Charlie’s Angels and the ULTIMATE Spanish Character Car…

As frequent readers will recall, we’ve already looked twice at how Spain’s 1970s-80s diecast toymakers liked to play fast and loose with (a) licensing laws and (b) authenticity when it came to cashing in on the era’s superheroes, movies and TV shows by producing tie-in model cars. But just when you thought the Back to the Future DeTomaso Mangusta, Superman Citroen CX and Starsky & Hutch AMC Javelin couldn’t be topped, along come… Charlie’s Angels.

The original Charlie’s Angels TV show ran from 1976 to 1981 and while it generated plenty of merchandise and tie-in toys, diecast models of the cars the Angels drove on the show weren’t forthcoming. Likely, this was largely due to toymakers assuming a show about three female private detectives would appeal more to girls and choosing to focus on dolls and related accessories. But it may well also have been because the Angels’ cars were pretty darn terrible. And they never got new ones either.

Kelly (Jaclyn Smith), the only Angel to stay with the show for its entire run, got a 1976 Ford Mustang II Ghia. In beige with a brown landau roof. This car was apparently unkillable since it got blown up twice but respawned immediately in the next episode as if nothing had happened. In a now-unthinkable move, the producers actually blew up two first-gen Mustang coupes poorly disguised as the Ghia. Kate Jackson’s Sabrina, meanwhile, fared even worse, getting around in an orange Ford Pinto Runabout with a white half-vinyl top. After she left, this car was inherited by Tiffany (Shelley Hack) and Julie (Tanya Roberts). Farrah Fawcett’s Jill Munroe fared the best (relatively speaking) with her ’76 Ford Mustang II Cobra in white with blue stripes. Keeping it in the family, she passed this along to sister Kris (Cheryl Ladd) when Fawcett left at the end of season one.

The full-size Charlie’s Angels Custom Van.

But at some point during the show’s run, Revell decided to get together with showcar company Promotions Inc. to produce a custom Chevy van to promote the show and which they could then make a model kit of – actually two model kits as it was produced both as a snap-together 1/32 scale model and a 1/24 glue kit. Finished in pink with an even more pink interior and the show’s graphic on the side, this did get some diecast attention too, notably from Corgi in the UK who produced a version of their existing “US Van” (also a Chevy) as the Angels van.

Corgi’s Charlie’s Angels Van. Like the Revell kit, Corgi actually produced this model in two sizes, this 1/36(ish) scale version with opening rear doors and a 1/64(ish) version in the Corgi Juniors range.

But over in Spain, the Custom Angels Van also piqued the interest of Mira, who produced models in 1/43 and 1/64 scale. Mira didn’t have a US van casting to use. Nor, however, did they have any concern about intellectual property rights. Whether that was TV show logos or other makers’ diecast designs. Because what they did have was access to Matchbox’s hideous generic Stretcha Fetcha Ambulance model.

The Matchbox Stretcha Fetcha, part of Matchbox’s 1970s-80s foray into Hot Wheels-ish generic castings.

Mira had already issued their own copy of the Stretcha Fetcha. Having been issued as an ambulance and a military ambulance, Mira decided that their Stretcha Fetcha was also close enough to a Chevy Van to be repurposed for Angel duty. If you squinted. And had cataracts.

And so they made this…

Marketed in a plastic bubble box like the rest of Mira’s 1/64 Mini-Mira range (also on blister cards), the “Los Angeles de Charlie” van also retained the Stretcha Fetcha’s opening rear hatch  – and its ambulance interior too. Mira may have made one change to the model for this version, however; their Ambulance models added a bar at the top of the side windows where the Matchbox model’s side windows joined to the skylights. The Angels van still has side windows – they’re just smaller and hidden by the stickers and modified casting can also be found in Ambulance versions.

The early and later casting versions of the Mira Stretcha Fetcha, with big and little side windows.

That was the only change, however. The baseplate still even identifies the model as a “Stretcha Fetcha”. Perhaps Mira thought it was a real vehicle? More likely they just straight up didn’t care.

All of which makes this one by far the most egregious example of one of these that we’ve found so far. While Pilen’s Back to the Future time machine was based on the DeTomaso Mangusta model Pilen had copied from Dinky’s original casting, all the others were based on original castings, and this is the first one we’ve found that not only rips off the TV show copyright, it also rips off another manufacturer’s original design.

Which begs the question, what else is lurking out there?  Will we yet a General Lee based on a Porsche 911? A Smokey & the Bandit Alfa Romeo GTV? Or how about a Herbie the Love Bug Citroen 2CV? Stay tuned. We scour the hobbyDB marketplace and have our eBay searches saved – but even if we do find more, it’ll be difficult to top this one…