MPC Miniature Military Vehicles: 1960s toys

The 1960s was the golden age of plastic toys.  It was the first full decade of mass produced plastic toys of a wide variety.  Yes, toys are still overwhelmingly made of plastic, but if you look through toy stores, there is a tendency to have nodes of toy lines, Lego, Disney, Fischer Price, Thomas Trains, etc, frequently tied in with movies and television.  Back in the 60s shelves were awash with inexpensive, royalty-free toys of different kinds even if they were manufactured by a couple companies.  Toy vehicles were a favorite for boys, and, before the growing awareness of the Vietnam War reduced their popularity, tanks and other military vehicles were a favorite subject. 

A particular favorite toy set of mine was, and still is, the Miniature Military Vehicles produced by MPC.  They came in a set of 40 different items, each vehicle about an inch long, representing the armies of the US, Germany, UK, USSR, and France.  Most were a single molded shape, though half of the vehicles had a moving turret, gun, aerial, searchlight, even a missile.  Most of them seemed to be chosen for their unusual appearance or fame as well as their ease of molding (generally a flat shape rather than curving).  For pictures of the vehicles, I borrowed pictures from the toysoldierhq website.  I was going to take pictures of all of them, but this site has shots of all of them, plus lots of interesting old toys.

The Second World War was the first mechanized war and its vehicles are almost half of the set.  The UK is represented by a single piece, the Daimler Armored Car.  A very successful vehicle in the war, it so looks like what a generic armored car should look like that a number of manufacturers made similar toys, even to this day.  The USSR is also represented by a single vehicle, the T34/85.  It was one of the most heavily produced tanks of all time, built by the tens of thousands.  They even appeared in the Middle East wars in armories of the Arab states.  Germany created many of the most distinctive tanks in the war, the subject of fascination to military enthusiasts to this day.  Their production is represented by a tiger tank, an armored car, a half-track, and three anti-aircraft tanks.  The tiger tank is still a famous tank (vehicles with a name tend to be remembered well, like Patton tank, Sherman tank, Stalin tank, etc.) that was produced in good numbers the last two years of the war.  The armored car and half-track were common as well, though the half-track is a combination of two real vehicles, one with a searchlight and one with a sound detector.  The anti-aircraft tanks were not produced in great numbers, only a couple hundred total, but are still popular with modelers because of their unusual shape.

British and Russian vehicles

German and US vehicles

The US has a number of second world war vehicles in the set.  Unarmed vehicles include a jeep, a motorcycle with side-car, an ambulance, a fuel truck, a supply truck, a command car (with a radio aerial to be attached), and four amphibious vehicles created during the war.  The Jeep is perhaps the most famous and durable vehicle created during the war, as you still see its descendants parked in front of houses today. The amphibious vehicles are a floating version of the jeep; a small tank called a Weasal, a popular subject for plastic models by Monogram in the 50s; a Buffalo, a common landing vehicle for Marines in the Pacific; and a DUKW, a floating truck still used 60 years later for tours of cities near bodies of water.  The idea of amphibious vehicles were popular in the 60s, as I remember seeing a sports car with little propellers at the rear drive into the water at a boat put in by a river as kid, perhaps the James Bond effect.  Armed vehicles include two similar half-tracks, a tractor and howitzer, and a self-propelled artillery piece.  The self-propelled artillery piece was a popular subject for toys in the 50’s.  A strange omission from the US armory is the Sherman tank, the most heavily produced tank in US history but it had a lot of curved surfaces that would be difficult to mold simply.

US and French vehicles

The cold war was a preoccupation everywhere to an extent that is hard to recall today.  Military vehicles were a common sight on the news and, sometimes, the new interstate highway system as units would go on summer maneuvers on the roads built ostensibly for national defense.  Germany’s post war production was not as distinctive as its wartime production and is only represented by an armored personnel carrier. France’s post-war production is represented by an armored car and a related tank (both used similar turrets, for ease of maintenance).   Three items from the arsenal of the USSR are included, an armored personnel carrier and the Stalin and T54 tanks.  Both tanks were famous at the time, as the Stalin tank changed the design of tanks after its introduction at the end of WWII, and the T54 was often pictured in photos of uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well as, in flaming hulks, the Arab-Israeli Wars.  The UK is represented more heavily with an ambulance, a truck, a land rover, a Centurion tank, and three armored cars, the Ferret, the Saladin, and the Saracen. The land rover was well known a safari vehicle.  The British used armored cars to combat rebellions in their evaporating colonies where tanks were impractical.  I still remember seeing the Saracen armored cars often in news reports about the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. 

The US arsenal had common and unusual pieces: a Patton tank, an unusual multi-barrel artillery piece known as the Ontos, an armored personnel carrier, a small towed missile system, a tank transporter, and an Honest John missile truck.  The tank transporter toy was too small to transport anything other than the British Land Rover. The Patton tank was the most common US tank built after WWII, named after the famous General.  The personnel carrier was one of the most produced armored vehicles of all time—I recall seeing them in pictures of the streets of Egypt during the Arab Spring.  The Ontos was produced in small numbers for the Marine Corps, but was interesting because it had six guns.  The Honest John missile was in three pieces: the truck, the launcher, and the easily lost missile.

The set was unusual in several ways. .  Even at an inch long, they had a fair amount of detail, showing wheels, exhaust vents, equipment racks, doors, and hatches.  Each vehicle had it’s name on the bottom and country of origin written underneath, as well as its length.  Kids could learn the names of the vehicles and realize that, though the toys were basically the same size, they were not the same size in real life. Even the turrets and guns had the names on them so that kids could assemble them correctly.  That did not prevent some interesting hybrids, matching the turrets from one vehicle with the chassis of another, particularly as the small pieces got lost over time.  As a kid, I lost over a dozen of the assorted chassis and parts, creating unusual tanks with the remainder until I bought the missing pieces on ebay a year ago, buying incomplete sets and reselling pieces I already had. 

As there were a lot of vehicles and they were all small, one could have little battles on a small space.  I had many battles on my bed, with the covers mounded to form hills and trenches, pitting the forces of Germany against US, UK, USSR and France.  Germany usually won, as I had almost all the German tanks and not many US and UK tanks.  I created convoys of the unarmored vehicles under attack.

There were many more extensive collections of vehicles produced, as well as many more detailed and collectible reproductions, but I will always like these simple toys.