Yeah, I never even saw those except at the movies and on TV. I guess we didn't have them out west. Maybe we really DID just use oil barrels.
AH!!! The smell of someone with a few burn barrels!!!:wilted_rose: Maybe someone like BLMA could make mailboxes, rural, group, like the kind at an apartment or something, and of course the big blue boxes! Also Kato or BLMA could make some USPS trucks, you know the little trucks that are driven by the roadrunner.
Actually, I think that is a green trashcan. If it were a mailbox, it should be solid blue or have a blue bottom and a red top. The Model Power set that Lowrider_33 posted has 3 mailboxes and 3 green trashcans in it, among other things.
That was an interesting article. Especially interesting to me because although I grew up with the red and blue mailboxes since I was born in 1956, I also saw very many olive drab mailboxes, which were supposed to have disappeared after 1955. So I think that depending on what part of the country you are modeling, you might display both well into the 60's. Especially if you are modeling the West, where our idea of a fancy trash can was a rusted old oil barrel. :tb-frown:
Whaddyamean there weren't photographers out there documenting tme for posterity? We detail nuts have been doing just that for decades and decades. However, this thread is supposed to be about mailbox colors... I'm sure I've got some trashy pictures. I like to model trash and... well, you get the picture. But the picture you are going to get from me today is MAILBOX! Here is a 1940s era mailbox as modeled in 12 inches = 1 foot scale by Universal Studioes, for the movie "Raggedy Man," filmed in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1980. The piece of wood stuck in the slot says the mailbox is a propr--do not nuse it to deposit actual mail I photographed this because I was interested in how movie makers (like we modelers) set the scene for an era with details. I prowled the area being used as a location for several days while crews were setting up, interested in the details of the job. Amazingly, the studio came to Corpus Christi Beach and redressed it to resemble Corpus Christi Beach- itself- in 1940-something. (The main setting of a movie, a small town 12 miles from Corpus Christi, was filmed some 200 miles away in central Texas.) I am in the process of donating my probably thousands of photos made at least in part for modeling study to a university research archive-- scanning a few before I give them up- so I can share some of them here, for instance. Whenever somebody says "Obviously there weren't photographers out there documenting them for posterity..."
Kenneth, Kenneth, Kenneth... You may have only helped prove my point. I see you had no photos of trash cans to offer up...
Hm, I don't hope so, otherwise the mail will get lost... I painted it olive green, because someone told me that mail boxes had that colour in the fifties.
My apologies. It looked like the trash can in the MP set. I have never seen a green mailbox, but I wasn't around in the fifties. It's interesting because I just assumed that the USPS mailbox had always been blue. And before any of you say it, yes, I know what happens when you assume. :tb-embarrassed:
I am glad that I do not have to change the only two mailboxes I have. :tb-biggrin::tb-biggrin::tb-biggrin:
I wish someone could provide a timeline for details and colors for all three: mail boxes, USPS logo and USPS delivery trucks.
Being a mailman myself I wish I had a good n scale modern mail delivery truck. Someone sells a hand painted truck on e-bay that sort of like one but not really the same. I would think the demand would be there for them.
In large cities, there were (are?) green mailbox shaped boxes with no slots where mail is cashed for pickup by postmen along a route. The Post Office Department became the USPS in 1971.
