C is for Canoes - 9 - Not Giant!

Actually Mikephil in the US and a generic here in the UK, and I've never known if that's pronounced as a rather clumsey 'Mike-Phil', the smoother 'Micky-phil', or something esoteric like 'Mike-a-phil'? Guidance from US or Canadian readers gratefully received!

 

We did actually look at this briefly many years ago, and it will need to go on the Giant blog at some point, but they aren't Giant, they use the two sets of six (and only six) Giant foot figures, possibly even the old tool cavities, but with the lesser, non-Giant mark (Made in Hong Kong), and with new connecting runners, joining them together in rows, one of cowboys, and this one of Indians.

 

The Mikephil (I'm now saying Mick-effhil in my head!) shots here are all courtesy of Brain Berke, the generics are from the collection, except the green one which was a fleaBay image I took years ago, as you don't often see the green canoe.

 

Note that the Mikephil one has a monochrome image in blue-and-white on the back mirroring the full colour image on the card fronts, the generics available over here just have plain, undecorated card backs.

These images might have been used last time? This shows how the strips of figures are attached in the bottom of the canoe; the connecting pieces routed in the base of the tool are wedged in the little forked/slotted studs, holding them long-enough (one or more connections often pop-out while still in the packaging) to further hold them in, with the angled blister!

Brian did a scaler, and I have a yellow boat with the figures, unusually, placed-in facing the other way! Commonly the figures are firing/moving to the right, except the cowboy on the other end, but someone reversed some!

 

I must assume all colours of figure can be found as boats and vise-versa, but some seem commoner than others, so maybe the missing ones went to a country/region where they were less likely to survive the tests of time, like Mexico for instance?

 

One of Brian's sets in situe, the boat seems to be another brighter chartreuse yellow, to my aged lemon, but it could just be flash, the teepee is looking darker in the other image? It's also a perfect demonstration of how most '54mm' totem poles are better scaled for 25mm figures! Thanks again to Brian, for his images/examples.

 

And note this post is really about the canoes, the figures are far more interesting, and complicated, and, while we did touch on them briefly, a long time ago, here, I will do them properly as a series of posts on the Giant blog another day. And, the boat is a scale-down of another we'll look at in these posts, itself apparently; a full-size copy of a third!

P is for Premiums

New text

Despite the fact that it was one of my 'big' posts - gathering everything I know about something together with a decent spread of photographs,it was hopeless! So this is a big re-write, and should now offer the student of toy figure collecting a little more than it did, not least that the figures were given away with Quaker Sugar Puff's and not as I had pencilled in (with black ink) in the absence of the Cluck disc Toad sent me; Kellogg's!

We will start with that Cluck entry;

It's not bad for what was available to Wayne Ratcliffe back in the late 1990's, and is mostly correct. The question marks will come out in the wash below. he has made the Tudor*Rose error, or has he? He also tracked down an old comic-book advertisement for them which I'll also show for reference sake;

Old - now heavily edited - text

In America, these figures are easy...Thomas Toys, end of! In the UK, it's more complicated, although Thomas are likely to be the main originator, in the past both Kleeware and Tudor*Rose have been in the frame, Quaker carried most of the range, the variations we will look at below raise their own question marks, Manurba seem to have been responsible for lifting at least one of the mouldings, a few years ago people would tell me they were from Lido or Pyro moulds (they weren't), given away with Kellogg's (Doh!)...they weren't...and...and...

...lets have a look at them;

So, the figures, the upper row in each shot are those listed in 'Cluck' as being BOTH cereal premiums and the figures wholesaled to Woolworth's here in the UK, which are probably Thomas Toys, except that in the first edition of Cluck (above) he doesn't credit the canoe or paddler to Quaker?

