O Scale Oddities: James Bond Acrostar and "Driven" Tow

Two delightful-but-unrelated O'ish vehicles to share today.     

The first is a flatbed Tow Truck from the "Driven" line.

Found this at Goodwill and it caught my eye because of it's compressed length. True-Scale 1/48 trucks sometimes seem too large on my 027 Layout.  I have a couple 1/48 Tractor-Trailers and they are very nice, but they dwarf the rest of the layout so I lean toward 1/56 for larger trucks and busses.

This one is close to 1/43 scale in width (perhaps a bit oversized) but it's shorter than scale in length and has some neat features like ramps, a cable hook, opening doors and hood and light and sound.

When the front end is pressed down, headlights illuminate and a motor revving sound is heard.  When I wire this to my 4.5 volt system I plan to have the lights to be permanently on, and leave the sound effects press-operated. 

This and several similar vehicles are still avaiable from Target for just $7.99 and there even appears to be a remote control version!  Note that this this is from the confusingly-titled "Micro" series, not to be confused with Pocket (smaller) or Standard (Larger).

This second vehicle is a Bede BD-5J Microjet "Acrostar" as seen in the James Bond film "Octopussy".   I found it for a reasonable price on  Ali Express.  A search for "James Bond Acrostar" will bring it up on the website.

It's an actual vehicle that was sold as a kit in a variety of versions in the 70's.  Reportedly at least 30 are still flying today.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the miniature Roger Moore inside is nicely painted  

It may look small, but the prototype is 12 feet long so at 3 inches the scale is spot on 1/48.

Along with the cropduster I had flying over the Christmas layout, I might suspend this over next year's setup.    

I keep stumbling onto cool affordable Die-Cast so there's at least one more O-Gauge post coming before I head back into HO.

Til next time,

Karl