G is for Gygax Monsters - Part VI - Marks / Marking & Minor Makes

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?

 

 

Image previously seen in Part I.

 

This is looking at all the contents of those tubs and bags in the original birds-eye view of my samples, with a better image of the smaller bags, the yellow one, bottom left in the previously seen shot isn't looked at here, I'm pretty sure he's nothing to do the rest, and the two bags of Lik Be (LB) aren't looked at again.

 

'Gygax Monsters'

 

 Dinosaurs

 

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.

 

Note however that the MADEIN is slightly larger than the HONG and KONG, not something you find with say, those 25mm Britains and Crescent Khaki Infantry clones, where they are all the same size and in perfect line, suggesting that the prefix may have been added to the cavities later, or purchased separately?

 

 

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!

G is for Gygax Monsters - Part IV - Enzinger & Co., via Holly

So to a German (I think) rack toy which is otherwise all Holly Plastics, and a better look at some of the marking, which all comes from the same stable.

 

Original sales image, this was from an outfit called CardboxDE I think, I had bought quite a bit off them, over the previous year or two, but after the full Boris Brwreakshit deal of February 2020, they got very silly about postage and selling'shipping to the UK (as did some US sellers), cancelled an order for 40-odd quid, didn't reimburse me and tried (against eBay's rules) to get me to re-order on another platform, so they got my forty quid, I didn't get the stuff, and they've lost hundreds in repeat orders, and get slagged-off for being thieving shits (I've still got the emails), here! All a bit stupid, and that 40-odd quid means I get to use all their images!

 

 

A full scan of the card as I decided to de-bag the set for this series of posts. Some of the images are dated 2020, some 2021, so you can see how these posts build on Picasa and why there's over 900 in the long queue, yet sometimes I'm stuck to post something, the [admittedly mild] OCD that comes with Asperger's means I sometimes need things to be just right, or I'm waiting to take a specific shot, or something!

 

And it can sit there for years, a bit silly really, as I can happily post absolute shite, without conscience, on another occasion! The vagaries of the human mind!

The contents from both sides, the suspicion with this set is that the contents were constant, from bag-to-bag, and needing more of some sculpts than others (in the more random offerings), may be one reason for the variations in Holly's output, and markings, and the likelihood that subcontractors or duplicate lines were used for some jobs/contracts.

 

Certainly the seller's open set, closed set, and my set, all have identical contents, with the plastic colour as constant as the species count! Not that all the species, are all that clear!

 

 

Enzinger stamp and the HP of Holly Plastics both present on the card, I can't decipher the centre of the Enzinger stanp though. One assumes Enzinger were in the same vein as Woolbro or WHC, over here, having their moniker added to otherwise generic rack-toys, only in this case with the Holly logo also left on.

 

The common bird-footed Tyrannosaurus Chinasaur!

 

Six bog-standard, dense polyethylene, chinasuar sculpts, and among the commoner of Holly's output, with this set, four of them have the dinosaur's name stamped into them and nothing else (I'd previously only found one in a similar vein), the other two having a rough MADE IN HONG KONG similarly stamped, the chonky standee, and the duck-billed dino'.

 

To which are added two prehistoric mammals, neither of which has any mark at all! Both of which are the ones copied by Lik Be/LB, in the set we looked at here;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/08/m-is-for-monster-fantasies.html

 

Which were tentatively identified at that time as a Macrauchenia (on the left here) and a Dinocerata-like animal, whose odd horn arangement may be due to undercuts/the difficulties of producing in plastic, especially in the late 1960-early 1970's? LB also copied some of the Gygax Monsters, and some non-'Gygax' monsters, which we will see in the next post of this series.

 

 

But the definitely 'Gygax' Bullette, is the final member of this nine-count set, and again unmarked, which is unusual for this beast, who is usually marked with a neat MADEIN  HONG KONG, as three separate stamps, sometimes lined-up, sometimes a bit wobbly, but here, not marked; again pointing to multiple tools or cavities, or something! He is, though, in the 'standard' Holly paint-job. More on the markings in the last two posts of the series!