The lower rows are those not so listed, with the Indians divided further into the two poses on the left listed as Woolworth's but not Quaker, the one on the right not listed as either, along with the backwoodsman/wagon crew, who's the passenger in the larger canoe below, not part of the Quaker giveaway, but definitely part of the Woolworth's issue, suggesting the other one have just been left of the list a swell but - see note under the colours shots below - the three Indians may be something else, and seem to be UK exclusives?

The blue not-listed-at-all Indian is a factory variation of the similar posed red one to his left (as we look at him), but with the tomahawk attached to the headdress and the body pulled about a bit, making the sculpting a little cruder. Oh - and the paddler is a girl, according to the Thomas Toys paperwork on Bill Hanlon's site!

The reason for the small size of some of the figures has always been given that the figures were to be collected and set-up in front of the card backdrops supplied by Quaker, to give a sense of depth or perspective and I think the blurb on the packets said as much? [now confirmed in edit, although the advert only talks of creating a 'film set' not the figures size or 'perspective'] However, this was Quaker either looking for an excuse for the truth because they didn't want kids involved in a shootin'war, or because they didn't understand the product and didn't think to ask Thomas after they'd ordered/received the batch?

The truth being; the two smaller figures and the canoeist ARE children! And were sold as such in Woolworth's and the States. I'm listing them all as a 45mm range.

Because I'm trying to get the alphabet done in a week, have lost the Cluck disc Toad sent me, and because this 'set' needs more research; I'm not going to dwell on it too much here [now edited and dwelt on at length!], just raise the questions rather than try to prove the answers, to which end I'm not going to get involved with the wagons or the mounted, as the wagons will be another post another day and the mounted will probably end-up on the Airfix blog, for reasons obvious to those who know the Bergan/Beton figures post on that blog! I'm also going to ignore (for the time being) the transport questions posed by the two seated cowboys [just prior to hitting 'Publish' - actually it does all make some sense, with a few question marks!].

The canoes.

The yellow one on the left is the common one issued to everybody by everybody...Quaker, Woolworth's, Thomas and whoever else!

The green one next to it is the 'double' canoe which is a Thomas/Woolworth's/whoever piece, but not Quaker.

The blue one seems to be a different version of the double, it's to be found in original ad's on Bill Hanlon's site (I should have looked at it again instead of just posting the link!), whether it came first or second I don't know, but the features in the bottom are to hold the figures a little better, so I guess it was the second version? This means the smaller silver paddler probably is the Giant copy?

The last two are hard polystyrene; everything else - apart from the family group below - in this post is soft ethylene and I've highlighted the longitudinal planks in the bottom of the far right-hand boat in the right-hand image.

Now I had a conversation with Andreas Dittmann (my 'go to' expert on all figures German, and most figures European!) about six years ago with the possibility that some of these were Manurba and he not only confirmed that they were, but sent me some images (thank you Andreas)...

The dark red one (which matches some of the darker 'Thomas' figures, is soft ethylene, and indistinguishable from the US/UK originals (a slightly poorer join line maybe?), while the others are hard plastic, and mirror the US/UK design apart from the 'MADE IN W. GERMANY' mark and a bowsprit, a left-over from it's use as a yacht, in which guise it has a receiving collar in the centre of the boat for the spigot-end of a small mast with plastic sail - for another day!

As you can see neither of them is either of the other two canoes, so there are still question marks over both of them, see the family below for one answer? This means that if you include the Giant and Manuba versions there are at least 8 to collect, 9 with the yacht, 11 if you consider the US produced ones 'separate'.

The one with the two longitudinal ribs is also to be found on Bill's pages, so I guess it's a US Thomas one...see edited note on the family below.

Colour studies, there are translucent (lower row of yellows) and solid-colour variations (upper row of yellows) in most of the main shades, and the pallet is basically red, yellow, green and blue, in bright primary 'infant toy' colours, with darker red's (they are much darker - maroon - under natural light) probably coming from the Woolworth's batches, not Quaker, but that is my unscientific personal opinion and should be ignored! A lot of the variation in the reds and yellows was lost with camera flash, they are all quite different to the naked eye in normal daylight.

