L is for Lido Lookie-Likees!

Probably the last post of Rack Toy Month, unless I get another out this evening which is unlikely, as I have old printers to deal with! But as I said the other day, there's still loads in the RTM queue and while some can wait 'till next year, I'll try to work through a few in the weeks ahead. Medievals seem to have been ignored in RTM so I'll clear them first, but posting will go back to occasional as I still have a shed-load to do in real-life!

We looked at my smallish sample of Lido-copy medievals a while ago, and how I worked out what they were; well, now I have the generic Hong Kong packaging! Horses are wackier colours than the realistic white and off-white of my pre-existing sample, but they're fun toys!

Couple more shots, same MO as before; soft polyethylene figures and hard polystyrene for the horses, and that's it really, it was all said last time!

I also had these come in . . . seemingly (lots of gloss black and silver paint) from the same source; cruder copies of Lido GI's and ACW in odd, marbled 'ethylene. These are all the sample and both yellow-green ones are damaged, but there must be more out there!

T is for Two - Carded Western Sets

Well, having split the Past the Post folder yesterday, these Indians might have languished for a while, but in looking to see if Brain had sent anything that might have gone in the previous post I found some Indians he sent last year, which reminded me I had an Ajax set which needs Blogging (I had posted it on a Faceplant group a while ago), so a quick search in the big folder and we have another T is for Two... !

This is the other Past the Post set I have, also from James Opie, but not dated, however it's safe to assume they were bought together and will have been available in July 1964.

A  mix of clones from Crescent and Britains (including another iteration of the running guy we've managed to see three or four times in the last few weeks here at Small Scale World!), along with an odd stumpy chap (far right of the left-hand - yellow - half) who also has several piracies, but I'm not sure I've ID'd his donor yet . . . if he has one? Hilco, some European make? There's some duplicates, so I don't know if this is all the poses available, there may have been more.

Base mark is not the same as the Monogram GI's we looked at in the previous post, and the base shape of the donors is copied, so increasing the likelihood of sorting loose figures into two separate groups?

As we can see I have done here in one of the unknown/TBS boxes! A few points to note, by the asterisks:

• ·         Yellow have similar bases to Chris Smith's UN Infantry (previous post)
• ·         Red are from the canoe we saw a few days ago
• ·         Blue are three, unrelated, unknowns who don't have their own bags yet
• ·         Green are a good lot (LH) and true fakes (RH) pretending to be the other lot!

And this is the sort of image where everyone who's ever saved stuff for me or the Blog needs to be thanked, as it's only by gathering and collating all this HK junk, that the tales - eventually - get told!

And note this is only the Britains/Crescent/Lone Star section, there is a big section of Airfix clones and quite a few Jean copies elsewhere (but they were both later (1980/90's) and I am having more success with brands/carriers for them), while these are mostly from the late 1950's and through the 1960's.

This came-in a while ago, and I posted it elsewhere with the joke "I'm still waiting for the 'Flower Arranging Indians' but in the meantime I guess this will have to do!". A small 'dime store' set from Ajax with ex-Bergan/Beton sculpts all in a hard polystyrene.

Brian had sent these a while ago, Ajax copies of Beton, with a nice selection of colours; I rather like the one on the right who appears to be mottled blue/yellow.

A sizer; while the mounted figures match the 50mil'ish of the originals and the Airfix/Reamsa/Reisler (and others) copies, the foot figures are heading for 70mm, nice big toys for little hands to grab!

T is for Two - Khaki Infantry Rack Toys

This wasn't even in the quese until I found the .zip file from Chris in Downloads this morning and thought I'd better pull my finger out and get them up here before the end of the month, so then I thought I might as well add the others as they follow a theme!

Fairylite (whom I regularly confuse - in my head - with the antipodean Feathalite! Not here, yet, I think?) were an early British importer/re-packer, jobbing both domestic production and Hong Kong output (there is a Fairylite version of the Jimson tank and transporter for instance) and Chris Smith sent these as part of our further discussions (off Blog) on the African 'Zulus' the other-few-weeks back.

The set bears some similarities with the blue & yellow trays which turn-up on evilBay from time to time, and of which a good example was recently in Plastic Warrior magazine. The back has a strange 'envelope-fold' closure and wire-hanger which looks easy to tare, so that this has survived intact is a minor miracle.

