Forensic Study Of A Strange Robby Patrol Sled. Help Needed!

November 2, 2014

To me, every space toy is like the site of a forensic exploration.
All the little "tell's" of the repairs, paint and wear give away the toys history, kind of like a reading a book from a foreign language.
Anyhow, I have a friend with an unusual Robby Patrol sled. I would appreciate if any other owners of a dark blue sled would add photos for comparison as we go along.
The photos of the mystery sled are taken by my friend, I will take some more detailed one when I borrow it in a couple of weeks.
It is not an MTH as it has the logo and made in japan on the back, it is Nomura.
I don't want to give all the details of this sled away at first, just bit by bit so we can work through the differences it has without being distracted by people opinions until they have got the full story.
So, if you like a good detective story here we go.
First of all could anyone else add a picture of the dashboard area ( do you call it the dashboard in the States?)
On this one if you look at the middle dial and look at the bottom row you will see the dots are surrounded by white. As you can see the dash is a little scratched and original.I have lightened the picture a little and the red has not faded off the white dots with sunlight .
I have added a picture from my light blue patrol to show the difference. Mine is the same dot pattern as other dark blue ones I have found on the internet.

Ok, now the main turret, from what I can remember the main colour of the turret should normally be gold with blue and red lines, the gold matching the gold colour of robby.
On this mystery sled the base colour is silver, the same as the turrets on dome sleds.
See my gold base next to the silver base.
Does anyone else have a robby sled with a silver turret? Can you post a close up picture if so. Interesting in itself as it would mean 2 colour ways of the dark blue sled.

Ok, I will leave it there and if I can get some feedback i will add a few more details for comparison, and there are a few!!!!!!!

I love a good mystery!!!

Cheers
Chilli

November 2, 2014

Hi Chilli

I haven't got this toy,as you know! Anyway,I could be wrong (as usual) but the paint on the silver base one looks,thick,glossy with ragged edges,as though masking tape had been on it at one time. On your toy the finish is smooth,not thick or glossy,ie,lithography as opposed to actual paint? If that's a repaint,it must have taken ages to do!

November 2, 2014

Ha, there is more to this toy than meets the eye. Nice observation.Also bare in mind my picture is with nice soft lighting where as my friends picture is hard flash on camera.

But the odd dashboard is definitely not painted is it? You will see where I am going when I get a bit more feed back and pictures from members.

Repaint might be the wrong description. Lets see.

November 2, 2014

Yes, those lines have a hand-painted look, and the high gloss looks like enamel. The texture of the underlying surface does not look quite right, more like wood or resin than tin.

November 2, 2014

Yes, I agree, but it is tin, I will post a little more tomorrow, but has anyone got a close up of the dash to compare with the odd white dot version.

cheers

Chilli

November 3, 2014

You're waiting for a photo of a dark blue sled's dash? - There might not be many around ...

Sorry Chilly, if this is not quite your topic, but may be you'll cover this as a side effect: I'd love to see both versions, dark and light, side by side in the same photo. I am not very sure about the actual difference. The shade of blue heavily differs due to the exposure and light when taking a photo. So they should be photographed in one shot. There has been one piece sold at Vectis in 2012, with a light blue lower front part and everything else clearly darker. Same with MTH repro. If that actually is the colour scheme of the dark one, well, then it's clear for me. The Vectis photo is marked with copyright.

November 3, 2014

Hi, Lunik, how are you doing.

I dont think there is a problem finding dark sleds, plenty about, what is difficult is finding any with a good robby on board, not that I need that for this exercise.

Cheers

Chilli

November 3, 2014

It just gets odder.

Ok, the body and seats are hand painted.

Here are the seats, but look at the rust marks, they have been painted a long time. But here is the weird bit, if this was a repaint he must have had taken photos of the original paint. he is just to detailed not too.

But the seats have been painted the colour of moon patrol sled, yellow, not the orange of a robby sled, and also the lines on the back of the seat are short at the top similar to the design of the moon patrol..

As with the turret these colour combinations are from other sleds.

The first 2 shots are the mystery sled the 3rd and 4th are my robby sled seat and moon patrol

Anyhow more to come.

cheers

Chilli

November 5, 2014

Just got my hands on the sled today to have a closer look. I had only seen it briefly before.

I had originally thought that the art work was applied with transfers, thinking this was maybe an original factory sample with transfers applied over a hand painted body rather than lithoed.

It turns out that the art work has been masked off and then painted up to it. But it is so much work gone into it as all the lines and all those dots are hand painted on as well as the turret.

The dash is still the only one with those white dots at the bottom though and it is original litho as is the base of the seat, they were produced in yellow, the back of the seats have been repainted, all other dark sleds I have seen have the orange seat.

Also odditied like the back wheels are metal and not rubber like my 3 sleds.

It is sure one item with a lot of time spent on it. But mystery solved

cheers Chilli

November 5, 2014

Ahh,pretty much as I said then.Interesting re the dash though.

November 5, 2014

and the seats.

November 14, 2014

Well, the reason I had hold of the sled is my friend had trusted me with the job of doing another schylling Robby chop to fit the sled.

This is a rough indication of how to do it.

Open the robot remove the antenna and add a bulb ,I also add a couple to the front plate. These all wire together to the connector pin I fitted to the new base, which was in fact a bronica lens base cap, which had a hole cut in it to cover the size of the sled turret top. Inside the cap I fitted a jar top dremeled in half and another ring of metel to help fit the turret top/.

To the jar top I added a plastic incased pin with wires attached and also another metal pin to locate the robot on the turret and also take the second power wire to the motor.

I had a bit of a fiddle to realise that the sled had been rewires and there was no power actually going to the top of the turret but manged to rewire to the centre hole of the turret top after stripping the sled down completely.

because the robby bottom was going to be hidden I quickly cut the bottom skirt off it with tin snips.

Then you have to remove the legs off the chassis.

The chassis is then too long so it is trimmed off to where the leg cog fits as this is not needed. Again I did it with tin cutters as it is quite tough and a dremel would have caused metal dust in the cogs.Again a bit rough but it is all hidden.

Wire everything together and glue the base on the bottom.

takes about 2 days as there is a bit of waiting for resin to dry.

I would like to thank my friend for letting me do the job as it is great fun.

As he has a quirky sense of humor I also sprayed a pair of old toy boots , added small motor magnets, and they can be added as a "run over" astronaut!!!!!

Cheers

Chilli.