Humber FV1600

[Humber-One-Ton Tom]

Hi - first off, congratulations Richard on your fantastic truck, looks really tidy. Sorry to hear you injured yourself, though.

But here's a funny thing. Sitting down to Christmas dinner, pulled a cracker, a small plastic truck fell out. "At least it's got wheels", I thought, better than a yo-yo or whatever. "Actually, looks a bit like a Humber....BLIMEY! it IS a Humber!"- There is no mistake, with the two hatches, the spare wheel hatch on the left, the ridged bonnet, split screens...no two ways about it, this is a Humber GS truck...

You will see it is tiny, photographed with a penny (for you guys in Oz, a penny is pretty small, 20mm accross and 1.8mm thick -Thanks to photographer Simon Marriot - not an easy thing to capture!)

So how is a truck produced in such low numbers 56 years ago getting into a cheap Xmas cracker made in China? My guess is that this is a scaled-down copy of the Dinky Toys Humber - Once I found a low-grade miniature copy of the Dinky austin K9 water carrier so this appears was common practice in Chinese toy factories.

The truck is in packs of Sainsburys foil crackers - now reduced to 62p per pack, picture of gifts on back of the box so you can be sure...I bought a few packs so if anyone is desperate for one of these for their collection I will send a couple out for free to folks if you want one. It will never be a valuable collectors piece but is an interesting curiosity and part of the story - how the Dinky toy of a prototype vehicle with one-piece hatches (LYN 69?) spawned more toy trucks than real ones....as I speak there are more of these toys in circulation than real trucks ever produced, but most will be in the bin by the weekend!
Check out photos.
Happy New Year!
Tom
Portsmouth
UK