The range of the Soviet large scale pressed steel vehicles were produced from the early 1960’s through until the mid 1990’s.

To the casual onlooker or collector in the world of old toys, these toys are of no great interest, are crude by modern standards and only a few different types were ever made or so it would appear. In the late 60 ties of the last century a new serie Russian large trucks turned up. Made of pressed steel with plastic windows. They were mainly produced by CAMOCEAN. (click here: AZLK Car Factory where we found the above pictures of the abandoned factory)

As far as I know there were only two different models, designed to the (still) existing Russian trucks as you can see on the photo's below , I took in Belarus, October 2007.

In Brest I visited several super markets and department shops, searching for these trucks. Just like in our countries, all toys were made of plastic. I met several guys from Russia, who are going to check if these toys are for sale in the (former)Soviet Union.

This massive 1969 blue-green camocean truck has its registration on the back. Like the Tri-ang Road star it has a kind of hydraulic system to lift the tipper.

The early Camocean, like this1970 one ,had disc wheels with rubber tyres .

  The early Camocean with disc wheels   

             

  Later models had solid plastic wheels.

   and rubber tyresand an iron hub cap 

 

The door on the early Camocean does not have a window,

while the later versions do have a simple fitted

plastic window.

 

On the tailboard of each Cameocean you can read the production year. I presume that trucks with a black number plate were meant for the local Soviet market.

For export they punched the production year into the tailboard. The tipper was made for quite a long time.

In every box there was an instruction sheet how to play with this truck.

click here  to read this instruction ( in Russian..)

 

As said, in the late 60 ties , this camocean came up. Later on they modified the truck to a more new fashioned type with a white painted grill and red painted headlights. There was a truck with and one without a tipping mechanisme.

May 2009 I was in the Ukraine and had the possibilty to get a closer look at the a real truck and was allowed to drive this truck which was  a real torture ! It had a rusty blade suspension which had better days. It has a very simple a 8 valve engine and drove like a tank. The factory who made these real Camocean is GAZ.  Gaz produced two different models:

                                                                                                                                                     GAZ 52 - 04                             GAZ 53 - 12

The second Camocean model was a truck with trailer. In Germany it had Sinalco (lemonade) transfers on it. The wheels are plastic. These trucks are not very collectable and have ,like the most of these Soviets ,a low value. The regular colour of this combination is a red truck and a green trailer.

We didn't know there were other coloured trucks until the blue- green combination appears on a Dutch web site. It is a nice impressive combination.

The Camoean was also sold in Belgium.

We received these photos from a Belgium Camocean collector.

( thank you Hugo!)

 

Hugo took also took these

pictures of a GAZ 52 - 04  in Cuba.

This truck has an unusual tailboard. This is the first and only

one I have seen with a numberplate

( Jack, thank you for the pictures.)

When I was in Belarus (October 2007) I took these photo's

of these (ugly) plastic models for sale in a department

store in Brest.

Go to the Tri-ang home page:

click here

Go to the Zis page:

click here

Go to the SOVIET main page:

click here