"Aurora 1/87th tanks from the 1960's qurey" Topic

In a earlier post I talked about as a kid in the 60's buying Aurora "Rat Patrol" & "Anzio" sets. Last month at my gaming club, one of the gamers two tables over, was doing a 15mm WW@ NW Europe game and I had a blast from the past when I saw he had a platoon of Aurora Panthers & some Aurora jeeps. I was surprised to see the tanks & jeeps fit in with 15mm plastics no problem. I asked him about them and was informed he bought tem loose in the 60's. I never knew Aurora sold them that a made me wonder what tanks they sold? Any one know?

Yes, I remember from a long time ago, when I was a kid, our local toy store sold individual Aurora tanks. I remember they had Panthers, Panzer Mk IVs, and Shermans. They may have had more, but I don't remember what kind of tanks they were.

The only military items in 1/87 offered by Aurora models, were the "Rat Patrol" & "Anzio" sets. By "loose" I suspect he meant second hand, taken from those sets.
See this listing:
link

There were others in the 60s and 70s that offered 1/87 (HO) scale items, namely Roco / Minitank. These lines were quite extensive:
link

Some items are still sold in Europe, by such as Toy EKO:
link

Dyehard, Aurora did sell single tanks in stores. I have seen the packaging and they were nothing like Rocco Mini tanks blisters or bags. just a cardboard bottom and blister on top and the tanks were a lighter green. The one I saw was the cast hull M4 Sherman. I did search the web for info and came up empty.

Yes, that's what I remember also.

link

The Roco Minitanks Collectors Club lists nearly all HO scale Roco military vehicles with pictures.

Roco no longer makes the Minitanks line and has not for several years. Only a few are still in production by ArsenalM who purchased the rights to Minitanks from Roco.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

I had the Aurora Anzio set… and cast hull Sherman and jeep were pretty much identical with Roco models of same… though not sure if tanks had 'wheels'! 1/87 sizes seemed to 'wander' a bit! Some might work with 15mm… the Panther and Sherman seemed 'on the small side'… Panther esp. was a Big tank!
Think Roco might have upscaled in later productions.
If it works, then…

Well!

It is good to know I can still learn new things.
I had the Anzio and Rat Patrol, as well as many Roco and other HO scale tanks as I could get my mitts on back in the 60s and 70s, but some how I missed the "MILITARY MIDGETS" line. link

I have learned to trust the listings on ScaleMates, but I should have less faith in my skill to navigate it.

Now I have more toys I missed to try and find as a adult.

25 cents. I'm crying here.

Thanks Dye Hard for the info.

Even back in the late 70s I'd never really heard of Roco or of people gaming in 1/87 until I bought Operation Warboard. My first thought was, What do you do for infantry? – and the answer turned out to be, "use 1/76 just the same". In fact the Lyalls cheerfully mixed up 1/76 vehicles in with their 1/87, and thereby ended up with games that looked even worse than mine.

If the models were 25c each back in the day this would make a bit more sense. As I recall they have always been expensive, and last time I looked on eBay they were about £10.00 GBP or £15.00 GBP each which is close to 1/32 money.

I did think about acquiring an army of Airfix soft poly vehicles at one point, the ones that they used to include in the assault sets. But the range is mostly postwar and quite limited, and they go for collectory prices too…

I discovered my Anzio Sherman a month ago in an old bits box. Put it with my Battlefront Shermans, hard to see the size difference from a couple of feet.

News to me also that the Aurora vehicles were ever sold separately. Certainly never saw them in Australia.

I seem to remember (really stretching here…) that the tanks despite having no wheels still had the slots in the bottom a la Roco Minitanks so I had always assumed they were largely "knock offs", especially since all the figures in the Anzio set were obviously copies of Airfix.

Not sure if Aurora can claim originality for the figures in the Rat Patrol set – those were awful!

@ Hornswoggler

Could be licensed knockoffs – it did happen. The Airfix 1/76 Stalin tank was a licensed copy of the Aurora 1/48 Stalin tank pantographed down to 1/76 scale, which is why it includes all the same errors.