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 the 'Empire Made' is another clue, by the 1970's most mentions of 'empire' on prodcts from the colony had been replaced by some form of 'Hong Kong'.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.