I've been rather bounced into the
first-half of this post, and it will be brief as I know someone else is working
on an article about the figures which should be appearing in a magazine which ought
to be dropping on your mats four-times a year, but only if you keep subscribing!
Also I have very few of the figures and haven't dug-them out.
You will know these, if not from collecting
them, for seeing them in rummage trays at shows, you may have picked them up,
seen the clear logo-mark on the base and asked a fellow collector or the seller
or a passing member of the 'Old Guard' if they know the maker to get an answer
along the lines of 'No, Hong Kong though,
but I don't know the mark', I know I have!
Chromium-plated copies of Britains Deetail
with integral bases. People call them 'electro-plated' but they aren't, they
are just sprayed, which is why they wear so badly; electroplating leaves
radio-buttons, toaster parts, mobile-phone detailing, or polypropylene B/O
robot highlight's shiny for years, Lego
elements can be found with electroplating; this is the stuff you can buy in
cans from craft shops for a fiver!
Kwong
Wah Industrial is the moniker, formed in 1971 and
they were still going until around 2008 as Kwong
Wah (Lap Kay) Toys, producing more up-market stuff, their slot-racing sets were
in many households, as will have been their microscopes, telescopes and robotic
stuff. They also had a range of Playmobile-like
play sets with larger, simply-articulated figurines. 1986 above,
magazine-advert graphic in the middle and 2006 below.
I did still have this copy of the US Recoilless
rifle to hand and it's one of the nicer pieces, the weapon is heat or friction-welded
to the base, but the figures are just plugged-in. You can see the logo clearly
above the code.
I'm giving what little history on the
company I have to the author of the article forthcoming, so for now I'll close
by trying to disassemble the logo; the earlier cutting dates from 1986 and it's
easy to see the WI of Wah Industrial, but how you get the Kwong's K from that basket of snakes is
anybody's guess!
There is a possibility (revealed by the
cable (direct telegram) code) that there may be an R for Ray in there or that
the K has been iterated as a C, or (most likely?) that there is an element of a
Chinese character (or characters) incorporated into the logotype?
Note how the stars - small stickers on the Britains originals - have been etched
into the helmets of the Kwong Wah
knock-offs, on the front of the officer/NCO's helmet and the left side of the
soldier/gunners'.
These don't have the Kwong Wah mark and might be another HK maker altogether, being
copies (third or fourth generation?) of the die-cast figures known here as Lone Star Metallions, but also part of
the Fontanini/Cané/Peltro
family of much-licensed/copied/influenced stuff, they were further copied in
metal, in Hong Kong and supplied to SS.Kresege
(now K-Mart) and Cragstan (and a third brand, I've since forgotten - AHI or the one from Philadelphia?), so
whether Lone Star were first, or just
a step-on-the-way remains a question.
There's a link to a very good
German-language site on these, which should be on one of the 2017 Fontanini posts? The fact that Kwong Wah also did copies of the large Fontanini figures may point to a link though! They were also sold through Zodiac Toys here.
Returning to the theme; we're back to Deetail-copies, but not Kwong Wah, and now Kwong Wah has been indentified, these are next on the list, with their
distinctive H? Unlike the Kwong Wah's,
these have the separate bases with the little foot-catches and they are copies
of the oblong ones, so probably slightly earlier than the Kwong Wah's as well.
The reason I took three shots is not
because of the bag-reflection, but that I kept umming and arrhing or whether or
not to get them out of the bag, and each time I'd take a shot before opening
them and then - not open them! But it does work for the reflections to a
certain extent; I think you can make out the three poses copied here.
And the deciders for not subsequently
getting them out were that with one figure duplicated twice, there are only the
three poses, and also that they are the same colour-schemes as the originals (Deetail Turks), if I find a second
sample with a better mix I will probably open than one!
The H is also on the bases so not a 'phantom
brand', but a serious attempt at brand-marking both packaging and product with
something which must have been known/familiar to the Haitch-Kay Toymen?
I would like it to be Herald Holdings, but that would be too neat, and there's rarely
anything neat about HK company naming, look at how Kwong Wah have changed their title over the years.
It's not Herald Metal and Plastics, or I don't think it is and I don't know
if they (1980's) were the same as the 1960's Herald Holdings, or if either are in anyway related to Britains Herald (I don't think so) and
with forty or fifty + other H's in the colony, of which I've only eliminated
30-odd, it's still up in the air? But it will come out in the wash, one day; as
Kwong Wah now has.
The backing card is a weirdly anachronistic
battle between Viking long-ships, I can only guess at a tangential reference to
the crusades and/or the fall of the Eastern Empire to Islam and/or Viking or
Rus mercenaries/traders in the Holy Lands or Constantinople (Istanbul)?!
Unpainted Hong Kong-made copies of Deetail knights also appear in gold,
silver, greeny-gold and pale-grey polyethylene plastic, but I don't have any so
I don't know if they have the H-mark (making them likely late
issues of the above line) or are blank generics, but Brian Berke sent us this
China-made, silver one, which is a clear, late third/fourth generation copy,
possibly relatively or actually current.
He's marked CHINA and the thinner legs
& arms, along with the poor quality of the detail all point to copying
rather than any skill with a pantograph! Sized with a spigot-armed Co-Ma copy, he's been promoted from medieval
to 'Janissary' with an upgrade from cold steel to Springfield's-finest courtesy of . . . AIP, BMC or TSSD . . . Conte even??
Thanks to Paul Morehead and Bill B for KWI info., and Brain for the late Turk,
a Kwong Wah A-Z listing will appear
after the other article has published.
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