Those other trays however have the Britains/Timpo copies, whereas these are clearly Lone Star clones, painted-up to UN service, which could be a clue as to approximate production date, after the 1948 Middle East deployments, the next UN mission which caught the popular imagination was the war/s and insurgencies resulting from the collapse of the Belgian Congo, so early to mid-1960;s for this set? the 'Empire Made' is another clue, by the 1970's most mentions of 'empire' on prodcts from the colony had been replaced by some form of 'Hong Kong'.

This contemporary set (dated '64 by the diligent - and legendary - James Opie) has been seen here before, but back when the Blog had forty visitors a day, not the number we have now, and I know some people don't bother with the tag-list much, so we'll have another quick look!

Past the Post, who I mentioned in those Zulu posts, as being a possible source of those figures, there's so little on them they may be a phantom branding for the UK (or other) importers, and I have seen larger trays like the one in PW, or the one above, but in the same red-yellow Past the Post graphics.

Copies of Monogram's PM35/8213 US Infantry kit-figures, there are several sets of these and we have looked at them briefly here at Small Scale World in the past, only the carded rack-toy examples though, and I will get round to comparing and contrasting all of them with the lose samples - one day!

The marking is neatly stamped in two parts 'MADE IN' and 'HONG KONG', despite also having the 'Empire made' on the box. These are smaller (45mm 'ish) than the closer to 54mm of the other sets mentioned/above.

C is for Circus Caravan

We've looked at the larger version of this once or twice, but the smaller one needs a quick box-tick and is notable for having a draft-camel rather than the horse teams or locomotives of the larger set, or my other small blister.

The camel appears to have a different draw-bar to the alternate horse in my existing set, and is quite a good sculpt, based on the Britains 'Zoo' baby camel I think; hollow like the large-set's towing horses, and it comes with two Crescent-copy circus horses, which would be disappointing if you were going to open it and play with the contents?

We looked at the contents of these sets here, but a couple of close-ups anyway, and the oddity that one of the horses has been stuck to the [Merit copy] wagon-floor with the wrong leg! That's it, quick box-ticking on the alternate contents of a set we've seen previously here - once I'm settled we'll have a proper look at all three sets and the loose samples in one - bigger - post over on the Giant or Not Blog.

E is for Emergency Team

Just a quickie but it ties into the previous post, indeed it is the only real reason the previous post was published in the end! We've seen the current/more recent Halsall (now HTI) stuff here before, both as shelfies and collection, but this has been in the collection for 15-20 years I think and adds to the whole picture.

The obvious thing to note is that the contents are the same as Kentoys own-branded sets, so these are a contract-manufactured, or just catalogue-bought 'thing', with optional own-brand graphics set for Halsall, but originating with Kentoys.

However the Teamsters sub-branding or line brand-mark has - more recently - been used for stuff which originated with Pioneer! Yeah . . . it's almost been Pioneer month not Rack Toy Month this year, but that's purely coincidental - a lot of it was in the box I had to take-apart!

Quick close-up of the figures, always the driving force here at Small Scale World, the accessories have a lot in common with stuff in Supreme sets and as I said at the start of the month, one day I'll do comparison articles for all this stuff, and try to make more sense of it all for posterity!

Case in point here - this helicopter is a much poorer or cruder model than the Pioneer one we saw in a more recent HTI Teamsters set, but by itself, is far improved on a lot of these little EC-OH-Bell type small-seater models, out there from HK/China, the method of attachment and design of rotors and skids or wheels will be the final arbiter on how to ID most of them!

But there's more work to be done, and you do need the 'stuff' to make the calls, for instance, did Halsall take the Kentoys military set? I don't know! Were the figures in the two more recent emergency sets by/from Pioneer or Kentoys? They don't match these, but are close to the eight soldiers' sculpts, the bases being the clue, so maybe Kentoys, even though the other contents had switched to Pioneer . . .

. . . and that would give two sets/pairs of police and two sets/pairs of firefighters from the same source . . . it's almost never ending, but we will get as far as we can here in the years to come! And that's why I am still working on the firefighter page Brain and Theo have contributed-to and Chris has sent several figures for; time, it's all a matter of time!

The Five P's is for Prior Preparation Prevents Piss-poor Performance!

Yes it's six, but officialdom doesn't like to count the [unnecessary] cuss-word!

