I was watching this frogger control panel overlay on eBay, an odd variation that I hadn’t seen before. The seller had it listed as Willis, but it didn’t see the usual markings to identify it as such. I forgot to set a snipe and the auction ended, luckily with no bidders. I contacted the seller and worked out a deal for the cpo. It arrived in great shape with no visible damage and a nice clean front and back, always a plus. The colors are bright and vibrant and the adhesive backing is intact. The overlay was probably carefully stored flat in a drawer somewhere for a long time. Masking tape on the back identifies the cpo as “gremlin frog” with the number 253-0089. Now the number leads me to believe that this was a catalog item produced by a major company such as Willis. The numbers are in their typical format, so it is possible they produced it. However, the cpo is lacking the Willis Industries text and date on the front which they typically put on their cpo’s. Of course, if this was an unauthorized reproduction, or bootleg, identifying marks would have been a problem. The cpo has a quality adhesive backing and a good attention to detail overall, so there is a chance that this is a Willis piece. Since I’m not 100% sure, I’ll file it under bootleg for now. Enjoy the pics.

EDIT: Big thanks to Ethan (Hyde) for correctly identifying this control panel overlay as an NOS Gremlin FROGS and not a bootleg. I’ve moved this to the NOS section of my artwork page and added the flyer here. Thanks to TAFA for the flyer images. Looks like my overlay must have been part of a conversion kit as the dedicated cab appears to have a smaller control panel.

Tags: bootleg, control panel overlay, cpo, frogger, Willis

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Artwork, Bootleg, NOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.