Wednesday, July 20, 2011

#41 GOZÁN – MINI 1000 (Around 1972)

Juguetes Gozán is another Spanish toy company that has recently disappeared. Although in the last years their production was negligible, this company has more than 50 years history behind them. The company comes from the split of a previous firm: in 1945, Ernesto Coloma (worked as a mechanic for Payá) and his brother-in-law José Pastor Guillem had a bicycle workshop that also built their own tricycles for children. These tricycles were partly made of wood, so they received help from another local family of carpenters, the Pascual, while the metallic parts were made by these two gentlemen.

During those first years, in their catalogue there were plenty of toys, with the common factor, that all of them had wheels, including prams and chairs for dolls.

This company broke up just a few years later, and the Pascual family, founded Juguetes Gozán in 1948, together with other mechanics from Payá. Their first product was a truck made of wood with a cabin made of tin. That tin was retrieved from cans of condensed milk, and the model they built was a famous Spanish truck at that time: Pegaso.

Unfortunately, Gozán disappeared as a company in February 2009. At that time the company had less than 5 employees.

A distinctive sign of this company is the tin used in their toys, very common until the mid-80s. They built mainly trucks, jeeps and cars, but also cranes. This car here is an exception, because it’s completely made of plastic.

The car is the popular Mini Cooper. The mould seems to be a copy of the model made by Exin in 1970 for Scalextric (Ref. 4045). We have included a picture comparing both models (the scalextric Mini Cooper is not the original model, but a re-edition from 2002, with an almost identical mould).

As you can see in the pictures, this car was sold in a carton box under the reference number 90. At each side of the box is depicted the car in a different colour: red, green, yellow and blue, although it was also available in white. The decals remind also very much of the original Scalextric models.

The chassis is made of black plastic, and there’s nothing especially remarkable on it. Just the reference number is 93 instead of the 90 marked in the box. This has no explanation; maybe the different colours had different reference numbers? This seems to be very unlikely. Maybe it was just a mistake when printing the boxes, or the casting the chassis.

FACTS AND FIGURES

  • Name: MINI 1000 (Ref. 90 or Ref. 93)
  • Scale: approx 1:32
  • Year: Around 1972
  • Company: Gozán (Spain)
  • Size: approx. 9 cm

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