THE BS PLASTIC VESPA TOY

B.S. stands for Beuzen en Sordet – a French company that made cheap plastic toys for a short while. They apparently made a Vespa 400, but slightly better known is this three-inch long cheap plastic toy – for all that, quite well detailed. Suprisingly, it is a representation of a Piaggio built Vespa rather than an ACMA one. In the ‘fifties it was quite usual for moulds to be bought, sold and shared amongst different manufacturers. Maybe the mould for this toy started life somewhere else. In any case, only the silver and green versions shown here are definitely BS. The orange versions may also be the BS toy, but might also have been made by somebody else. The BS Vespa toy fetches about £50 today.