'This one' being the Star Plastic Toys Manufactures Limited. As this is the third of
these posts in a row you will be getting two things about Hong Kong toy makers;
they either have several titles/brands/brand marks (Tai Sang / Blue-Box / Red Box et al) or a really long title, or both!
As well as premises in Hong Kong, they had a showroom/office in The Toy Building in New York (200 Fifth
Av.) back in the day and they also used Staristic,
SPToy and Startoy.
We collectors know them for their crude
knock-off copies of Britains Swoppet
'Modern' khaki infantry, which they sold with the logo (and no other markings -
hence my S-for-Star - top), or
branded to/for various customers (here the German-European Dickie group - middle, another's called Alme - 'Arizona' ACW sets) or as unmarked generics, which could be the little
trays or loose in header-carded bottle-bags (bottom).
On the left is my generic with its
atmospheric artwork . . . A US GI, advertising Germans with SLR's and '58 pattern webbing! On the right an old feebleBay image of two
Wild West sets, also generics - note the Lone
Star copy swoppet bases, they did (later?) use the rounded ones, but so do
several further-generation copyists, generally Star provide a better pose range and a slightly higher quality
figure sculpting/finish.
Back to the 'Germans' and we're going tan
on the fifty-eight (is that a Q-Anon code woooohhhh!). They basically copied
all the Britains Swoppet body sections AND the upper torso of the Herald khaki
infantry officer, and then stuck the bodies on any-old legs.
There are only the two helmets, possibly
copied from Minimodels (German helmet)
and - obviously - Britains (the piss
pot), and quite a few colour combinations exist between body and webbing/PLCE colours.
Upper torsos and webbing are a soft,
stretchy PVC, the rest of the components are in a bog-standard 'Airfix' or
soapy polyethylene.
Although all the figures in my first set (Star marked) have the Britains SLR (FN Fal.) copy, one
of the new sets has a copy of the Timpo
Guardsman 'At Ease' pose's weapon, with a base-locating spigot, on a couple of
the figures; this may be a Timpo
original as it's very good, but the set was mint, with no sign of the figures
having been removed from the card (not easy without damaging or dimpling the
card), but perhaps Dickie also
handled Timpo imports and filled
empty hands with Timpo spares? I
think it's just a good copy - I'll see if others turn-up!
Artwork; Blue Box's Patton Tanks
attack a Churchill, pity we didn't
get a decent rack-toy of that machine! While a Pz.Kfw V, Panther is about to get it in the side from a T36½! Not an SLR is sight!
A couple of other figurals from Star, the driver of the fork-lift truck
is quite common in various forms, the original was M.A.C (Mobile Action Command) figures from Lesney/Matchbox, but marketed by Star as Action Jack (? I think?) and copied -
poorly - by Montaplex in Spain as Montaman in Kiosk Sopresas (surprise
bags).
And I don't remember a plain black sheepdog
in the recent posts on the subject here, so that's another one to find!
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