Karl AKA Stroget is an active curator at HobbyDB of many of the 1/43 model car brands. He has been adding model cars to the DB since 2014; some of his favorites are Alfa Romeo and obsolete Tekno from Denmark!
Part I introduces the topic and describes the history of the Beetle, VW model collecting, and the Beetle in Japan.
Tomica released the late series Volkswagen 1200LE Beetle in both 1:60 and 1:43 together with companion 1303 Cabriolet in 1:60. These were supplemented by two models of the VW typ.2 (Type 2) transporter theme: a late series, second generation kombi/microbus in 1:60 and a first generation van in 1:43 retrospectively now referred to as T2 “Bay window” and T1 “Split screen” or “Splity” respectively.
What impressed me at the time was that by contemporary standards they were very well finished with superbly glossy paint finishes (often in two tone) and excellent overprinting.
In early 1979 the ever-expanding range of colour and decor variations on the 1200 theme in both scales was supplemented by a Police version – again in both scales. Both these initial Police releases were in blue with white wings. The 1:60 version had catalogue number F70 whilst the 1:43 version was numbered F21 in the Tomica Dandy range.
The F70 variations that subsequently appeared including black/white wings with Police door script, bright green/white wings with Polizei or Police door script, red/white wings with Police or Swiss Polizei door markings, white with black wings carrying Japanese Police door script. There are 61 variants on hobbyDB of the 1:60 version but only a few are numbered F70.
The F21 model then appeared in 1982 in German Polizei guise of white with mint green door panels. Later still a Toronto Police version in yellow was released, but before that a series of Police Beetles based on the Tomica 1:43 casting took off in a very surprising way… There are 44 variants of the 1:43 VW on hobbyDB but only twelve are labeled as F21.
KADO rose to instant fame with VW model collectors in early 1980 by issuing a 1:43 diecast split rear window Beetle in 5 colours and a set of 6 Beetle Police based on the Tomica Dandy F21 casting.
The split window Beetles were manufactured by KADO themselves consistent with the range of other models they had released many of which being Japanese saloons from the early 1960s. At the time the split window Beetle casting was significant because it was one of the very first modern models of the earliest Beetle body style to be released.
The Tomica-based KADO Police models were like a breath of fresh air representing as they did unique, limited issue, models of Beetles in different national liveries. An instant success, these six models were soon followed by a further set of 3 Beetles in German service liveries. These KADO-Tomica issues were marketed in a distinctive yellow display box based on the Tomica Dandy packaging with a similar style in mid-blue being used for some special livery KADO versions of the Tomica VW T1 van and in green for a companion set of special livery Citroën “H” vans.
The first (1980) KADO Police Beetle set:
The second (1980) KADO Beetle set:
Note about boxes: there are two common issues: being retrospectively sold with the wrong contents as collections are ‘moved on’ and being originally sold without labels. The significance to collectors is that they may not know which KT number they really have.
That first set of the six KADO Police models hit the VW scene with some considerable impact. The subject coverage and the quality had a profound effect on me – I can still clearly remember the day that Jim McLachlan (1) first showed them to me when they were brand new.
Effectively nothing else quite like the series had been made since the heady days of Tekno’s fairly extensive coverage of Beetles in different national liveries. After all at that time about the only contemporary range of 1:43 diecast Beetles available in a range of service liveries was the ageing Gama model of the 1302 which around that time had seen a resurgence thanks to being one of the first releases onto the market of models in the blue livery of the German THW.
Reflecting on the liveries represented by Tekno some years previously and fuelled by research I was doing for one of several extensive, authoritative, series of articles for the former Volkswagen Audi CAR magazine, it seemed to me that there were some important and very well known national Police liveries not covered by the KADO series – a Swedish Polis Beetle certainly being at the head of the list.
Fired by enthusiasm, I decided that somehow I should find a way of putting that point to KADO. Working at that time in a Civil Engineering drawing office, I set about using my drafting skills in my lunch breaks to process the idea.
I photocopied multiple side view line drawings of both the Beetle and its companion split screen van from one the KADO-Tomica boxes and glued them with Pritt stick onto several A4 template sheets. A contemporary set of three view line drawings of a Beetle from a dry print sheet (Letraset or Mecanorma, I remember not which.) of architectural style illustrations was also copied multiple times and set alongside each borrowed Kado line drawing. Inscriptions were added with Letraset and the “Master” sheet were then photocopied again.
