K is for Kwong Shing

When I published a plethora of articles on the same day during Rack Toy Month a couple of years ago, on the subject of Kamley/Kositoy/KS and how they all seemed to be one; I'm pleased to say I wasn't wrong! But, there was a piece of the jigsaw missing, and thanks to Bill B, I now have it, and it explains the KS . . .

. . . as the parent company was Kwong Shing. We looked at Kwong Wah yesterday and there are other Kwong-somethings out there! Obviously we have both Kositoy and Kwong Shing together on the one advert graphic here, while . . .

. . . here we tie Kamley and Kositoy into each other with an identical, but over-stickered, set and the KS is brought into the fold through early/mid 1960's sets; where it appears as a sort of brand-marking; and later sets from Kositoy and Kamley (or containing the same product), where it's used as the prefix to stock-codes.

Recognisable stuff from the previous posts along with other items, some generic, some marked up, and some stealing artwork from other1960/70's sets I have in the master-collection (and which probably have nothing to do with the now-four K's). In addition some of the artwork has been nicked from Tamiya!

I'm also pleased to see the 'arctic warfare' helicopter header-card (which was one area where I could have been tripped-up over the previous posts!) is here with alternate and 'known' Kamley/Kositoy stuff in it (Combat Troops - top right) where mine has small-scale Airfix 8th Army (2nd type) piracies.

By this (1986) publicity photo' the Britains khaki infantry clones have clearly been phased out, although a few of the ostensibly '70's sets were probably hanging around to be found in the odd corner shop, we still had lots of independents back then.

The Nazi Spitfire's fun, they did have a few I believe and some (one?) airworthy Flying Fortresses?

A fine spread of civilian rack-toy tat was also on display, with - interestingly - some mini-truck body types never issued with the military trucks, well, two; the crane and the bin-lorry! The micro-cars have helped me ID a couple of mine and I think the tiny jeeps may have been seen in the recent Airfix post on the subject, but the resolution isn't clear enough.

And what looks to be the originator (or an earlier iteration) of the stretcher team we saw in the large set from Peter Evans a couple of months ago, this one is - even at poor resolution - a much cleaner sculpt. With Star's version, the Maymoon/M-Toy (Marty) take-off of the Britains Swoppet one and the brown one with clip-in bearers we've seen here in the past, there is a sub-collection there for someone with little space or a limited budget.