It has always made me chuckle that “Toys, They Are Not” Tamiya should be making something so bright and fun and yet seedy at the same time.
I’m talking about Vanessa’s Lunchbox. There is so much innuendo within the name that your parents should have been appalled if you’d asked for one for Christmas. And I should never have been able to sell them to those below the age of consent when I worked at the Beatties hobby store in Croydon. If truth be told, anyone who sold these should be on the sex offenders list!
There is more to this model than yellow paint and stickers. I’m going to research it by watching just one film, Corvette Summer (1978). Mark Hamill, you may have heard of him and his intergalactic incestuous family, stared in this rom-com romp. It also showcased Annie Potts, who you may have heard a scream in a well-known film about ghosts and a giant marshmallow man.
To cut a long story short, a young pre-light tube swishing Hamill called Kenny, a not schoolboy of the actual age of 27 and his school chums save a Corvette Stingray from the crusher. They modify it and over the semester turn a wreck into a show-stopper going as far as to make it a right-hand drive. The car gets stolen. Kenny goes on a hitchhiking journey to Vegas where he is told the car is. A plot twist is the car that isn’t even his because it belongs to the school. It’s all about taking your studies to the next level. The next generation could learn from these actions instead of glueing themselves to walls and roads and wasting tomato soup.
He is picked up by a young trainee prostitute in a van. Her name is painted on the side of the van. She goes by the name of Vanessa. Get the connection now?
Admittedly this film came out some 7 years before Tamiya launched their Lunchbox but that doesn’t stop you from connecting the notches on a well-used bedpost. I certainly didn’t watch it in 1978. I was being potty trained or something back then. However, I did watch it one late night in the 80s and I’m sure it was before 1987 too because I couldn’t help but raise a smile when Tamiya launched their new model, Vanessa’s Lunchbox, in 1987.
Like Agatha Christie who introduced lesbians into 2 of her Marple novels, Tamiya also moved boundaries to give a model a girl’s name and painted it bright yellow. This was at a time when radio-controlled cars were mostly aimed at the male of the species. This was also at a time in 87 when teenage boys were getting excited about a 14-year-old songstress. She went by the name of Vanessa Paradis and sang about a grown man who drove a taxi. Or so we thought. Taken from Wikipedia I have since discovered that “Joe le taxi” is a song about a taxi driver called Joe, who works in Paris.
Joe is a pseudonym of Maria José Leão dos Santos (1955–2019). She is a Portuguese taxi driver and Parisian nightlife figure who fled the Estado Novo authoritarian regime to France in the 1970s due to her homosexuality. You learn something new every day.
Tamiya may have chosen Vanessa because it has Van in the name. Then again they might not have done. Apart from the rather lame paint design, someone in the office was going to have fun with this. I say that because you just need to look at the sticker set to know this was very tongue-in-cheek. The blond with her ample bosom hanging over the door tells you otherwise. She really was an adolescent wet dream in a cartoon that could be played in the mud. Or on the road. It didn’t really matter except on the road you were likely to come away with a dose of road rash. Vanny was a little top-heavy and quite unstable.
All this silliness got me thinking about other names they could have chosen. Pox-in-a-Box might be a little lost in translation for yesteryears yoof, Vag-ina Van is a bit too risqué but Willys Wobbler could well have sat there alongside the rest of the Willy series. I’m not sure how I would take to the visual of Willy having his man moobs hanging over the side of a van. Then again it could quite easily have been called the crudely named Todger Dodger (because the van is a Dodge you see). Then again we could always have Vanessa’s less well-known brothel on wheels called Ride-On-Rodger. And with that, I’ll stop there.
No matter, to me Vanessa’s Lunchbox will go down in history as a cheerful RC model with a suspect name. And you want to know something ironic? The Croydon Beatties store I worked in became an outlet for fine flouncy nighttime wear and industrial toys for adults as sold by Ann Summers. It’s true what they say, what goes around, comes around.
1987 – 1995
Original release 58063
2005 – current
Rerelease 58347