HTI is for Halsall is for Welly is for China

Welly are more commonly a now China-based, previously German toy importer and now die caster, rivalling Carama for shelf-space in the cavernous Smyth's and reborn Toys-R-Us's of this world, at some point Halsall toys - now HTI - got hold of this circus set and shipped it into the UK.

 

 

Quite a boxful, for what wouldn't have been a great amount, being no more than a glorified rack-toy, as far as the toymen are concerned, although the Welly moniker would take it up a pricing-rung! 

From the bases one is forgiven for wondering if the figures came from Pioneer, another die-caster, but, as we've seen here before, often including figures, which usually have largish oval bases?

This time we get a seperate ringmaster and another white-dove producing magician (see today's earlier post), a clown and a performer who seems to have been designed for a piece of apparatus which didn't survive the planning/design stage of the set, having two arms which might have slid-down or clipped into something, now absent?

In addition to the loose animals above (tigers, elephants and a lion), we get two lions in a cage-wagon clearly influenced by earlier vehicles from Matchbox, Corgi Juniors or Majorette (see now, below), and it's demountable, more for ease of construction on the factory I'm sure, but it does mean you can drop them and their cage near the 'Big Top'!

 

The Big Top, is actually a big cage! But quite well modelled for such a set at such a size, with entry and exit points and some big-cat guide rails, which as we shall see in a minute, all go on a lorry!

 

Obviously the set is aimed at toy-car fans rather than circus aficionados per se, and as such contains a nice variety of vehicles, some carrying the logo of a fictional 'Circus World'. If the tigers go in the blue trailer, and the lion in the horse-box, that leaves the artic' below for the elephants!

 

"The artic' below' is now above! Two US style long-nosed articulated trucks, which technically should be called semi's (or sem'eyes, but there's me, being 'racist' again!). There aught to be a rubber-band, holding everything on the lower wagon.

 

A Majorette set as seen on evilbay a while ago, a smaller set, but from the image on the back of the box, part of a larger line of Pinder-branded stuff. Pinder are still going, France's main circus I believe, although originally Anglo-Scottish in origin. Also note that the two articulated lorries nearest the viewer in that image seem to be a larger 1:64th scale or thereabouts.

 

It's interesting that the three sets looked at today, Lidl/Padget, and the above pair, all appeared around the turn of the century, as animal circuses were going rapidly out of fashion, yet all three reley on animals to give them a circus feel?