One thing to note about these though, there are a smaller number in a sharper, more matt or chalky 'powder' blue or yellow, all from the three lower Indians in the first image above, the seated backwoodsman doesn't appear in this guise, suggesting that the three may be from a different range, set or even manufacturer? All these colours are common to most of Tudor *Rose's output, Poplar, Rafael Lipkin and early Merit...among others!

Top left finds the left-hand of the two hard plastic canoes with the figures that came with it, you will notice that there are no war-like poses in this group, I think they would have been sold as an Indian Family (like the proposed group on Kent Sprecher's page - link below) but with the canoe and paddling girl replacing the diminutive archer? As Thomas went from a PVC vinyl-rubber to polyethylene with both the Romans and the Spacemen; I find it hard to believe they suddenly made these in styrene. So; I reason (with no evidence!) that the mould was in the hands of Kleeware or Tudor*Rose OR someone similar for the moulding of this (maybe incomplete) lot? Or [added] that it is an import from the US, where they were issued in hard plastic at the beginning?

Top-right shows a couple of nice mould shrinkage variations that have come-out usable, the boy is just smaller (and more childlike I think...click on the picture to enlarge), the man appears to be walking toward the viewer as he looks for a target to his left!

The other two shots show the papoose and baby, and compare the two similar largish cowboys.

No more than an overview, we will return to these one day and try to nail things down a bit firmer, in the meantime I would be interested in your views. A couple of links starting with Bill Hanlon's...

Dimestore

...and Kent Sprecher's site, scroll down about three-quarters of the page for the Thomas;

Cowboys and Indians

Bill's added a lot of content to the site than when I last visited (helicopters!) [and I would have done well to read it!].

Then the other canoes on this blog;

Giant - Thomas copy
Post-Giant - long with figures

Concluding; probably mostly Thomas Toys, a smaller range issued to Quaker, a larger range supplied to Woolworth's, with three extra Indian figures, seemingly designed to fight the larger Cowboys (new info in the conclusion - English Lit fail!), moulds maybe handed-on for later polystyrene production, at least one piracy (Giant) of the double canoe, another unexplained and Manurba copying, licensing from Wales or maybe getting permission from Islin Thomas in the States on the smaller one? Seems clearer than when I started a hour or so ago!

Now all the above edited/re-written, here are some other relevant images, after which we'll leave this subject alone for a while, it's a mess now, but it'll do, I can rewrite it in a year or three!

So....new conclusion...We can't be 100% sure of the actual '16 different styles' talked about by Quaker or their comic book advert PR writers. If the wagon and horse mail-away doesn't count, should the mounted Indian count? We know the two cowboy riders aren't in the mail away, but their horses are so we must assume they were in the packets, to utilise a finger, any spare horses the child had or go twos-up behind the mounted Indian...no, he's only in the mail away?

There is another list on line - Here

But he's included a Lido figure and makes the Tudor*Rose mistake? He also leaves the canoe and paddler off the list, including one of the chalky axe-men along with his Lido interloper.

The above is my 'take' on what the 16 count probably consisted of, I know the canoe and girl were part of the promotion, because they are about the commonest of these to find from the set, and if they were Woolworth's only, they'd be as rare as the other non-Quaker pieces today, which they're not!

But it's my take only, and open to new evidence coming to light?

Now we'll look at everything else, the horse is the same design all round, with the moulded-on Indian's horse getting a nice fringed blanket, while the stand-alone's (and some of them don't stand happily, leg bending with hot-water gets them to behave!) have a sort of blanket/saddle 'hint'. The wagon horses have an oblong hole right through them.

These are most of the colours I have encountered over the years, the dried-ink blue ones being from a Hong Kong set, we'll look at (and open!) below...

