear! The metallic cerise colour is the most common by some margin, but be careful with this colour as sunlight fades this particular shade remarkably and you will find several pale metallic grey-pink models around as a result! Look under the wheel arches, however, and you'll see the true original, lovely dark cerise.

All the other colours (and the early pale blue and green) are difficult to find now and some are particularly scarce, with many being available with red and lemon interiors too. You could have good collection that would take a while to gather by looking just for this model alone!

dark silver-blue

pale silver blue

silver

solid dark blue

metallic dark blue

turquoise-blue with red interior

turquoise-green with lemon interior

metallic bright emerald

gold-plated (very few made for VIP guests and Jaguar directors)

This month was a busy month for shops as there were also two large Gift sets issued in September. These were Gift Set 22 Agricultural Set and Gift Set 23 Chipperfields Gift Set.

The Agricultural Gift Set 22 was quite an important one in that it was the first to feature a green Land Rover Series II with suspension. The early sets had a distinctly different and lighter shade of green Land Rover to the deep green that would be issued later as 438. There was also no canopy on the model and I am inclined to list this as 406S rather than 438. It is pretty academic, though, as the 'farm green' Land Rover with suspension and interior only ever appeared in this set.

The set also featured an all yellow 101 trailer which would not be issued anywhere else either. 

Later in 1962 the deep green 438 Land Rover would be used, but still without a canopy, as in the illustration which shows a later set. The all-yellow 101 trailer continued to be included, early sets having one with fixed shaped wheels, later sets having the free-spinning variety. All had the fixed drawbar.

The other components are as shown in the top illustration above. Later the set gets revised with the later components in the lower picture.

The other set was the Chipperfields Circus Gift Set 23 which was the second outing for the Land Rover in Series II guise, still with a tin canopy in the early sets.

The other components in the original issue are as shown above. Later they would be changed, with a Bedford Giraffe Transporter replacing the Booking Office.