I'm guessing - from the address (Pawtucket,
Rhode Island) that - Azco Products
Corporation are now part of (and may always have been - phantom brand?)
part of Hasbro Inc.? But this may
have been issued by the US arm of a Canadian (Montreal) company, which may or
may not now be part of Hasbro?
There are still several Azco's around but they all seem to be in
engineering; cutting/packing machine-tools (New Jersey, since 1983), water
treatment (Langley, British Columbia, since 1975), industrial construction (Appleton,
Wisconsin, since 1949) . . . and etcetera! The trouble here is that the name is
- of course - an obvious diminution of 'A-to-Z Company'
Anyhoos, getting here just in time for not
going in the Christmas 2022 folder, which already has unused nativity stuff
from last year (and 2019's leftovers) in it, is this rather charming
blow-moulded set and; another shooting-game, which although a generic infant toy, has a certain seasonal
vibe to it, at least to me? Babe's in the Wood,
lawn-inflatable's, Crimbo nutcrackers . . . Hans Anderson's The Steadfast Tin Soldier (or The
Little Soldier), you get the vibe too, don't you?
From the styling of the card I'd say
sometime between 1950 and 1962/4 (Hassenfeld opened a Canadian subsidiary in '63 I believe)? And the sort of thing you'd expect to see at
a seaside gift-shop over here, or hung near the tills in a dime-store over
there? I've found a larger, lawn (or beach!) checkers (draughts) game by Azco too, which sort of confirms their
target market/manufacturing bent, if not their history! He's 8-inches from top
of Shako to base-underside, so a 7" figure for boot-to-eyeline measuring-Nazis!
Given its age, and the dearth of other
stuff available on-line, physically, or as text, I thought it better to not
open it, so after cleaning the bag, which you could barely see through
yesterday morning, tried to get good shots of the crude blow-moulded cannon and
equally basic 'cork' - another polyethylene blow-moulded piece!
Possibly the best shot - you stuff the cork
in the end of the barrel and hit the pad on the end of the trail, it
claims to fire the cork 20-feet, but my memories of such toys coupled with a
test-squeeze through the outer-bag, suggest you'd be lucky to get two feet out
of it, or have it last longer than a few hours before one of the edges/seams goes futt!
But that would get you through an afternoon
on the beach, or a Christmas morning which would be job-done as it's very-much
a one-trick pony. However; the figure is definitely a Toy Soldier, without a shadow
of a doubt, and blow-moulded Toy Soldiers are a perennial favourite here at Small Scale World!
As a boy in the US, early 1960s, I had a set of blue and red soldiers like the figure and cannon in the header card. Here are links to sets similar to what I had:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-harett-gilmar-press-pop-1818935418
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/shoot-em-down-hg-toys-soldiers-253324804
I had lots of fun with these - my set also included some plastic blow-molded Lincoln logs to make defenses for the soldiers.
Dan
One more comment - I think the pad at the end was more for stability and steadying the cannon. Anyway, I fired it by squeezing the wheels and got some satisfying range and force before some of the guns eventually pooped out.
ReplyDeleteCheers Dan, that's them alright! Simpler paint on the figures? Maybe HG bought Azco, although the packaging seems pretty contemporary with my example, so they may have both been buying them in from someone else!
ReplyDeleteAnd your firing method makes more sense!
H