H is for Hard Plastic Animals

I really don't know what else to call them! This is a bit of a box ticker, and represents the efforts of seveal people, over about the last three years, everything being chucked in a folder until publishing, which you nearly got last August, but time waits for no man!

The phenomena or trope we're looking at here is hard, polystyrene plastic toy animals, manufactured in a hollow-cast style, with the hollow in the extremities (legs mostly) visible, this due to or caused by the act of not bothering with undercuts by creating the animal in two halves - in a shallower, two part mould, and then gluing the halves together. This is presumably cheaper that having a more complicated three-part mould, to create a similar solid/single-piece model from polyethylene or PVC; with the undercuts filled-in?

These two were shelfied by Brian Berke over two years in new York and are branded to Lan Jia Da (left) and Rong Xing Toys (right), one of which (if not both!) has to be a phantom brand.

Contents are identical and scale is 'large' but not consistent. The actual sculpts are quite good, the panda possibly a bit dog-like and I'm not sure I'm familiar with the monkey species, but they are dirt-cheap rack-toys!

Again a year-apart and again 'stateside, but the same branding (Zhenkai), and scale is further apart with the domestic cat posing a threat not just to the zebra, but the giraffe! They are also manufactured slightly differently with the hooves/ankles fully-round, so the possible savings hinted at above my not have been involved here, which begs the question; why any hollows at all? I guess material is still saved?

These are of a larger size again, and carry AAI branding on the sticker and tampo-printed onto the side of the Donkey. We've previously seen them here shipping-in dinosaurs from the Far East sub-branded to Bely, also courtesy of Brian - both the animals shelfie and the past dino' set. Design is the same as the first set we looked at.

I love the artwork (Photoshop or I'm TJF), one sheep is saying to the other "Don't look now, but there's a giraffe in our field" while the horse clearly let Lady Gaga do its hair!

Red Deer have gone with a giant duck  and tiny horse! The left hand one was sent to the blog by Peter Evans, over a year ago I think; although they are now on a hook in Fleet here, as the new pound-shop has them (right hand image) where they were shelfied! Added play value comes with two pieces of fence! And some greenery . . .

. . . which are no more than sections of budget plastic plant! It's naff isn't it; not even cost can be an excuse for not including a couple of 'proper' flat trees!

A few close-ups showing how it's the backs of the legs which end-up still hollow after the two separately-moulded pieces have been glued together. This allows for the animal to be shot in a shallow mould-tool, like a kit, before being assembled and given a touch of paint. The duck and hen however seem to have a third 'gusset' piece, or to have be manufactured slightly differently, possibly more expensively, but it's the unit price of the set which matters.

I also had these come in (from Chris or Jim?) in an odd-lot, the deer is missing his antlers and they have some age to them, probably weren't 'rack toys' but are manufactured and assembled the same way as the others. You can see they have been given fully-round legs but at the cost of a flat section running up to them from the join-line.

These resemble Tri-Ang/Mettoys 'wheelimals' in size and execution, but without the wheels and I suspect they may be Marx? Whether US or UK I wouldn't like to guess, especially as there's no evidence for them being Marx at all beyond a similarity between this Hippo's pose (and painting) and the little HO Miniature Masterpiece one?

I guess an infant's ark set? And that's large hollow, polystyrene animals for while. Thanks to Brian, Peter, Chris and Jim for the 'stuff' of the article.