Indeed the evolution of toys can be driven
by the evolution of technology, and in this case, like Aldershot and Basingrad,
it has resulted in a family tree who's DNA has degraded before our eyes!
It's not enough that Gem and/or Festival seem
to have two or three versions of most of their figure output, but that Hong
Kong chucked out almost as many copies! Although it has to be said that generally
there are far more copies of the known (or believed) Festival items, than those catalogued to Gem.
This may have something to do with the
relationship between Culpitt and
either (or more accurately 'both') of the Musgrave imprints, and/or Culpitt's connections with the
aforementioned Hong Kong . . . or Wilton
in the 'States . . . or . . . ?
After the earthquake,
the draughty doors were
less of an immediate problem!
In both images the cottage nearest the
viewer is clearly marked Festival on
the broad area of under-wall, the middle one is a different moulding, but still
'early British' white polyethylene, yet clear of markings, while furthest from
the viewer is the Hong Kong piracy in hard polystyrene, happily carried by Culpitt (and others) as if they didn't
know it was a plagiarist copy of the one they'd been carrying for a decade or
two previously!
The clear inference is that either Culpitt didn't care, or, they were (in part
at least) responsible? Whether this was done with the blessing of George
Musgrave (following his retirement from active business), is the bigger
question, to which my guess at an answer is - probably not!
There is a brown-plastic version of this
seen in Gem museum images, which I'm
still trying to track down, it clearly has no tree/shrubbery to the right and
may be the actual pattern for the HK copy, with its lower gable-end?
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