I hadn't realised how bad the images for this article were; I've just rejected most of them and deleted half, sticking the rest in an 'unused' sub-folder against probably never using them again! But I need this up here for the next article, can't reshoot as it's off in the storage unit and we've seen Kentoys before, so it'll add something and the weaknesses won't count for much in the grand scheme of things.

'Big Box' play set; dating from about the same time the large Supreme sets were in Wilkinson's each Christmas (about three or four years on the trot - have the dates somewhere) and Argos were carrying the Redbox one, so about 20 years ago? And, let's give credit where credit is due; there's a whole Christmas's worth of play-value in this set.

We've seen most of these before, but the two firefighter's are new, having an Anglo-French look to them, but mid-70's in a 1990-2000's set, and at the larger end of the 1:76^th-1:72^nd spectrum they will go with OO-layouts better then HO ones.

The VW 'camper' is as good as anything fromPraline, Roco, Brekina, Siku or the like with high tolerances on the production values, no flash and tight decoration/finishing, apart from the rather plain and unpainted wheels/tyres.

A lot of the contents have little to do with all but the biggest fire; cargo vehicles and the like, but again it's about play-value not realism!

Along with all the usual street-furniture 'make-weights', come these - not even in scale for the set - they will make very useful accessories for modern war-games, being scaled somewhere between 1:35^th and 1:48^th, they can be useful barricades or more general scatter scenery for games between 28mm role playing and 1:32^nd scale garden war sizes.

S is for Single Solitary Shelfie!

We haven't had any new selfies this RTM, to which end I shot this in Poundland, Newbury yesterday!

Both Poundland and the late 99p Stores have carried these in the last few years, indeed I think I've also shelfied them in Poundworld/Poundworld Plus at some point, and might have seen them in 98p Store in Reading (yes, eventually you get to the unworkable retail model!), but these are not the ones we;ve seen previously; they are a much poorer 2nd generation copy, of something which was already pretty crude . . . doesn't stop Mark at Man of Tin doing magical things with them, some paint and a scalpel!

T is for Two; The Toy House Toys!

Or, T is for a half, as I won't spend much time on one of them, it's destined for the 'But Is It Giant' page, and already has an intro' article, to go here, so that’s for next week or something, after I've got Rack Toy month out of the way . . . although we're less than half-way through the articles in that (RTM) section, so I'll continue to work through them for a bit!

Commonly referred to as Toy House (even by them, themselves!), there is officially a 'The' in front! A large-scale Western buckboard wagon, in bottle-bag with header card and a blister-carded lot of repackaged Giant aliens (from Mars!) with a flying-saucer / space-station / UFO thingy.

So to the wagon . . . only nine pieces and simple at that but I couldn't resist the colours; muted oranges and a turquoise-blue wagon body! Design is a simple one-horse affair, for all those one-horse towns!

Riders are quite specific with an offset locating stud on the driver (I think the sculpt is a copy of a larger figure with a locating stud in the center of his butt, whom was seen here at Small Scale World in passing once. The 'guard' who is very casually posed has a more complicated and very specific locating 'key'. The horse - who is expected to pull a bloody large wagon - is a skeletal-thin semi-flat!

I also suspect this is locally (US) produced; there is no sign of Hong Kong on anything, the plastic is a bit 'western production' chalky and the design seems to be Payton's but with a single late '45mm' horse instead of a fuller team, interestingly, the card mentions 'horses' and shows two? Also; there are four locating studs for what must have been a tilt/cover, which is missing, and for which there isn't room in the bag.

The whole assembles into a lovely carpet/garden toy with tons of play-value - if you're five - and have a small handful of stuff to carry about!

H is for Hummmm . . . ?

This is a quickie, but nevertheless interesting as far as Hong Kong/China tat goes, if only for it's oddness, and the fact that it explains something which has always bugged me, vis-a-vix some unpainted 'Galoob' figures in the collection!

First weirdness is that this is basically an old VHS video-case, with a paper-card, windowed wraparound and a shaped, inverted-blister tray where the actual tape would otherwise lay. I assume the GIA is an attempt at a play on words, i.e., instead of MIA (missing in action) they are going with G.I.'s in action? No, it doesn't really work, but I couldn't find a better explanation in my slowing brain!