...we have actually seen this before on the blog, but in taking some close-up shots of the contents I noticed the axle was through the bag, so I prised the staples carefully and built the 'kit'! I wouldn't normally do something like that to a one-off in the collection (I'm not so fussy about second or subsequent examples), but it'll last better with the bag and card in a click-shut with the contents the other side of a stiff card.

This is actually a Hong Kong copy; it's very good until you get up close and realise there's a marked fall-of in the finer detail, but size-wise it's hard to tell, so cut by someone who know how to compensate a pantograph properly!

At some point, someone at Thomas (or Poplar? They had some of the moulds made in the US for both of them, see the spacemen story on Bill's site, or in back issues of Plastic Warrior magazine) said something like "You know what...our smaller cowboy wagon; the one we sent to Quaker...it's a bit shit isn't it?!", at which point someone more senior said "Yes, let's redesign it with more wheels".

The result was a much-improved look to the same wagon which now has two drain-holes mid-way along the body! They just drilled four new open-clip axle-mounts, into the old mould.

The front wheels had come from (or were used on?) the other member of the transport fleet, a reasonable stage-coach. All these come in all four body colours, but always with yellow wheels. Thanks to Michael Melnyk for several of these wagons.

While the waggoner (spell-checker doesn't like wagoneer?) fits into both the two and four-wheeled (and Hong Kong) wagons with a rather painful-looking retaining spigot between his legs, the spigot is missing on the Stage, and in experimenting I found the canoe-trapper actually fits much better, pose-wise. I don't know if he actually came with it, or if - maybe - it came without a driver at all?

From the left; The two versions of the Thomas wagon (albeit one of them from HK) next to a Tudor*Rose wagon of the same size range and the Charbens one I picked-up a while ago.

Below them - also from the left - are the Thomas and Tudor*Rose drivers, a HK copy of the TR driver with a longer mounting-spigot and a polyethylene chap from one of the bigger wagons with an angled spigot, who's wagon I've yet to identify.

Literally as I was going to press this afternoon, I had an email from David Scrivener with the above shot showing the larger versions of the Thomas wagon drivers and mounted figure, with a standard (THE standard) 54mm control sample from Britains! Thanks Dave.

These larger wagons were often sold at the seaside in the kiosk that also sold sand-castle paper flags, the castle-shaped buckets for the paper-flags and blow-ups, and Merit, Poplar, Tudor Rose, Kleeware, Rafael Lipkin and others all had them, I have a few in storage which we can look at another day.

Last of the loose ends; Clockwise from top left shows the sample I've been working with, another shot of the two left-off all the lists, a shot of the blues which I forgot to do the other day and a close-up of 'The Three Axe-men of the Appomattox'!

As I say, this page is a mess, but it'll do for now, still don't know the story behind the other three Indians, still don't know the definitive listing for the '16', still don't know why everyone thought they were Tudor*Rose...but then I thought they were Kellogg's!

Couple of hours later...several typo's corrected and another email from David! He's only gone and sent us a picture of the Quaker mail-away boxes...

Interesting that they are both the same colours...new question - was the whole Quaker batch blue with brown horses and yellow riders? Thanks again Dave...that's wrapped it up for a while!

20-01-16 - This was sent in by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous...

It shows the UK version (I think) of the US set shown in Plastic Warrior magazine a while ago, the 'Fort' is actually titled 'Trading Post'

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

October 2020 - six years later and Gerald Edwards (Plastic Warrior issue number 180) is suggesting they were Poplar, and while they obviously were (that's a Poplar set immediately above!) and we dismissed Tudor Rose six-years ago (longer in my head!); all the Poplar-branded sets contain the two-axle wagon (if they have a wagon), so I think Thomas are safer for the single-axle wagon'ed premiums and - consequently - by time-line; the original Woolworth's supplies, although that may mean the five [often chalky] poses were earlier (and therefore Thomas) so may have been a separate tool which Poplar didn't inherit when it inherited the other Thomas stuff - khaki troops (also Taffy Toys), Romans, spacemen etc . . . probably in the autumn of 1960 when Alden Industries Inc., off-loaded the UK end of their purchase of the Thomas assets? Not that Poplar weren't anything other than a subsidiary of Thomas in the first place!

