Down Mexico Way

Yonks ago I featured an obscure set of snap-together plastic molded cars marketed by Topps with an even more obscure set of cards. Issued in 1970, Mini Model Cars was a set manufactured elsewhere and, as it turns out, not necessarily for Topps.  

Here is my own Mini Model Car:

And here is one described as a Mexican cereal in-pack premium:

It's clearly from the same mold and the "22" hood stamp matches; mine may be missing one little piece, or not (hard to tell as it looks undisturbed).  Here's another, different model from the world of cereal:

I've seen some in pastel colors but I think they are modern repros.

Well some recent Facebook posts and eBay auctions may have possibly uncovered who produced these - an outfit called Tinykins.  Tinykins was a Marx Toys brand in the 1960's that was the Funko of its day in a way, issuing sets like this one featuring the Flintstones and other Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, which I found over at the Hanna-Barberawiki site:

Yeah, you want that bad, I know I do!

But I'm not sure it's the same brand used for the cards but some auction listings reference Tinykins Formula One racers and some also mention 1971 as the year of issue.  I'd feel better if I could find a cereal box image advertising them but some cars are offered by sellers in Mexico.  However, it's very much worth noting Quaker Oats bought Marx Toys in 1972. For now, this is where things stand.

What If I Want An Egg Cream?

Well the inevitable has happened and the world can now see what Topps unleashed onto an unsuspecting public in 1970.  Friend o'the Archive Bill Cox has finally completed the twelve card puzzle that yields a 43 year old concept automobile Topps dubbed the Soda Fountain Car!  Here it is in all its wacky glory:

A couple of points to make.  1) Those cones are gonna fall and 2) Where's the napkins?

Being the result of an idiosyncratic insert to a scarcely known issue (Mini Model Cars), there can't be too many completed puzzles out there so a hearty well done is in order Bill!  Bill is nearing completion of the Racing Track cards that comprise the majority of the 33 inserts and you can bet we will feature the completed puzzle here once he hits the finish line.

Strangest.Set.Ever

As promised, there is a part 2 to the saga of the 1970  Racing Track Cards recently shown here in "layout" form. Friend o'the Archive Bill Cox is putting together both puzzles that came with the plastic Mini Model Cars in '70.  Well yours truly worked out a deal with Bill and a Soda Fountain Car Card now is ensconced at the Main Topps Archives Research Center.  Behold:

These are a strange size, just like the Racing Track Card they measure 2" x 3 5/8". The back is quite similar to the other subset as well:

I don't think the cards were made in Hong Kong, just the model cars. Oddly the Soda Fountain cards seem sturdier than the Racing Track ones; they are slightly stiffer.

Bill sent along a picture of his partially completed Soda Fountain Car.  What on earth was Topps thinking?!

Track Work Ahead

Well, as I well suspected, I am not the only person out there who likes and collects the obscure Topps issues from even the most unknown sets. A while back I posted on a set of insert cards issued in 1970 called Racing Track Cards. These came with the Mini Model Cars of the same year and were designed to be put together like a puzzle to form a race track for the mini models. A collector named Bill Cox has been piecing together the race track and is just shy of being halfway there (21 cards comprise a full track):

I have traded him a piece he needs and am also going to nab a Soda Fountain Car Card from him, which I will show here of course once it's in my sweaty little hands.  Those were issued in the same packs as the race track pieces but there  are only 12 cards in that subset.

If anybody can help out with the remaining pieces for Racing Track Cards or the Soda Fountain Car , I can pass a message on to Bill.  I think it would be cool to see the completed track and he indictaes he has extra pieces to trade.

This Year's Model

I don't even know where to begin with today's entry. In 1970 Topps issued a set of small, plastic toys called Mini Model Cars:



According to Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards Number 4, there are twelve cars in a complete set but I frankly have no idea if that is true. The back of the pack shows what was in store for the lucky purchaser:



The cars were made in Hong Kong and the packaging, which is a paper envelope measuring 2 3/4" by 4 3/8" with flaps on each end held a mini car on a sprue that measures 1 3/4" x 3 1/2":



That windshield is not brown but rather has a weird translucence like certain areas of the 1968 Baseball Plaks. Unlike the Plaks though, which were fairly thick, the model cars are made of flimsier material. This particular model has number 22 on the hood:



The cars came packaged with a very thin insert card, or rather one of two types of insert cards. The cards that make sense are called Racing Track Cards:



The back indicates 21 were in the set and obviously they made up a race track for your mini cars:



The cards are oddly sized at 2" x 3 5/8". You can see one of the two dimples on the card (caused by the main body pieces of the model) in the back scan. The box advertised the fact you could make a starting grid, as Topps put it:



Here is a full box flat from the wonderful norman-saunders.com site:



Here is an interior shot of a box from an Ebay auction a while back:




Now, the weirdest part of this whole thing though is that certain packs held something called Soda Fountain Car cards. The only place I have ever seen a picture of them is from the aforementioned Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards Number 4 by Chris Benjamin:





Twelve in number, the card front would have been in color. If you take the 21 Racing Track cards and add them to the 12 Soda Fountain Car cards you get 33, which is a total used by Topps quite a bit for their insert and oddball sets and is divisible by that favorite Topps number, 11. Why Topps had such strange cards as inserts beats me; it seems there was to be a set of soda-fountain cars issued as well that was scrapped. It looks like the kid in the above scan has an ice cream sundae on the seat next to him and they are both situated behind a windshield.

The mind reels at what those would have looked like in plastic form or why they even were contemplated. The only thing I can think of is that the Brooklyn property the Shorin's once lived on around the turn of the century (that's the 19th century turning over folks) when the four eventual Topps founders would have been very young, featured a converted saloon that was, yup, a soda fountain. Other than that, I have no idea what was going on.