Contents are two really cheap die-casts (the tank's turret already has a huge crack from alloy-disease, despite never having been played with) and two figures. The figures are the unpainted versions of Galoob's Army Gear / Secret Army Supplies figures, which explains them, and why, when I found an SAS set, by Galoob a few weeks after that first post; they too, were painted.

They seem to be the same figures just unpainted, so may have been a clearance thing, and while I don't think the tank is Pioneer, the plane is rather better, and these could be early Pioneer, but it's only a thought and I won't tag them as such; they are clearly marked-up to the Golden Wheel Die Casting Factory Limited and dated to 1991.

The video-case thing was also common at one point, back in the day, they could be used for fancy stationary sets, make-up sets, aroma-stick/burner sets, greetings-cards, emergency tool kits . . . you know; sort of novelty tat round Christmas time!

A is for Astronauts . . . in a Tin!

Back to space! It's been quite an eclectic mix this Rack Toy Month; not as many foreign (European/ex-Soviet) or domestic sets as some years, but Hong Kong and/or China are synonymous with rack-toys, so it's no bad thing to have concentrated on them, especially when the whole month has been a bit 'on the hoof' and 'off the cuff' this year.

Also this is hardly a rack-toy, having all the markers for an overpriced museum gift-shop novelty, however rack-toy versions exist and it ties in nicely with an earlier post on small-scale space sets and continues the running mentions, this month, of Pioneer being behind or involved in a lot of this more recent (1990-2010's) stuff.

Astronauts in a tin, it does exactly what it says on the tin! Distributed by PMT Holdings (a quick Google reveals pooping llama key rings on Amazon!) and sold by American Holiday & Surf Shop, the exclusivity is unknown, but may well be so in this perticular packaging/contents configuration, although Google says single outlet (St Michaels, Maryland), so maybe not?

More of a rack-toy configuration (contents differ somewhat; see below), and now branded to XY (Xinyu), and the last time we saw Xinyu here it was in the context of AFV play-sets containing Pioneer die-cast vehicles, so the persistent link is there! Astronauts have a plain finish in this set.

The contents of my set, as manned stations the satellites are all subscale although the landing module could fit two Airfix or Giant spacemen (in the imagination - not phyically, there's no door!), but not the 40mm figures in the set, however as unmanned science or communications satellites they can pass for HO-OO-compatible gear? Shuttle and rocket though are clearly sub-scale generic die-cast/plastic fare.

A third configuration, unknown, some image I saved ages ago from Amazon or Alibaba, branded to some phantom nonsense (there are 'branded' suppliers on Amazon whose names have clearly been generated by AI shoving lumps of syntax (or random letters) together - Watinc, Ainolway (think about it!), Oocome, Cvcbser, Trswyop?) and again, new items but only one figure.

The current offering from Amazon is a top-end set with just about everything seen in the other sets (differen rocket) and then some (claims 44 Pieces), branded to deAO, I have had Toy Major stuff from the same brand-mark, and they clearly came direct from an Amazon warehouse, so an in-house phantom-brand, I suspect!

The 'meat and two veg' here at Small Scale World is always the figures, and here they are, referencing the coloured patches on early (and much sought-after) Kinder spacemen, and about the same size as Kinder's smaller offering, I suspect only coincidence, and around 40mm, polystyrene.

Now if these were Pioneer, that would make a third set, in a new plastic type, so, again it points to the caveat I gave earlier in the month that as a die-caster, Pioneer (if it is them again) may have been buying in the figures themselves.

It would make it much harder for someone like Galoob to sue for the combat infantry knock-offs, for instance, if Realtoy sent them to Pioneer and Pioneer fingered a minor third, fourth, or fifth-party who had already moved on!

That some of the other - die-cast - contents have come from Pioneer I have little doubt.

PS is for Pitiful Spectacle!

Heeheehee . . TJF's decided to have a 'rack toy' day in Rack Toy Month!

How lovely . . . did I mutter something about his incredible insecurity a while back? 

Hahahahahaha!

 

T is for Two - Indian Canoe . . . s

These arrived yesterday, hot-foot from New York in time for Rack Toy Month, and caused a bit of a quandary as I am working on a larger overview of canoes, to which Brian has already contributed nearly a hundred images, and while I fancied a 'T is for . . .'  post, I thought I'd better save these for that postponed 'season', however, Brian also suggested they should be Blogged now, and checking his images I realised we will see them lose, later, so here they are as a bit of a rush job, in the rack-toy bags with header cards.