The finishing stage comprised of hand colouring these photocopied profile view drawings with fibre tip pens. Just one set of ‘suggestion’ sheets was produced, with something like a dozen further police liveries and a similar number of postal service liveries. My hope was that, maybe, they would at least prompt the possibility of some Scandinavian themed Police Beetles from Kado.
As with the initial sets, the liveries were representational and depicted, in general terms, those used in various countries. Some were liveries previously represented by Tekno, Metosul and others whilst some were ones previously unmodelled.
I sent this set of hand coloured suggestion drawings sheets off to KADO by Air Mail in the early months of 1982, and there the matter rested for a few months. Then after more correspondence including a telegram from KADO, further frantic research and more drafting, I learned to my utter surprise in late August there was a possibility that Kado were actually considering all the suggestions for production. After minor last-minute rescheduling, the first six models were released in Japan in November 1982 stock of which arrived with Rod Ward in time for the New Year 1983. At that stage the planned release date for the second batch of six models based on my suggestions was given as being February 1983 and the last scheduled six in May 1983.
KADO explained that the Postal series would then follow at a date later in the year but sadly they and the intended May release Police models never reached production.
For a while I had a full set of colour print photographs of the pre-production versions of the models sent to me by KADO. My recollection is that they got used as cut-n-paste material for use in one of the 1982 issues of the quarterly VWMC Magazine. Today, of course, such valuable material would have been scanned and the magazine put together totally electronically. Back in 2017 Jim McLachlan did, very kindly, do an extensive search through his archives for me to check if the original paste-up including those photos had survived, but sadly it appears to have been lost over the passage of the past 40 years. Or maybe my recollection of their fate has become flawed with the passing of four decades.
What has surfaced though since I started writing this article is a copy of the February 1983 issue of the VWMC Mag’ which Jim very supportively scanned for use here. Thanks to that evidence I am at last able to put provenance to, and closure of, the unfinished tale published in MODEL Collector five years ago.
Interestingly not only did that February 1983 issue of the VWMC Mag’ give a finite cataloguing of the subsequent KADO Police releases, but it also gives a lead in the editorial to where another set of pre-production photographs were published:
“Observant members will note detail differences between the drawings we reproduce here and the photographs which appeared in the December issue* of Rod Wards’ excellent Model Auto Review magazine. These photos show the original hand-made pre-production models. Minor changes were subsequently made and the following is a detailed list based on the latest information available to us. As with all model productions there may well be slight differences between the models and the drawings when the production models are released.” (* Model Auto Review Issue No.3, December 1982)
The photos on pages 93 and 101 of Model Auto Review, No 3, Winter 1982, show pre-production photographs of models resulting from my suggestions that are highly probable duplicates of at least one of the sets of prints sent to me by Kado during 1982. In an editorial comment on page 418 of Model Auto Review, No 10, Autumn 1984, Rod Ward observed “there has been a long silence from KADO… certainly the release date for the final six has been missed by many months and there is no news from Japan.”
So this then is the definitive cataloguing of the subsequent sets and illustrates why the models that were released do not form a neat numerically sequential listing by catalogue number. The accompanying pages from that February 1983 issue of the VWMC Mag’ show copies my original suggestion sketches overlain with the catalogue numbers allocated by KADO. I hope it also provides a definitive reference source for the catalogue number that each of the liveries had because I have noted on several occasions – and indeed currently on ebay listings – that where collections have been broken up, it is not unusual for some models to now appear at auction in the wrong boxes:
The November 1982 set of Beetles:
The February 1983 set of VW T1 vans (all six vans are pictured on hobbyDB):
The set of Beetles scheduled for May 1983 that never reached production:
The Postal VWs (each as Beetles and T1 vans) scheduled for late 1983 but which never reached pre-production stage were (as far as I can remember):
As with the Police series these suggestions were based on research I was doing at the time for a series of articles published in the former Volkswagen Audi CAR magazine (also later in Volksworld magazine). From which, some of the photos and pages can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.340758026065550&type=3and .
In the way that these things happen to many of us, I very sadly had to “let go” of my then extensive Volkswagen toy and model collection in the 1990s, and although it contained many factory promotionals and vintage items the models, I still miss most (and still hanker after…) are those Tomica, Kado-Tomica and Kado models from the early 1980s. All the remaining correspondence (minus the photographs already mentioned) that I had had with KADO also ended up lost at around this time.
The Author’s biography of magazine work can be found in the second person profile at: http://sebeetles.com/who-we-are/
And his Facebook Page is at: https://www.facebook.com/stephenpaulhardyautomotivehistorian
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