It is a large playset with a masonite base and has only 9 accessories that came with it. Four cars, a garage lift and four little people (3 boys and 1 girl). The garage has three levels, a elevator, a gas pump and a white ramp. The elevator is operated by a crank and a bell rings as you pass each floor. It also has a little stop flag that comes down while the elevator is going up. Sadly my garage is a bit beat up. The elevator doesn't go to all the floors, the pedestrian part (clear plastic on the outside) is missing the part to stand on and the gas pump piece is broken.
I just recently added the garage lift. It puts cars up and down by turning a crank, which makes a clicking sound. I found the lift on ebay and paid almost as much as I did for the entire action garage base.
It lift has cute lithos in the back.
Inside the garage there are lithos of a service door, sleeping dog, oil, tools and auto parts. The bottom of the garage has stop and go signs as well as markers to show the cars which way to go.
I hadn't noticed this little litho until I was taking photos. How cute is that?
The garage also has a lovely fountain with koi fish and flowers. There are stone walkway paths in the front and the back.
It does not come with the phone booth, but we've added ours. The phone booth is from the play family village #997.
The top deck has parking but like many garages the spaces are too small to drive right into. So it has a crank that can move the cars around to get into the tight spots.
Even though this play set is big, heavy and partially broken I had to have it. This was one of my favorite FPLP sets to play with as a child. We didn't own it but I had access to one somewhere (sunday school perhaps?). I loved the elevator and driving cars down the ramps.
See you next week!
Dear Anne
ReplyDeleteI remember this toy. I was born in 72 and my brother in 77 - the toy was his so he must have had it circa 1980. It is an excellent toy but I am looking for info and images on another toy that I had and that I remember as being related to the service station. The Internet is not helping me find it so I wonder if you could help.
What I remember was a department store with (maybe) four levels. It had one or more cars and people. My description gets odd from here on in however. The little people had ball bearings in their bases (like another toy that research tells me were called Matchbox Shuffles except these had only one bearing each) and this was the key to a lot of the play value of the department store. The floors were slightly sloped so that the people could roll down a floor, to a hole, fall into the next level, and so on all the way into a car on the ground floor. Also there were large (life sized) transparent red or pink plastic coins that could be stored in different parts of the playset, including the car.
So I guess my questions for you are do you know what I'm describing at all and (more generally) did Fisher Price Little People have ball bearings in them? I'm happy I discovered the service station today but still want to see images of the other playset I always assumed was from the same range as it.
Kind Regards - Daniel
Hello Daniel! I am your brother's age but your toy description didn't ring any bells. Fisher Price Little People didn't have ball bearings in them. I asked some of my toy-expert friends and they suggested that it might be a Playrail toy as they had ball bearings. They suggested looking up "playrail by tomy" on Ebay to see if the toys look familiar.
DeletePlease let me know what you find out!
Warmly,
Anne
Thanks for that Anne. I am much closer to identifying the department store toy now. I think it must be Tomy (I love Japanese stuff) because the ball bearing figures I remember definitely come with Tomy play sets in a related range to Plarail called Merry Go (e.g. Merry Go Zoo). See for instance in this image you can see the ball in the base of the figure: http://worthopedia.s3.amazonaws.com/images/thumbnails/1/0612/27/1_2a7ae6a8c7d6ea9949789295b36b1c12.jpg
DeleteIt is still eluding me however. This may take a while and maybe "department store" is the wrong search term to be using. Nonetheless I am that bit closer. Amazing how similar all this tiny limbs-free figures look. :)
Sorry I didn't have more information but I'm glad I could help a little. I'm not familiar with any "department store" type sets at all, that would have been a great idea for a toy! Let me know if you ever figure out what it is. :)
DeleteI've just come back to say that I found it, with help from friendly commentators on YouTube toy reviews. What I was looking for was the Small Mall Push Button Shopping Centre, apparently from Sears, which I suspect was made exclusively for them by Tomy (I say this because of the same ball-bearing figurines). There is no Sears in Australia but they must have been sold at a sibling store. Anyway here are some images: https://www.etsy.com/listing/36465054/s-a-l-e-small-mall-push-button-shopping
ReplyDelete(scroll down past the other items for sale)
Thank you for coming back and updating Daniel. That toy is unfamiliar to me but now at least I know what it looks like! Were you able to purchase that toy on Etsy? Or maybe you just wanted to see photos again. Either way thanks for sharing it with me!
Delete