G is for Gashapon - Introduction

Well, these have been in the queue for nearly two years! A mate, Adrian, was doing the Cherry Blossom trail in Japan, with his wife, and I said to him "Oh, you'll be able to fill your boots with Gashapon!", which required a quick explanation of the particularly Japanese take on capsule-toys, as they evolved from Western gum-ball machines, themselves evolved from earlier, Victorian postcard dispensers, a mutual friend - Gareth - backed up my enthusiasm, and Adrian was clearly intrigued enough to look them up while he was out there.

 

What I didn't know was that when he came back, he would present me with results of his research as a fiftieth birthday present! So we're looking at them over the next few days, purely as a brief overview, their full story is far greater and there are catalogue-type books on the subject available in Japanese, rather like the O-Ei-A books on the similar, but tending to more juvenile, Kinder Toys.

 

So, Gashapon, from Gasha (the cranking of a 'one-armed-bandit' handle) and Pon, the actual capsule; Japanese capsule toys; not the occasional tray of chocolate eggs, or the odd machine outside a convenience store, but rather a semi-industrialised craze, primarily 're-invented' by Bandai in the 1970's, with Tomy ('Gacha') and Kaiyodo also heavily involved now. There have, since the late 1990-early 2000's, been whole stores dedicated to banks of the machines, which we are looking at here, all shot by Adrian.

 

Clockwise from the top left we have, 'luck dip' mystery prizes, highly detailed miniature firearms, specifically semi-automatic military rifles, I guess pistols or machine-guns will be separate issues/series? Some kind of miniature viewers (?), construction-brick bunk-beds, cat's arse rings (who knew there was even a market for them!) and Tama and Friends keyrings - more Hello Kitty knock-off?

 

Squishies, manga deforms, some kind of pump-dispenser keyrings (?), Halloween wallets, more cutesy keyrings and miniature lunch-bags - it's quite an eclectic collection of subjects, and materials, especially when compared with Kinder*, but that - in part - explained by the larger capsules, and the fact that adult collectors don't hide under Edwardian leftover shame as we do, in the west, the Japanese 'grown-ups' happily collecting them as an expression of Shōwa nostalgia.

 

*Kinder do seem to be moving (at a glacial speed) in a similar direction, with more keyrings, phone-hangers and luggage tag type prizes, appearing these days. 

 

A canyon of gift-dispencers!

 

Choices, choices!

 

Advertising display cabinet, I believe all the larger Gashapon stores have something like this, with a selection of current of recent offerings, to kick-start the consumer urge, among the undecided!

 

Platform shoes and fishing lures! And the lures, conveniently telling us - in English - that they are the 5th wave, I think? And - even more weirdly - without actually knowing much about it, I suspect, you could remove them from the keyrings, tie them into your tackle line, and use them to fish?!

 

Miniaturised, or doll's house scaled, tea-ceremony furniture, and necklaces of . . . Japanese mythological themes?

 

Miniaturised foods or foodstuffs seem common themes, both modern and nostalgic, and the display of cartoon, Manga or Anime figural models, above the machines, may be some of the staff's own duplicates? Or maybe leftover/end-of-line stuff, or damaged capsule comtents . . . something like that?

 

Likewise, here, where more necklaces and keyrings feature in the machines themselves, including miniature beach sets, blood bags (?!!) and two different 'Juggler' related things I can only guess - badly - at!

 

Watch-battery illuminated, stand-ups of Harry Potter characters.

 

Sci-fi feature quite heavily, along with historicals, and here we see stuff related to The Rocketeer, Batman, Star Wars and The Avengers

 

More Anime/Manga stuff, either side of miniaturised Pioneer Hi-Fi decks!

 

An amazing maze!

 

A mystery to finish, not speaking Japanese, I can only guess these are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland coasters? Featuring Sir John Tenniel's (the first commercial illustrator to be knighted) original artwork? Which would require the largest size of capsule? There are different sizes and designs of Capsule, as we'll see working through them, while a few sets seem to be cheaper or more expensive than the 'standard' Gashapon.

 

Many thanks to Adrian for all these images, which give us a good flavour of the subject, and for the toys which we will be looking at over the next few posts.

G is for Gardiner, Alison Gardiner

Another one shot in passing, back in February, at the NEC gift fair in Birmingham, these were both on the Alison Gardiner (who specialises in advent calenders) stand, but may both be imported from Coppenrath, (since 1768!) in Germany?

 

Nutcracker soldier tree-hangers.

 

Victoriana'esque nativity scene.

G is for Glass Animals - Oh Dear, More Deer!