A week after that and TJF wants to blow-off, on the same subject . . . sweet, he's really lost without the rest of the hobby feeding him ideas!

 

B is for Bow't...lill'wouldn'bow't

Looking at the Giant foot Cowboys & Indians the other day (Figures) I mentioned the fact that as uncut strips of six figures these came with a canoe, and that I'd dig them out and photograph them, this I have done...

I'd forgotten that there were three receiving spigots, not two as I stated the other day, this is quite a big canoe, at least twice the length of the Thomas/Poplar/Tudor*Rose/Manuba ones, and from the packaging - clearly not Giant production. These figures in fact being non-giant as often as they were!

J is for Jogging

Following-on from the Giant Cowboy and Indian Article the other day, we have this little lot who use all the same poses as Giant but with another horse, the one I called 'Jogging' in my original series of articles for Plastic Warrior magazine. I suppose I should have called him 'trotting' but didn't think of it at the time and it's too late now!

The foot figures are easy to identify as they have a a 'HONG KONG' mark in very small letters that are graphically arranged to make two little oblongs to the naked eye. Also see how while similar, the colour 'palette' is very different from a Giant Sample.

A close-up of the Jogging horse, again - easy to identify as he doesn't have the all stretched-out legs of most other HK horses. Mounted figures again are Giant poses, but much glossier and in different colours, my two samples being one - pastels, and the other - primaries; red and blue.

The larger card is similar in style and graphics to a non-Giant chariot set we will look at in the fullness of time.

C is for Cowboys (and Native Americans!)

Well, I had a day to spare so I dug into the box I've been blogging the Giant Stuff from and had a half a sort-out of the Cowboys and Indians, at the same time because I needed the 40mm canoeist, I got the box of carded sets out of the loft and the result is a stultifyingly tedious look at the minutiae of Giant Wild West - if you are a casual visitor to this blog; or a decent overview of what is or isn't Giant to those who get so excited about this HK-production importer from New York.

These are the 6 Giant foot poses in the wild west range, apart from the canoeist (below) they are the only known poses used by Giant, all other foot figures (and there are many) were imported by other firms.

Even with these 12 there are question marks over when they are Giant (dealers premium - kerching!) and when they aren't (dealers description "Believed to be Giant"), more of that below, in the next part you'll find a explanation of the base marking changes with these guys, in the meantime, the simple rule is the better the quality the more likely they are Giant, however as with all rules there are exceptions.

The 6 mounted poses, there are as you can see three Cowboys and three Indians, in my articles for One Inch Warrior magazine I think I identified 40 or 50 mounted poses of hollow-horsed Cowboy or Indian, and only 6 are Giant. Again these poses are used by non-Giant brands and carriers, usually of a poorer quality.

In the Cowboy image, all three are on the horse I have christened 'Smoothie', in the Indian shot, the centre rider in on another Smoothie, while the archer to the right is on a 'Mexican Small' and the chap in the full war-bonnet (not necessarily a chief) is on a 'Mexican Large'. Along with the medieval charger these are the horses typically associated with Giant, but again there are exceptions, and again the other 20/30-odd hollow horses out there are not Giant...unless they are!!

From the left; Mexican large; Mexican Small and; Smoothie. Occasionally a smaller version of Smoothie appears in a Giant lot, usually towing wagons or artillery, he's called 'Pony'. The Smoothie seems to be based - loosely - on the Marx running horses, lacking the wave in the mane of the more common horse based on Crescent's running pose, but with the stirrups removed and a fatter tail, while the Mexicans seem to have something in common with both the Ajax 60mm horse and the Rel horse.

Colours of Giant horses are usually pretty reserved, being black, either a solid or slightly translucent white or many shades of brown, however as we saw the other day, there are exceptions and sometimes wild colours appear like red, green, pink, mauve, purple...in fact; any colour the figures come in.

