W is for Well! We've Seen These Before Recently!

But they were hidden in a non-VT header-carded, bagged, coach, and sans riders as they were being employed as draft-horses. But that these are they - I am quite sure (I have a few in storage somewhere) and having visited the wheeled transport twice in the last few months, let's look at some of the riders - courtesy of Adrian Little!

As they came in, but after a good wash, so . . . not 'as' they came in at all - fake news!

The two golden- or dried-cream coloured ones were almost certainly another, browner or yellower colour once, but have faded through the action of sunlight or just the leeching of an unstable/unfixed additive?

The cowboys (Mexicans!) are the same as the wagon/coach drivers and while I think these are the sub-piracies, I'm guessing VT have slightly better ones (possibly the ones in storage), and they may be limited to the one pose?

The Indians are far more interesting - firstly they don't have the plug-on hats, secondly I love the colour palate and thirdly; at least six poses . . . including the one on the far right who has a hunting horn like the kazoo/blow-horn we looked at here last year some-time . . . year before?

Now, there are some clues to origin here, as I have been given similar but much better figures by Italian collectors with the proviso that they were Italian pocket-money things. This suggests that the French versions may be copies of Italian production, with the HK copied from either.

My reasoning being, that while the French stuff is much better than the HK stuff, it's horses are thin parodies and - as far as I know - they don't have mounted figures like these, but the Italians do, along with the wagons?

There are three poses of horse -and as far as I know, these are a HK-only thing, the Italian (and French) originals having either their own designs or animals following the Bergan-Beton pattern. Although I expect a western design of this horse to turn-up one day, it's such a common design with HK stuff, one feels it must have been copied from somewhere?

You can see from studying the photograph, that the two left-hand and the three middle horses (the other two poses) have some very odd-looking leg positions and/or sculpting and have clearly been created by traumatic surgery on examples of the common pose! The white one, bottom-right, it a premature mould-release shrinkage example and otherwise a guide to nothing!

Also the right-hand pose is the one I call 'Mexican' with regard to the small scale production of the former colony, where it comes in two slightly different sizes from Giant (and many others) as well as an intermediate 30mm version - probably a Christmas Cracker/Gum-ball capsule thing as I only have one or two.

Markings are confined to rather crude Hong Kong's on horses legs, one leg per horse, but not every horse, so a multiple-cavity tool looks likely.

The 'scenic posed shot'! For what these are; 2nd or third rate copies of copies I rather like them! They are quirky and there's nothing wrong with that, conformity never did anything for anyone!

With a tray of mixed stuff there's always a question mark or two, and while I quickly rejected the Totem Pole (seen in the 'How they come in' post the other day) as having nothing to do with them, I'm not so sure about the pink Tee-Pee.

The red one (also un-ascribed to a set or maker) is for comparison, and more common (I have two or three now), but the pink one is the same pink as the cowboy in the sample, so while I've bagged it separately for now (with a post-it-note note), there's a chance they do belong together, a second 'as clean' sample will confirm . . . one day . . . maybe, or a bagged set on fleaBay.

Also a comparison shot between the 25mm figures (this is a non-Giant one on a poor quality horse I happen to have to hand) and the 45mm, the 30mm (which I couldn't find with a cursory look) comes dead-between them both! Actually - I think mine (30mm sample) has an over-scale Roman on it? - I was looking in the wrong box!