S is for Some of Them Are . . . and . . . Some of Them Aren't?

The products of the Pioneer Toys Manufactory Limited works, that is, from the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong, now in China and founded in 1992.

Some of these I've suspected for some time, some are now confirmed and the rest may or may not be, but as the output of Supreme-SP gets nailed down, Soma's is usually marked and Smart seem to have concentrated on smaller scale figures, we are running out of cheapie, rack-toy die-cast, PVC-figure accessory origins and; as we'll see, the patterns point to Pioneer as the likely source for most of this stuff?

We have looked at a few Pioneer bits over the last few years, I've dropped the odd mention into posts and they've had some tag's, albeit with the odd caveat or question-mark. But working on the other three this week; I thought I'd pull what I had together, go Googling and see where I was, and the answer is this post.

Unlike the other three (the two Kwongs' and Star), this lot are definitely still going, and the above is from the website which is a bit basic, but they are very-much contract manufacturers, so the site is more B2B than trying to pander to your or my desire for high-resolution imagery - Hing Fat's website suffers the same fault.

I picked these two shots as the one has relevance to the question marks further down the page, while other confirms the next lot!

Now, I know we've seen one of them five times in the last six years, or is it six times in the last eight years, I've given-up counting . . . but here's the rest of them!

There would seem to be at least three generations of these, plus the unpainted set (one of which is below); the lower lot with bare arms and white overalls, the upper lot in yellow with gauntlet gloves (unified by the dumper-driver, who remains unchanged) and the current/web-site set who seem to be better painted with an additional, separate, base-colour.

The above is all fine, confirmed through the web-site, now it starts to get a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty confident time will tell most of these are Pioneer, but for now the possibility they may not all be, has to be retained.

The Buddy L is just for comparison, he's also . . . also PVC vinyl-rubber! Of the two sets of air-side crew, the lower lots are the most likely to be Pioneer while the upper three are a bit dodgier, being a much-softer, silicon-rubber.

Note also how the odd digger matches the lower set in base style, material colour (and density) and the jacket colour - which is closer then the photographs suggest. There are also parallels with the three-sets' gillets/body-warmers.

Both sets of ground-crew have been shown here before as question-marks, and I assumed the lower set were aircraft-carrier crew, which they may have been, but I suspect they were also in airport sets.

The set of four poses currently on the website, are much nicer figures, but clearly they (Pioneer) have had generations, and they tend to improve in China as they degrade in the UK (think Britains; herald→swoppets→deetail→hong kong shite), so that's to be expected, also there is (like Supreme) a tendency to different scales (see below), while I haven't said Pioneer definitely made/make any of these?

Their 'thing' is die-cast vehicles at the pocket-money end of the market, so Pioneer may be buying the accessory stuff in from other contract-manufacturers lower down the feed-chain, a point we'll get into more in a minute.

We have seen - on the blog, marked-Pioneer vehicles being sold by The Works, the same vehicles were in the same post (link) tied to Poundland (Funtastic), 99p Stores (PMS) and others including generics and several phantom-brands on Alibaba, since when we have encountered them in HTI and Flying Tiger packaging . . . and here's another one, Greek importer Zita Toys.

Obviously the vehicle range has improved since this, what, mid-1990's (?) set was put together, note that the helicopter is from similar generic Thomas the Tank Engine sets, where he wears a face! The jeeps however survive in some sets, I think, including the large one I shelfied in Smyths under the Streetmachine logo a year or so ago.

Note also the two building relief-frontages, taken straight from Supreme (but slightly different) or by Supreme (?), the two clearly spent the 1990's fighting for the same market; the older firm is also still going and also supplying lots of brands/customers. However the figures are the interesting thing here.

Erwin informed the Vichy a few years ago in his normal lecturing, hectoring fashion ('attack dog mentality' one of his 'friends' called it the other day!) that the left hand figure was . . .  well, I can't remember who he ascribed them to (with no empirical evidence whatsoever) and I think I corrected them at the time with '...probably Pioneer but not what he said!' His trouble is he makes it up as he goes along.

I knew they were Pioneer through the Die-casts, but hadn't made the connection with . . .

. . . the smaller trio (bottom left), which have also appeared here before; under a question-mark post, or two. The significance of this is that the larger figures have bases which match the softer ground-crew figures above, the smaller figures have bases which match the smaller ground-crew and the road-workers after a fashion, but are unpainted - like the blue road-worker.

Hopefully, if your logic circuits are firing (I schedule these for 9.30 to catch you fresh in the mornings you know!), you can see how it's all coming together!??? The upper shot is another one I'd forgotten I had with a colour-variation of the Zita Toys set (probably HTI over here? Woolworth's or Chad Valley before the former's demise; an early Smyths set?)'s figures.

Now, I've mentioned Soma, Smart and Supreme as being contenders for anything here which isn't Pioneer, but there is still a hornet in the wood-pile; the figure bottom right (it's a reminder shot we've seen before) is from the group that might be Realtoy (namely; Realtoy-Daron-Sky Marks) and which I've been told is Galoob, but over which ascription I've muted some doubt.

Galoob have produced (or had produced for them in Hong Kong/China) lots of PVC and PVC-like stuff over the years, with different bases or no bases in dense, medium and soft materials, and the 'Realtoy' figures (a harder-polymer than most of the above, or above mentioned) share posing with Micromachines' late 'armymen' series, which is a separate can of worms, but they both have to be contenders too, and Realtoy have at least one road-worker who looks like a Pioneer one!

My own feeling - or I wouldn't be publishing the post - is that most or all of the above (whether bought-in or internally-manufactured) originate with Pioneer, and have come to the market (which is our hobby) via die-cast play sets of the sort seen above or in previous posts, which may have been retailed under - globally - dozens of brands, brandings, brand-marks or phantom brands, and that they occupy a similar/the same niche as Realtoy (whoever they were/are), Smart and Supreme.

I've said before - in passing - they will be responsible for some of the many vinyl astronauts from 25-50mm out there . . . which aren't marked K&M! And I have several sets unopened somewhere which will lead to a series of posts on them all, but some of them may prove to be Realtoy, as the packs are similar to the Daron/Sky Marks sets . . . in fact I think one (with a die-cast missile) may carry the same Toy Galaxy logo as the Airfix Australian copies I posted on that blog the other day! It's wheels within wheels when researching Hong Kong toy production.

Those Police, Medics and Firefighters HTI included in their Teamsters sets - possibly Pioneer for the older - full painted - ones, probably for last Christmas's part-painted shelfies - Teamsters are re-badged Streetmachines? Likewise; the little vinyl HTI pirates?

As a die-caster Pioneer are current, it's the ID'ing of ephemeral figures from their early days which is the exercise here, the new airport figures will start appearing in mixed-lots any-day now, if they haven't already for some of you, and we need never see the road workers again, but probably will - when I get a complete spade or road-drill! Or more blue, unpainted ones, or different coloured ones, or new poses, or a need to do comparisons . . .

Thanks to everyone who's ever saved me odds and sods (I know some of the road workers came from Peter Evans) and Paul Morehead for the stuff in the first image.