I was toying, for several years (the folder these come from has been filling since 2020) with trying to establish 'Vitrines' as the collective noun for these, but the trouble is vitrines are already a thing, specifically small glass table-top/mantle-piece display cabinets, sometimes confused with the similar terrarium glass mini-greenhouses for houseplants, or even fancy lanterns for tea-lights!

 

So even if you were minded to go along with me, it wouldn't be ideal, and sometimes confusing, while if you were determined to not cooperate with the naming exercise, it would annoy the hell out of you every time I used it!

 

Equally, some people call them 'Murano', especially on eBay, where EVERYONE's an expert! And, while there are elements of Murano in their production, Murano is a particular form of Venetian Glass, specifically from the island of Murano, and pertains to larger pieces, using techniques not often found in these little novelty animals, which are more generic to glass foundries everywhere, and amateur glass-sculpting hobbyists.

 

AND, we're looking for a word or phrase which will also cover the plastic-tat versions, and 'coloured-transparent-animals-in-glass-or-plastic' is too much of a mouthful, so, they will be 'Glass Animals' in the Tags, even if they are plastic, and I hope that suits everyone!

 

In the order in which they were originally shot, we'll start with the plastic tat! These were a common prize at fairgrounds, where skill in hooping, hooking, magnet-fishing, shooting (air-guns or darts) or knocking a coconut off a pole, could win you your very-own, chained together set of coloured, transparent animals!

 

Chained together, coloured, transparent . . . yeah, well, boys would pick a pack of cap-bombs or something!  A loo-roll 'Furby' (called a Gonk, and predating Furbies by several decades!), or a bottle of bubble-liquid with wand, were other common choices, a Frisbee, or a balsa-wood fighter-plane! But, under multicoloured, flashing lighting, on their little gloss-painted wooden plinths, these boxes looked pretty attractive!

 

One the left, 1950/60's, on the right 1970's, even more-tattier, tat, in a reverse pose, but the charm's still there, and I bet you can still find these in some souks or markets about the planet! In the end, key-rings were added to some of the more substantial, or just 'less-frangible' mouldings.

 

But, in the 1940/50's, you got glass ones! And here, on the left is a box for a glass set, with a slight variation of the other set on the right - lightly oblong box against the first one's true-square, and a variation of code number, 33V as opposed to 33VA?

 

AG or GA does not spell Venice or Murano! German, Czech', American . . . Japanese?

"ArtNo" hints at Germany, does anyone know?

AG could be something-Glass.

 

The glass ones are much finer, and quite delicate, although some strength is imparted by dint of the stretching, and the annealing effects of continued heating and cooling, as the various steps of the manufacturing-process are gone through.

 

Glass got tissue-paper packing, while plastic gets plastic!

 

Comparison between the two, let's be fair to the toy-men of Hong Kong, it's not bad, and in a capitalist world, it's all about the money saved, at least they've tried to make the one resemble the other? No pink bows, or chains, on this (later?) set of plastics?

 

"Come out to play!"

 

Another boxing of the plastics, the little pink bows are illustrated, but the bondage chains are left off all artworks, here credited to an Illfelder Toy Co., of New York, but plainly the same Hong Kong product.

 

A lot I saw on eBay, with pink-glass horses (or donkeys?), the ceramic deer we saw, cropped-out in a previous post a day or two ago (I'm losing track at the moment!), and a chained set of the 'barley-sugar' deer, also in glass.

 

This one, who I picked-up the other day, in a charity shop next to the lucrative (for Rack Toy Month) Post Office in Cranleigh, is slightly more Murano in style with the orange glass-powder sprinkled, or, more commonly 'picked-up' by rolling the molten glass over the ground glass, on it's back, but is, otherwise, following the same pattern as the others, and it's one of the simpler techniques.

 

While these - above - are obviously all mass-produced sets of commercial production, the many glass animals you find, may also include both craft/hobbyist pieces, and end-of-term/end-of-year student test pieces - can you produce, using a set number of techniques, a number of similar sculpts, following a set of recently-taught rules?

G is for Gygax Monsters - Part VII - Round-up & Summery

OK, it made sense to post this in sequence, even if it's a new month! As bitty as last night's and more of the same really, but we'll see how we go, as I have these in front of me and can take more photos as I go!

 

 

So with Peter, Chris and Jon to thank, along with my own efforts, this is what's come-in over the last 18-months or so, none of which was in the shots taken between 2020-22 for the other posts, it makes for a typical 'mixed lot' and adds a couple of new bits, while confirming some of what's been said already.

