6th GET-BACKS Report: “A Thing About Majorettes”

Over the last few months I have begun to blog about car and road-related movies with my Theatre of the Less Obvious entries, but I have not gone into much detail about TV shows that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life, with the exception of Saturday morning cartoons. This post is not the time and place for that either, so I will mention only briefly that of all TV series ever made from the time the medium was invented to today, there is one show that stands above all the others in my estimation: when it comes to intellectual chops, social commentary, and overall quality, no other TV show can match the original Twilight Zone for thought provoking stories. It is my favorite TV series of all time. I think many people out there would agree.

I mention this only as a lead-in for today’s post on the “GET-BACKS” Project, as I’m put into the mind of a particular episode from sneason 2 of the TZ, “A Thing About Machines,” which originally aired right before Halloween of 1960. This is a tale of a snooty d-bag who’s convinced all his mechanical contraptions are out to get him, and of course, because its the TZ, he’s right; after challenges from his TV, alarm clock, typewriter, vacuum cleaner, and electric shaver, he’s finally done in by his 1938 Lagonda LG6 Rapide. What a way to go! While not one of the best eps of the series by a long-shot, it is quite memorable, and provides for “allusion” and “alliteration” for my “Thing About Majorettes.”

So here we have the latest delivery of “GET-BACKS” for the die cast collection: the Majorette renditions of the Oldsmobile Omega and the BMW Turbo. SCORE!

I’m not sure why a French company bothered to render the awful sub-compact GM X-body; perhaps these were sold in Europe, but if they were, that made for a baaaad ambassador for the American industry!

The BMW Turbo, on the other hand, is a spectacular car that I’m surprised more companies didn’t do in scale; a concept car of which only 2 were built, the E25 Turbo caused a stir when it was introduced, and there was a lot of talk about it becoming a real production car which, sadly, never happened. It looked so good, though, that you have to wonder why bigger companies like Matchbox and Hot Wheels didn’t make models of it. The Majorette rendering is very good, though, because even if the gullwing doors are plastic rather than metal, they operate very well, and the proportions of the model are good.

I mentioned in a previous post about sifting through my leftover childhood junk in the basement that many of the Majorette cars and trucks I had as a kid don’t seem to have fared well through my childhood. That’s strange, because the Majorettes of the 70’s and early 80’s were well-made, hefty little cars, and before they landed a contract with Toys R Us later in the decade they were hard-to-find, specialty items that almost always came from out of the way tourist-trap type toy stores, where they were sold in little plastic containers like a cross between a blister pack and a box.

Most of the ones I had as a kid were bought at these types of stores and they were not easy to get ahold of. The few exceptions were bought at a stand-alone grocery store up at the north end of Euclid Ave near my childhood home in Upland CA called Smith’s, which, for a while, inexplicably had an occasional Majorette show up in their toy aisle before the store was bought out by the Lucky chain and then, later, torn down completely (it is the site of a high-end “assisted living” complex today).

And yet, for some reason I can’t explain, I never really liked them.

I think one reason for that is that they were always a little too big; with only a few exceptions, most Majorettes were a little bigger than 1:64; they were closer to 1:55, like the later Sikus, which is why I stopped buying that brand when they started to “enlarge,” even when I could find them. In addition, most of the ones I was able to find were models of cars I thought were pretty dull. Sure, there were exceptions: a few were “Euro” cars and trucks unlike those we saw here in The States that were kind of interesting. But even those didn’t seem to last long; they were often the first ones I chose to beat up outside in the dirt and mud and scrap.

Since 2016 when the first “leg” of the “GET-BACKS” project was launched, I’ve re-acquired several models from this brand, and the most recent additions are shown here: I don’t know what happened to my original copy of the BMW Turbo-seems like a cool car I should have kept, but there are no remnants of it in the Junk Box” so that one might have departed my collection via a swap or sale. I do know what happened by my original copy of the Olds, since I still have what’s left of it!

There are still a few Majorettes I’m after that I’m having a great deal of trouble finding; since the parameters of the “GET-BACKS” Project specify an exact duplicate of the car I had, I have never been able to find the Renault 18 in red with a white wing with clover wheels (I keep finding it in yellow or with 3-spoke wheels), or the Renault 11 in maroon (I always find it in red) or the Fiat Ritmo in red without the tampo printing on the side. One that I particularly want back is the Citroen DS21 ambulance, which I can find with amber windows or the wrong wheels, but mine had blue windows.

Mind you, I can find these cars for sale from time to time, but they are always from European sellers where the postage is extremely high on top of the cost of the car and the wait times are insane. I suppose in the near future I might have to “adjust my sails” a bit if I really want these back.

So that’s my “Thing About Majorettes.” They are very well made, high quality models-but for whatever reason they don’t especially appeal to me. I am glad I was able to find these 2 at prices I was willing to pay and I’m still going to continue hunting for those remaining 5 or so pieces I want to reclaim from my past, but once those are “got,” that’s probably it for this brand for my collection.

And what about you, dear readers? Do you like or collect Majorettes? Feel free to share your thoughts or flame-away!