STAR WANNATOY'S SUPER SPY GAME

From Brooklyn New York Company Star Wannatoy, comes this unusual Spy Item the Super Spy Game, unusual because most spy games tend to be big boxed affairs like 'Microdot' or any of the TV show based MB games, this one comes on a heaver card than the usual rack spy toys  and contains a fold out board & 12 spy Agents ( Counters).

I'm very tempted to open this and have a look at the rules, as I'd love to give it a go! i wonder how many other Rack spy games were created? a great idea and a Brilliant little spy toy item something Spy asociated but allso different from the usual Guns & weapons.

 one of my faves so far, with great 60's Esq iconography on the header card.

With 12 Spy Agents!

SPECIAL AGENT AUTOMATIC CAP FIRING PISTOL

From the 1970's comes this Great Pistol, another one purchased from E bay USA which a couple of weeks ago had 4 or 5 new ( well new to me) Hong kong knock off pistols, 3 of which i managed to win which always makes me wonder who's bidding against me, other Spy Toy collectors?, Bond Collectors?..please get in touch if you've also got bootleg items & rare guns or a blog which features them, because at the moment I'm all alone in the Knock off Spy toy universe.

Love the artwork on this one, the scene of 2 People ( Enemy Agents i presume) Struggling with the gun, while one lies dead on the bed! this header's a little more graphic than the usual fare, and leads me to believe the pic may have been taken from a Pulp novel rather than a Commissioned piece of art, after all if someone had been commissioned to draw the header, surly a more simpler generic pic of a suit & shades wearing spy would have been the choice, rather than the above pic, where its impossible to tell who the gun belongs too. maybe its the guy who's dead on the bed?

The guns pretty nifty too, weather it is  the original gun that's attached to the card is impossible to tell, until i find another one, or someone out there gets in touch and tells me otherwise i believe it is, its plastic and the cards pretty thin the metal guns that were produced tend to have been on heaver blister cards.like the one below.

great colourful card

'The gun of a Secret Agent' reads the blurb on the header of the pretty heavy 8 shooter revolver with silencer, always a nice little add on that.
 I got this with a Man from Uncle annual off of E bay, yes both in the same Auction! the card is a pretty Straightforward version of the secret agent type header with our hero looking a bit schoolboy -ish, with blazer & tie! and  some nice bright colours.
Made by Funtastic toys, maybe sometime in the mid 80's? its bar coded so its definitely a later issue and as always with these toys, a google search revealed nothing really, no history of Guns or spy toys associated with this company so maybe it's a one off for the spy craze or whatever bond film was popular the year this gun came out, 'View to a kill' maybe?

Back of the card mid 80's?

This was a great gun to get free with the first Man From Uncle annual, a really good deal both for £4.00.

SPECIAL AGENT SECRET WEAPON WATCH GUN!

Another nifty little Gadget no Super Spy Should Be Without the Secret watch, or if you prefer the Watch gun, actually I'm not sure what to call this hence the makers calling it 'Secret Weapon' which i guess it is, a brilliant little gadget that i am so tempted to take out of the packet and try, after all you can pick these up on E bay pretty cheaply i paid around £5.00 including postage for this and it is great.

More intriguing art work on the Header card, features a spy looking very Roger Moore Esq about to defend his self against attack from an unlikely looking assailant, armed with, i think a knife, could be anything really.

Fifty nine cents was the asking price for this great little rack toy, I'd love to see some of the other items that may have graced the rack at the same time, more Exploding coins & watches & deadly lighters!, all you had to do in the sixties & seventies to arm yourself would be to walk into your local newsagents, and hey Presto!..your fully armed and ready for Action.

Sonny watches, liking the Bright red Bullets!

Made in Hong Kong..of course the home of the best knock off Spy toys!

SPECIAL AGENT 707 LIGHTER PISTOL & COUNTER SPY GUN

Here's 2 Nifty little items the everyday spy cannot afford to be without!, both of which i picked up off E Bay USA..the counter spy gun is very typical Hong Kong just an outrageous cheap little item, but one i fell in love with instantly, the art work is classic, I'm not sure whats happening here but its very spy ish, the guy with the hat looks very cool maybe he's the Counter spy? i have no idea of the date of issue but it looks very mid 60's , i dont think the bag is orginal but i'm pretty sure the card is i dont think anyone would go to the trouble of photocopying that!, I think they would create a new one instead, its such an odd little picture but that makes it all the more attractive to me,and it sits nicely in the Collection.

Super Cool!

