Both the chassis and the body were to come back again in new guises. The Commer 5 ton chassis had a number of re-incarnations, this one is as a refrigerated Walls Ice Cream van. The 'Dropside' open backed body was released at the same time as this one, the flatbed came out in April 1957. It is interesting that the Commer was replaced so quickly by the ERF chassis on these three models. Given that the Karrier Bantam was a rehash of an old Mettoy product I wonder if that's what we are looking at here too? It really is a very dull thing for a toy though. A lorry you can't put a load on, a van without opening doors, OK it has an ice cream logo on the side, but still not that much fun.

The Ice Cream van was released in 1956 and deleted in 1960. You will find this with either light or dark blue cab. Dark blue is hard to find and worth a lot more than light blue. A red cab version is known and believed to be a factory error, it is still the dark blue one you want.

An interesting insight though into the history of this toy - click on the picture taken directly from above the lorry. You can see written in pencil on the top 5/=. Was this once in a jumble sale for five bob? if so it must have been pre decimalisation (1971) at which time you could buy new Corgis for that sort of money, seems a bit optimistic to me, and if someone did buy it for 5 shillings (25p), why did they not clean off the price? I'm certainly not going to - it is part of the history of the piece now.