H is for Hong Kong Hounds?

The reason I was digging out old images of Dorset hounds was because I was raiding the unused 'Dogs' folder, for the Hong Kong dog images, which tie-in to those Adrian gifted the Blog, a few weeks ago, and of which I mentioned at the time, a follow-up was in the queue, this is that follow-up!

However, first I'll raise a few points over this shot, which I took as a load of stuff headed-off to storage, back in 2021, and which were mostly - then - recent acquisitions, also including some of the attic stuff, but not the storage stuff from Berkshire, which was somewhere else!

 

Those starred in yellow are the Kellogg's premiums, issued more than once, and probably manufactured by Crescent, their other production for Kellogg's neatly bracketing the issues of these, but that is speculative, and the only point to note is the variations of caramel or butterscotch, one being a darker orange, the other a paler yellow. 

The five starred in white, however, raise several questions, not least who made them and how many sets are they from? The two boxer-dogs in creamy-white are most likely to be Marx, Swansea, the smaller (which I used to think might be a Bulldog, to the larger boxer, I know, legs are too long!) is a dead-ringer for the US/Hong Kong productions of Boxer dog, from several Marx sets, while the Pekinese also resembles the Marx version, but is not the same, while the short-tailed setter/spaniel type doesn't equate to any of Marx's as far as I can tell, and the Dachshund, smaller than the Kellogg's one, is, like the Peke', not exactly the same as the Marx one.

Obviously, Marx wouldn't issue two different sized Boxers in one set, while the lack of sculpt-similarities with the other three suggest three or more origins for the five, and any help from readers would be welcomed. I think the slightly smaller Corgi on the Cereal Offers page may go with some of these five?

Below them is five-of-six of the Airfix dogs, from their early days, fully covered on the Airfix Blog now, here (mostly toward the bottom of the post/page), these had slowly revealed themselves to the hobby, on these pages while I was in Fleet, but with the final one coming-in after this 'conversational' shot was taken - added below.

Below them are two of interest; the inner pair, one of which is a perfect scale-down of the Airfix fox-hound, the other - an Alsatian type - being little alike the Airfix sculpt. They may be Christmas cracker prizes? While the outer pair are from of the Hong Kong set, we saw the other day, and are about to look at fully below.

Quickly though, a reminder of the sixth Airfix sculpt, a Spaniel, seen before here, but clearing Picasa and getting all six together for only the second time, it is intended to shoot all six together, properly, in the not-to-distant future!

These cards seem to be aping another set of larger dogs, made in the US by Ajax (Blue Ribbon Canine Pals, as Joy Toy), and titled Blue Ribbon Kennel Club [now added at the end of this post], not to be confused with Marx's Blue Ribbon Dogs which are smaller, usually hard polystyrene and factory painted in Hong Kong.

 

The actual dogs are copies of Tim Mee and are reported to be slightly smaller. As I have no definite Tim Mee ones, I can only go on sight, and, well, they look alike, with the quality of the two sets being so similar as to suggest the tool may have made its way to Hong Kong?

 

And I say this, not to stoke controversy, but because a UK seller has a whole bunch of these, and I bought a set a while ago, and shot them before the six came in from Adrian They are lacking the caramel ones of the Hong Kong cards, but have additional black plastic examples*, and knowing there was Tim Mee European production, I wonder if these are in fact the Tim Mee versions, the colours - apart from the lack of caramel - are the same.

 

And, until I can compare them to the six from Adrian, the two I shot a while back, and any others in the stash  (and there WILL be more in the stash, there's a whole 'really useful box' just of domestic dogs, somewhere!), I can't say whether there's any size differential between any of them!

 

*To further confuse, Adrian's six includes black and caramel, along with two shades of the oxide-red!

 

A slightly washier white version of the Alsatian was kicking around at the time, so I managed to shoot a comparison with him and a duplicate Boxer. Whether they are all from the Tim Mee tool, or from two sets of moulds, they are not rare!

I can say there's a size differential here, though! The one on the left being a clear copy, probably from gum-ball capsule machines or, again; Christmas crackers, and I know there are plenty of these in the stash, we've seen a fair few here over the years, particularly sheepdogs, but others too.

 

The kind of Hong Kong sets the above yellow jobbie appeared in, they also tended to be found in the previously mentioned crackers and as capsule toys. Quality is usually pretty poor, with deformation, flash, miss-moulding or short shots getting past the - non-existent - quality control!

 

This is actually a better set, again there are probably a few in the main stash, and when everything is brought back together, we'll have a revisit of all this stuff, if I live long enough! I'm not sure who's sculpts they are copying, but they will be copying someone's!

As a full stop to the post, this strange combo' is a doll's clothes set from Germany, out of Hong Kong, and included is a charm-looped dog, very similar to the copies of Thomas's dogs, as we saw back here, and may very well be part of a larger set, catalogued by a Hong Kong producer for various end-users to chuck in crackers, gum-ball machines, or, indeed, doll's outfit sets!

 

There was a follow-up to the Thomas post, here.

 

As a 'Brucey Bonus', the Ajax dogs mentioned above, from old evilBay lots, you can see the similarities with the Hong Kong cards. These are much larger though, and one of the amusing things about researching toy dogs, is that Marx, Ajax and Kellogg's all did almost identical Poodle sculpts, which were then copied endlessly, and there are so many variations out there (also saw a few here once), from the huge blow-mould infant/beach toys down to direct copies!