Reefers With Asymmetric Advertising - American Flyer Style
American Flyer's 4 wheeled Morris Reefers can be found with six different ads for Morris products on their lithographed sides. According to Greenberg's book on Flyer the sides were cut and stamped to shape and delivered to the assembly line in containers. The people who assembled the cars took two sides at random from the containers and assembled the car bodies. The end result was a total of 6!/(2!*4!) = 15 possible reefers with different combinations of ads on the car sides. If we add in the possibility of having the same ad on both sides that gives an additional 6 and, for their Nationwide Line, Flyer also made a Morris car with Nationwide markings giving a total of 22 different cars.
So, if you really just have to have it all this would be the series to think about collecting. Of course, if all you care about is having one of each of the car sides with different advertising you could do it in 3 cars. Add in the Nationwide car and the total would be 4. I'm still looking for an acceptable Nationwide version of the Morris Reefers and, while I wasn't able to do the 3 car minimum, I did manage to get all 6 sides with 4 cars
Morris Reefers - Side A
Morris Reefers - Side B
All toys, to some extent, will have elements of the real thing they are representing. For me, the asymmetric nature of the Morris car ads is particularly interesting because they represent a not too well known practice of advertising seen on the sides of some of the real billboard reefers of the period. As far as I know, the Flyer cars are the only cars to highlight this advertising practice.
By way of illustration - consider the Atlas Model of the Cudhay Reefer
Cudhay side A
Cudhay side B
The Cudhay reefer is a little more extreme because it has ads for two entirely different types of product on its opposite sides, however, there were a number of real reefers with asymmetric advertising for different products from the same manufacturer in the fashion of the Morris reefers.
