387 - Gescha Military Truck with Rotating Rocket Launcher, Tin Toy

Gescha Military Truck with Rotating Rocket Launcher, Tin Toy Tin and plastic, painted grey-green. Three-axle military truck by the Gescha company with an open driver's position, white steering wheel and red seat. Behind it, on a turntable, a rotating rocket launcher with a shield set in front of it and launcher tubes of plastic, in front of these grey sliders for release and a red lever at the base. The rear part is taken up by an open tin box which can be raised by a crank with a red handle on the right-hand side; the mounting for the rockets and the rockets themselves are missing. Six individual wheels with treaded plastic tyres. On the underside of the frame the impressed circular mark of the company and the lettering „MADE IN WESTERN GERMANY“. Played with, heavily used condition, the paint with losses, the guard plate at the rear broken or damaged. The clockwork mechanism does not work and may no longer be present. Please view in person. 26x10x13 cm (LxWxH) Gescha was a Nuremberg tin toy manufacturer which from the 1920s built above all vehicles with clockwork and flywheel drive and was absorbed into Conrad Modelle around 1980. The addition Western Germany on the underside was used only after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949 and thus places the piece in post-war production. Military toys in tin belonged to the standard range of the Nuremberg makers from the 1930s into the 1950s; after the war the old tools were frequently reused and the models converted into civilian versions. In the nurseries of the 1950s and 1960s rocket vehicles replaced the artillery pieces of the pre-war period; the tubes took spring-loaded plastic rockets which could be fired singly by means of sliders, and a second set lay ready in the raisable box at the rear. Because the loose rockets were lost in play, complete examples are rare.