This is a dinky little thing, and going on the card art, possibly quite early? A hard polystyrene canoe with two soft ethylene crew; one paddling and the other getting belligerent in the stern . . .  well either that, or having a dance-off/sing-song, which is not to be recommended in a lightweight, flat-bottomed vessel!

Novel addition here is the carpet/floor wheels, two pairs, forward and aft, and the fact that the figures are specific to the canoe, being plug-ins. The boat-wobbling loon is a Crescent copy, while the captain of the vessel looks more unique, having some points in common with the flat copies of Gibb's Indians or other figures in this old post also out of Hong Kong - his oar is a short-shot, but you can paddle with a stick, it just takes longer!

While this one is so long I couldn't find a decent background (in a hurry - hedging all day!), so shot the card separately and the canoe just fitted an old foolscap folder cover! It's eleven-and-a-half inches (29cm) long, a proper canoe!

A bit like the 'thing' that most 54/60mm toy figure totem poles are better scaled to 1:76th/72nd scales, so most 'big scale' toy canoes are a lot smaller that they were in real life, although some were one man, so it's not so clear . . . but this beast is definitely a 'war canoe' . . . you could pack eight Timpo Indians in it at a push!

The crew include another copied Crescent figure, a Britains clone and the paddler who I used to think was a Cherilea or Hilco (?) sculpt, but he keeps turning up and might be of German origins? I'll do the research before the 'season' and we'll nail them then! He has a separate paddle, and they too are plug-in, but brittleness has removed the plugs of the two fighters, or removed them from their plugs which are still in the receiving sockets in the hull of the boat!

And many hanks to Mr Berke for the timely donation, the rest will be in an 'H is for . . . ' post at some point, where I have 12 or so articles waiting now!

ABC is for Another Batch of Copies!

Why I haven't come-up with that heading before, given the number of times we've covered ABC here is one of those mysteries only the gods will have an answer to! Most of these are from Chris Smith who seems to have had a good lock-down as far as finding esoteric Hong Kong output goes, as he adds more poses/images to the ABC story and another (earlier?) chapter!

So, that new chapter first; Chris has found some unmarked figures, of higher production value/quality than ABC, but of the same poses ABC use. The conclusion has to be that these copies of UK figures must pre-date the ABC's and make the ABC figures, the poor 2nd generation copies they are.

Lower shot shows two of them with their Crescent 8th Army donors, while the sample also contains a Britains 'Khaki Infantry' pose, standing firing, which we haven't seen from ABC yet. You can see the bases are more substantial than ABC's and have a flat edge.

Here we see three of them compared to the green ABC (middle) and sand figures, at this point Chris didn't have a direct comparison, so they were a 'stand alone' set of 'new' Hong Kong Piracies, but . . .

. . . Chris then found some more sand ABC's, with two cross-over's, the Tommy-gunner seen here in the left-hand comparison shot and the running with bayonnet fitted, along with a grenade thrower - right-hand shot, although these don't have the ABC mark which could confuse, but those ABC US Marines in dress uniform, with the three versions, have some unreadable examples, so I think they all are ABC?

Which gives a [running?] total of six poses in the ABC set, seven with the Britains shooter and up-to nine (or more) if the missing Crescent poses ever turns up in either set, or more conversions/Britains sculpts?

Meanwhile, my only contribution is these two which I found while looking for the 'Zulu' versions a few weeks ago; two marked-ABC copies of Britains running swoppet in solid, but with the feathers (unlike the Africanised version), both of these are rather-poor short-shots, the brown one particularly, but I've never claimed these to be Hi-Fi, just high-interest!

I also had these Britains Herald-clone Union troops come in, they are unmarked versions of those issued within the ABC / HK / CMV 'family', a family to which we can probably add Past the Post, they may all have been independent but they seem to have shared ideas, production values or source material . . . packers, shippers or import agents!

Trees in the background are also courtesy of Chris I think, from one of the lots he's sent over the last year or so, the contents of which are languishing in a group of future 'H is for . . . ' posts, but they happened to be at-hand when I shot the ACW.

So many thanks to Chris for the images, donations and all round support - he found an absolute blinder earlier this evening (25th Aug) which I promptly paid a little too much for, but, well, they're for another day! Cheers again Chris.