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Bradgate Talking Fire Engine
Trumptonalia.
This plastic toy was produced by Bradgate,who were part of Palitoy. ( Although it was actually made by Tomy.)
Its main selling point was that it could "talk".
With 2 HP7 batteries powering a wonderfully archaic stylus-on-a-disk affair.So that when you pressed the button under the ladder you could hear Brian Cant say "Fire! Fire! Call the Trumpton Fire Brigade. Pugh,Pugh,Barney McGrew,Cuthbert, Dibble,Grub", followed by the beep of a whistle. cont ....
Sadly,that's the only job the batteries were needed for.
Because you had to wheel it around and operate the hoist yourself.
And don't look to the occupants for help either.
Removable ? Yes. But no arms or legs and the heads don't even move.
Cheap to produce,but hardly hours of fun once you'd played "firemen skittles" a few times and tested their flotation skills in the toilet bowl.
But,for the record,there are 7 in total ( one's hidden in the pic ) ...
4 identical ones without any distinguishing features.
And 3 instantly recognisable as Flack ( moustache ),McGrew ( beard ) and Cuthbert ( hair over eyes ).
All-in-all pretty lame effort really.
A one-trick-pony whose only trick was an audio loop that would quickly become tedious,even for a pre-schooler.
The rather speculative mid 1970's release date was a long way from the Trumptonshire boom time of the 60's, despite regular tv repeats.And it was also just a solitary,one-off product and not part of a range.
So the omens weren't promising.
But survivors aren't that hard to find.So maybe it did a bit better than I'm assuming.And certainly better than it had a right to,based purely on the quality of the product.
And because it's one of the very few toys to actually feature the Trumpton Fireman,it's really just a reminder of what might have been,rather than a celebration of what was.
a different view of the box is shown here
