I didn't know whether to use 'meander' or 'variations on a theme' here, but I think meander is the better word for a look at how the Blue Box penny-based figures evolved over time, or (as it's not a comprehensive survey!) how they were presented at different times!
This is fascinating and probably pre-dates
the "Blue-Box"
logo/branding, being a generic from Tai
Sang, dating from some time in the mid-/late-1950's, before Peter Chan Pui
had discovered what Cecil Coleman was doing and came-up with the Blue Box concept. It would have been contract
manufactured, or - more likely back then - speculatively manufactured and
offered for sale/wholesaled as a generic.
It contains the Crescent-copy gun, a runner of ammunition (both in green) and a
handful . . . alright; half-a handful . . . of the green, 1st version of their
small-scale Britains khaki infantry
piracies, these are the same as the brown ones they supplied to Triang-Mettoy for the Battle Space train-sets in the same
brittle polystyrene.
The penny-based figures would go through a
painted soft-plastic polyethylene phase, before they were issued as unpainted
mouldings; and here we see a late 1960's crossover set with the Merten navy-copies still in painted
polystyrene, along with unmarked ships and Blue Box-marked copies of the MPC 'Minis' aircraft. Indeed the
aircraft and the backing-card are the only marked items here!
While this set (which I think has a date of
'72 on it, I'll have to check though!) is another generic, only revealed to be Blue Box/Tai Sang from the contents. Now
the gun has yellow ammo' and we get four vehicles to fire at!
A few more shots, we will look at all these
elements in greater detail over on the Hong Kong small-scale Blog - when I pull
my finger out, and - to be fair - we have looked at the vehicles already, while the figures were itemised here, although that page ran-out of puff and is
due to be replaced on the But Is It Giant Blog.
And thanks to James Opie for the latter two sets above.
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