Buddy L Red Baby Model 200 Express Truck- Salesman’s Sample for Sale *SOLD*

Buddy L Red Baby Model 200 Express Truck- Salesman’s Sample For Sale

What an incredible find!  This is a Buddy l Model 200, likely from around 1922.  It is painted in red, and likely a salesman’s sample based on our research.  It is such a challenging variation of truck to find it is’t in the McCollough Book on Buddy L.

-This flawed, used, toy represents the first model EVER that Buddy L produced in numbers.  It is a simple open cab truck with fixed bed. Red has often been identified with early salesman’s sample productions.

“The truck that led the parade was, by comparison with the more elaborate Buddy “L” toy line in later years, rather plain and simple.  Though the first one shown and produced, it carried the catalog number 200… and it was called the “Buddy L” Express Body and finally just the Express Truck……Construction was so sturdy that the truck– and all other Buddy “L” trucks– was guaranteed to support a 300- pound man. (Lundahl was said to have tested each new design by jumping up and down on the sample with his full 220-pound weight.)” -McCollough.

Each side of this toy has needed stiffening over the years.  The Model 200 just had a flaw– the spot welds and metal weren’t well engineered and fenders tended to bend off.  Also, imagine the schtick that the salesman did; they stood on beds.  If they stood on fenders, this flaw showed up.   We see brazing to hold back the right rear fender with some burnt paint.  There is a screw and washer to stiffen the opposite side.  These field fixes are a badge of primitive, flawed toy history.

Paint is original and wheels are original.  The early floorboard Buddy L sticker is intact and in very good shape with some edge chipping.    There is no tailgate present.

Note the sticker on the floorboard with the early Double Quotes around the L (“L”).  Later there were single quotes, then later the quotes were completely removed.  This is the early variation.

We have asked a number of collectors, and they have seen one or two before; but it is the stuff of lore.  Here we have the actual primitive Red Baby style of red toy, only this is the rarer variant with open cab and the earlier model.

Please contact us if you have more information, have a comparable sale, or details to contribute to this toy’s history.  Thank you!

Buddy L Moline, IL
1910 to date
Other names: Moline Press Steel(1910-1913); Buddy L Wood Products(1944); Buddy L Manufacturing (1930); Buddy L Corp.(to date).
Founder: Fred Lundahl
Cranes, steamrollers, trucks, construction toys.
Buddy L toys were named after the founder`s son. Lundahl introduced the line in 1921, starting with a pressed steel pick-up truck that expanded into a veritable fleet of almost 30 cranes and other construction toys some five years later.