So this would have been the final post in this series, but there is another, sort of follow-up, which I shot the other day, and as this is the 31st, I think I'll do this one now, and then maybe do the other as a proper F is for Follow-up, in a few days or a week or two?
These are the most common finds, and seem to tie-in with the 1970 catalogue images most closely, so we can assume they are all or mostly Holly Plastics production. The mark, which can be in a straight line or more tumbled, consists of MADEIN HONG KONG, with the three groups of letters seemingly one each of three stamps in the possession of the tool-makers.
The mark is also found on other rack toy stuff of the era, especially farm and zoo, where it will have 'Holly' significance in the future here, but also on Army Men of clearly different makes and generations, which suggests they (the little stamps) were bought-in by different toy makers, from a machine-tool/engineers supplier.
The above musings partly explained by these, basically some of the missing poses, which only have the HONG KONG, and not the 'madein', so it appears we are looking at a firm whose marking policy was neither a priority, nor rule-based! Again, they match the illustrations in the catalogue, so we can be pretty confident we're looking at more Holly stuff.
Dodgy photograph, but you can see, for instance, the standing yellow dino's above, in the catalogue in the brown plastic of other models in the range, while there are two
Dimetrodons, a smaller better sculpt, and a larger 'gape-mouth' one on longer legs, possibly copied, by Holly, from an earlier 'rubber-jiggler' type? Not necessarily their own.
I'm sure there are lots of Holly products in the not so well sorted Dinosaur pile, and when we return to these, in a few years, probably, I will have hopefully brought more together.
These, however, matching most of the above in poses, plastic colours, paint colour or style, are all totally unmarked! Different contracts? Duplicate cavities, earlier or later generations? I suspect everything above was Holly, and it was pretty hit-and-miss as to what you got.
Remember, with the Einzinger set, clearly a Holly-originating card, we had some marked with just the dinosaur's name, others marked with another MADE IN HONG KONG font altogether, a more standard engineers stamp lettering, closer to a DIN type - in both senses of the word!
Note also, we are getting different sizes of the same basic sculpt, and for some there are clear small, medium and large versions.
So returning to the other line-up image, and we're going to look at the two larger samples in a sec', but first, you should be able to read my dodgy notes if you open the image in a new window and click on any plus-cursor you get. The annotation is thus;
- * - Probably Holly Plastics Factory
- X - Probably not Holly
- # - Likely from Holly, or old Holly tools
So the big Tyranosaur (middle right), is one as supplied to Enzinger, to his left are four mono-coloured/undecorated (late production?) ones, which are otherwise all Holly, while the two smallies on the left of that row have clearly had Holly's marking removed, for reasons we'll never know, but equally likely to be contractual (end-user asking Holly to mask identifying marks), or, ex-Holly tools?
Below him, the other Enzinger mark on a Steggy'. Top left is probably a piracy, while the bag bottom middle seem to be another Holly marking variation, and we'll look at the other two bags quickly now;
Above the T-Rex, we have
CHINA marks, but following
Holly's rules on
plastic and paint colours, almost certainly closer to 1997, than 1970? And a step on the way to the last lot, and the end of this post, below.
However, after all shots, annotation and above blub has been cast, looking at them in close-up, the fan-whiskers have been fused into a lumpen 'wing', so these may well be copies pretending to be Holly, either with permission or as straight band-wagon figures, as discussed in Part I?
Equally, they could be reworked tooling, deliberately thickened to ensure proper moulding . . . it's never going to be 100% clear with this stuff, millions were made, over decades! And . . . that IS one reason why they have a separate bag.
These are
Holly'ish, and I suspect they are
Holly, from the same era/generation/batch as the
Enzinger, but include the unusual red-plastic version of a
Triceratops, and the only example of the '
Disney' dinosaur I mentioned in the original list, he may be a
Disney thing, he looks familiar? But overall, they conform to more
Holly 'rules' than they confound.
These are far more recent, and have a mix of MADE IN CHINA, or CHINA A (B, C, etc...) markings, I believe these are from
Holly tooling, whether it was still
Holly manufactureing
is not so clear, there are still a couple of
Holly's, but in auto-parts, medical components and such-like, with different logo's, and one with only a 20-year history can't be 'our'
Holly.
We did see them before, and they seem to be Jaru-issued as seen in the sets Brian Berke sent us from Liverpool, and of which I then found a bag-of myself, while the loose sample above was a charity-shop purchase who got a post at the time, they can all be found under the Jaru Tag, but I should add a Holly note?
The odd-one out, if we assume these are from Holly tooling, whoever actually made them, is the stripey tailed Parasaur, who seems to be a better sculpt, but Holly did have a largish one in their inventory . . .
. . . Bottom right, mostly hidden by the card-art, but the same beast, with a newer, bigger
Dimetrodon and large
Mammoth sculpts, so it all ties-in nicely! But we don't have to assume they are from
Holly tooling, they could be copies, or half-and-half, ex-Holly and new tooling, it's not an exact science! And if anyone has one of those electric-blue and heliotrope-pink
Mammoths going spare? . . . It's a huge gap in my collection - how leery is that!