Heres the Super Cool Redbox toys Special Agent 707 Lighter & Pistol pack complete with bullets! of course, what a brilliant gadget this is, the perfect toy weapon to get you out of that extra tricky situation, i love the card artwork it is fantastic with the great special agent 707 looking very cool as he's about to use his lighter on some un suspecting villanous double agent/or criminal mastermind.
The card says 'red box secret weapons series' so were more made? i've only found this one so far I wonder what the others could be?.

Great art superb card

The actual plastic holding the lighter to the card looks new to me, its very bright so i'm thinking its a replacement and the staples look new too, no rust at all, which is what you would expect from a 1960's rack toy item.

It is one of my faves this lighter pack, i'm having great fun tracking down these rare & un usull spy toy items,once again a google search on 'Red Box Toys' proved to tell me nothing, except it's an Hong Kong toy firm, they also make pirate ships, i only hope they made more of these great little spy toys.

DENYS FISHER NEW AVENGERS GAMBITS GUN

Here's one of those 'I wish' Toys, there was very little New Avengers Merch at the time, most of it we know about, and i guess if guns were made we'd definitely know about them.
Unless a few Hong Kong type knock off's slipped through the net!, thats the look we are going for with the custom version, created & designed by Steve C designs of Northampton.

First Proto Type

Thanks to Mr Steve C, here's our version of Gambits gun this is just a prototype custom, but as you can see. its looking good.
The Colour of the card will Probably be Different, but i don't mind the White Backing, it shows up the colours  really well and the Denys fisher logo at the bottom is a nice touch.

The Back of the card features a handy little history complete with a caution!..
we may be listing a couple of these as custom guns on the E bay with a limited run
so if you want one get in touch, its a nice little item to add to the display,and at the moment we are working on the 'Purdey & 'Saint' versions, which i will feature here soon.

SUPERSPY DISGUISE SET GREAT RACK TOY

Fantastic Trash!

I love these Trashy Hong Kong knock offs, in fact one of the driving forces behind me creating this blog was that...
there's no pictures/record or info about them on the web, i guess because there were so many of them made an actual list of what was produced would be impossible to catalogue, they only way I find things like the items below, is Toy fairs/toy Shops, and the E bay and I've only been collecting for a few months so image how much I've missed.
Yes the above toy is Trash!, but it contains the word 'Super-spy' my criteria for collecting was that the items should at least have the words 'spy' 'agent' or 'Secret Agent' on the card or box, unless the item in question was sooooo actually brilliant it could ignore these self implied rules and be a fabulous spy item all on its own..Like the safe gun set ..below..

The logo 'Merehall' appears in the top corner,  I Believe, from a quick Google search Merehall were UK distributors , and not actual manufacturers of the Toys  these are obviously aimed at the spy toy market but there's no mention of spy or agent on the small card, but at £5.00 each these were too great to pass up plus I can use one to customize into a  Vintage spy item, I can only wonder what other great Spy items Merehall may have distributed in the UK.

HONG KONG SECRET SERVICE SET

I don't really know where to start with this one, one of the greatest Knock off Spy toys I've yet come across, the brilliant 'Secret Service set' it includes a gun, handcuffs, grenade and a camera, the card inside the packaging reads 'Detective set!' so I think the makers had all area's covered with this one.
The header card is brilliant featuring as it does a series of targets, one being a young woman( who does look a little foxy, it must be said) the other 2  are  a city gent, and a young man about town type, why on earth these people are targets is beyond me none of them look remotely villainous in the Spy sense and none are armed in any way, at least one of the targets should have been a Bald man  Stroking a cat, or another agent pointing a gun,then the Bond theme may have been a bit more obvious.

there is no year of issue, but perhaps because it reads 'Secret Service set' maybe its a cash in on OHMSS?..could be, I'm sure the words 'Secret Agent Set' would have been used otherwise, or 'Spy set' but then again if it was a OHMSS cash in I think a 'Snow' setting would have served it better, with a variation of the film poster, rather than the header used.

I found this great item under a table at a recent Toy Fair for £4.00..yes a complete bargain, long live the secret Agent knock off Rack toys!.
As always any info you have on this, and other items I'm featuring, please get in touch, I'm no Expert just a Fan & collector.

 

Civilian Targets..or Spy's?..you decide!

COIBEL AGENT X-9 EXPLODING LIGHTER

The Clasic Agent X-9 Exploding Lighter

The Spanish Company Coibel began making James Bond toys in the 1960's when i presume they had a licence to do so, by the 1980's it looks like it had run out hence this much more interesting variation on a Bond gadget the 'exploding lighter'.
Agent X-9 of course bears an uncanny resemblance to my favourite Bond Roger Moore..this is a great little item I'd love to open and try out, they say smoking is bad for you, well with the Exploding lighter it just got a lot worse!