 

The 'Friendly' Gygax,', on the left, who was never actually a Gygax, and goes best with the 'Disney', it's a pretty standard Holly Plastics one, with the longer marking. On the right, a clear copy/knock-off, following some of Holly's rules, re. paint/plastic colour, but maybe just following the now standard Chinasaur rules? However, with both the remains of MADE IN CHINA and HONG HONG, in different fonts, a much mucked-about with tool cavity, and a more recent, post 1990 issue?

 

Lik Be on the left, China copy on the right, the LB is a bit chewed, but the purple poser is still slightly smaller, so probably pantographed from the Lik Be, and then sharpened-up in the/on the tool. Again probably quite recent (the copy) so the moulds are still out there somewhere!

 

The Friendly came with two mates, two Ankylosaurs and a blatant rip-off copy, the copy having even less going for it than the crudeness of the Holly's. But that's the whole point, these are the 'Chinasaurs' whether recognisable dinosaur species, Gygax and associated monsters, or the more dodgy sculpts, their charm lies in the nostalgia - we all had some!

 

There are two kinds of Chinasaur, these; hardish polyethylene ones, and the soft, gape-mouthed PVC critters (with stretchy, silicon 'Rubber Jigglers' made of both types)*. What they all have in common is, poor sculpting, with arguable species sometimes, poor finish, with short-shots, flash & surface blemishes, a stab-and-hope paint scheme, no constant scale, a dirt-cheap retail price, and a rack near the checkout tills!

 

* The Fleetwood set we saw here.

 

It's a market which has almost totally changed now, with a lot of the cheapest dinosaur toys being actually quite good sculpts, realistic to not just species, but subtypes, and while there are poorer ones out there, the hollow-bodied cheepies from BJ Toys, for instance, even they are recognisable to what they are depicting, and better finished.

 

Another Holly Gygax on the left; Gator, with an unmarked, sub-scale, possibly sub-piracy to his right. The Holly has a partial MADE IN and the full HONG KONG, while the darker grey, shiny PE clone, has lost an arm, but is decorated to resemble the Holly!

 

More Holly, recognisable from the catalogues and previous posts, two Spiney's, with the full mark, as has the Bullette, while the LB Fan Whiskers is actually unmarked.

These are all non-Gygax, and with one exception - the green on grey plastic Sauropod - are all Holly, with the yellow standee (one of the questionable species Chinasaurs) having just the HONG KONG, and the pretender a clear CHINA in engineer's stamp lettering (a Roman caps font, sans), we have two unmarked, the Dimetrodon and 'Phoenix', and two with full marks.

 

Because the unmarked pair, are clearly Holly, we can assume the three main mark/no-mark types ran alongside each other, but assuming the larger-font stuff was a separate line for contracts like Enzinger's, is not so safe, they could have been earlier, later, or subcontracted., while it's a similar question over the obviously removed-mark issues, they could be client-requested, or post Holly ownership, or post-1997 handback?

 

This chap, with a larger HONG KONG stamp, is in the bag with them for now, but I sort of know he doesn't belong there. He has a friend, a guitar-playing tortoise, sitting on a box, and both can be found in this hard ethylene, or in an eraser rubber type material, and I think one has been seen as a key-ring, and I'm sure there's more to the full set. No evidence for him being Holly or Lik Be, but he could be the third 'Funimal' source, an outfit advertising in magazines as Colonial, and now I've 'shot my bolt' on the Gygax, a bit early, maybe, I might try to get the Funimals moved-up the long-queue lists!

 

So, to summarise these eight posts - 

• Gary Gygax and/or members of his team, took three of the more monstrous sculpts for their AD&D bestiary, the other [at least] nine sculpts, were never, and will never be 'Gygax Monsters', and they were all, always, Holly Plastics Factory / HP production, in the first place, later copied by various back-street outfits, ancient (1970's) and more modern, including one now-named firm who should have known better - Lik Be / LB. But they may have had permission?
• There may be a Kaiju element to one or two of the monster sculpts. 
• Holly were also, possibly the main producer/influencer of the typical, poor-quality, cheap rack-toy Chinasausrs, and had a stable of mould-tools with different marks, different sizes and even different sculpts of the same species.
• Holly may have farmed-out or licensed production to some of those back-street outfits, but that's never likely to be empirically known, nor their trading names, if they had them.
• In recent years China-made copies and reissues have been available of most, but the Owlbear Gygax and Diplocaulus amphibian dinosaur do seem to be harder to find, but, really - not $500 harder!
• All twelve, thirteen, however many monster/dragon-like fake dinosaurs are out there . . . will always be known as the "Gygax Monsters"!

And that's all folks! But we'll hopefully return to them in a few years when more stuff has turned-up, and maybe clear-up some of the remaining questions, especially over the number of tooling versions, the Jaru re-issues, clones, China-copies &etc!

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!