Issued to cash in on 'View to a Kill' I presume, they also made An 'Exploding Coin' and the Classic 'Exploding spoon', i think both of those are actual Bond merchandise rather than AgentX-9 knock off's, neither of  those  I have at the moment  but I wont rest until I find them.
I got the above from E Bay USA pretty cheaply as I've seen it go for £20.00 in the UK
Looks like the Roger Moore pic was lifted directly from the Corgi  Jr car..Fantastic Stuff!..I love there unlicensed Spy Toys.

Bang!..Classic.

Nice bit of Coibel Plagiarism

LONE STAR 1987 SECRET AGENT CAP PISTOL

Off Of The E Bay comes this nifty little item, the very heavy metal Lone Star 12 cap repeater Pistol dating from 1987, no great artwork this time but its Secret Agent credentials are clear with the inclusion of some  John Le Carre type Iconography in the Top corner, a Passport, tape recording and film canister, this is A serious Spy Pistol!

Over the years Lone Star made Many Secret Agent Guns, and as I've said before it's Pretty much Impossible to find a List of all of them, I'm attempting to track down as many Versions I can find, including my favourite Knock off Variations it's allway's fun & interesting to see those.

The card has seen better days but for £10.00 i thought it was a good buy, it ticks all the right
box's and is interesting to see pictures rather than Artwork on the card, i guess this was something Lone Star did with later variations of the gun.

THE CRESCENT SECRET AGENT MINIMATIC

The Crescent Minimatic  gun has to be my favourite of the collection so far, I picked this up at a recent Toy Fair and  as soon as i saw it I knew I had to have it!, it's virtually mint and I believe would have looked no better on the day it was originally bought , there is no year on the gun but I think it's got to be 1960's, it's a lovely little piece which fits into the Spy collection very nicely the art work is very reminiscent of the time with the Secret Agent looking at his watch with his car in the background brilliant, I wonder how many variations of this little gun were made?

What A great Find!

Looks Great In The Collection!

CODE NAME SPY TOY BLOG INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my new Blog, many thanks to everyone who followed my old blog,the new blog is dedicated to my pursuit of spy toys, guns gadgets & cars of the 50's 60's & 70's, and a bit of 80's if its cool & trashy enough..i will try and focus mainly the obscure Hong Kong Knock off toys that were mass produced around this time,a lot of these are Fascinating and feature great art and just about get away with being as close to Bond & Uncle as possible, without being sued!
After many Google searches, nothing came up about these kind of toys, so i guess a list about how many were made would be impossible to find even a book about Spy toys of the 60's didn't mention them..sooooo this is..

A Blog about  My Pursuit of Vintage Spy/Secret agent toys Focusing mainly on the Unusual Knock off variations that were issued in the 60's & 70's and some of our own custom created toys..The rules are i only feature toys i own, i need that hands on approach to give good descriptions, plus i see no point in nicking images from the web to use.
I will feature some of the more popular toys i own, such as Uncle & bond items, but they are already well served by other sites, its the weird & wonderful that have not yet got a Blog,till now!
So enjoy, and let me know what you think.
All the best.
Vince.

NEW AVENGERS SHOOTING GAME

This is the Denys Fisher New Avengers Shooting Game from 1976, i recently got this from a Toy shop in Birmingham UK, I got a pretty good deal on it considering its quiet rare, and this one is complete with the correct gun & shooting discs.
 Most examples of this I've seen are usually missing various parts like  the gun for example, I've even seen one dealer selling it with a completely different gun & no proper inserts although he was honest enough to tell me that at the time!.
I absolutely love this toy , it looks great on display shame about the large black & white picture, I would have prefered some more of the funky 70's artwork that you can see on the inside of the box, but never mind that's just a small quibble i had a blast playing this, the Timer ( you turn the gun anti clockwise) and this activates the motor which moves the shutters down slowly obscuring the various targets, with no instructions, and no other info on the net, I figure you win by hitting the most targets in the allocated time.

Game Contents

 In the pic below you can see the gun & cards. I'm not sure what the makers were going for, I guess various spy looking character silhouettes with a hint of Espionage & intrigue, there's also a larger card pictured containing  all the spy's  with the New Avengers  logo on the back, I presume you get more points if you hit this target than the smaller ones.
The game was based on a New Avengers episode called, appropriately 'Target'..the Targets used in the episode were actors made up, some were Steed & Purdey in weird make up, designed to make them look like Dummies.A great episode worth checking out from the Excellent first season of the show.

Gun & Cards