Ideal would later carry a larger version of hollow Mexican in their Fort Cheyenne play-set.

The only other figure I've linked to Giant is this copy of the Thomas  'girl' paddling a canoe. It's hard to give him a scale as the original series was all scales for making box-dioramas from cereal packets, so in the bag with the others he looks like a boy, on his own in a carded canoe set (see 2nd post below) he is a 40mm adult.

It's not a terribly clear picture but it's the best I could do and I took dozens of shots with and without flash or natural-light and at all angles, but the plastic blister is old and tatty and very scratched so this is it. Also; of the four figures in the set he's the only one not damaged, it's rare for this HK stuff to get brittle, but it does happen!

An idea of the colours you'll find these figures in, it might look as if you can find them in any old colour under the sun, but when you look at a sample of Giant against another brand or unbranded set there are differences.

Typically Giant are matt rather than gloss, have a pastel hint/tint to them and are 'solid' colour - it's hard to explain but it's there! Indeed one way to tell late/post-Giant issues of these figures (as opposed to all the others) is that they get shinier the later they are dated - not because they're cleaner, but because the plastic is different

Top left shows the 'spruelette' as it leaves the machine, they survive like this as they were issued in a non-Giant branded Canoe set, with the long connecting pieces between the first and last pairs of figures wedged into slots on spigots in the base of the canoe. I should have stripped the home-paint from this one but I have others and was hoping to use them...but they are in the missing 'proper' boxes!

Below that is an interesting sample of Type II figures (see post below) in a limited colour range that all came together. To the right are a hot-pin conversion above and a sharp-knife conversion below.

I is for Indians (or Native Americans!)

Carrying on from the post above I want to look at the markings of the cowboys and Indians in greater detail, as to the Giant purists this is everything; if it's marked Giant it must be Giant'. There are three distinct phases of marking on the foot figures bases, while there are dozens of horse types and the different horses have different marks while the riders have no mark at all, so we'll concentrate on the foot figures.

These are the least common, and best detail so by default - the oldest! It is a rule of thumb that the newer the toy soldier the poorer the quality, you only have to look at the Britains Detail Americans and how they slid to see that particular 'rule' in action! Likewise the harder something - originally mass-produced - is to find, the further back in time it was issued. Not hard-and-fast but a useful starting point in these things. A larger GIANT above a smaller HONG KONG, I call these; Type I.

We then arrive at the problematical one, a smaller GIANT on all the Indians and the odd Cowboy with the same HONG KONG, but with most of the Cowboys just having a HONGKONG with no space between the 'Hong' and the 'Kong' [and bloody difficult to capture on film!].

The reason these are problematical is that they are not that common so the above rules suggest this is a 'Type II', but the quality is poorer than the ones we will look at next? Yet for reasons we will come to the others pretty well have to be Type III, also these are sometimes mixed with the next type, but only occasionally. It is my view that these were a poor mould, hence the need for a third, and were phased out a bit sharpish?

These are the most common, sometimes with the colouring of typical Giant I tried to describe in the above post, sometimes shiny and 'new, sometimes in Giant sets sometimes not, sometimes not even with Giant horsed mounted figures, and they seem to have overlapped the Type II's, and gone on for a long time (a bit like the last version Knights - but that's for another day!).

The most important thing about the Type III is; No GIANT anywhere. Just a neat blocked MADE IN HONG KONG, this gets a little fuzzy on very late non-Giant product.

When I say quality is good or bad with these figures, I'm really talking about the level of detail in the tooling, the rifle of the yellow figure above shows that otherwise they suffer from all the usual problems of HK production - a lack of care in the finished article! One of the problematical things about the Type II is that the actual detail is poorer than I's or III's?

Direct comparison of the Type I/II 'GIANT' size differential, the bases are also different in outline and as I've said the figures are overall poorer with the Type II, almost as if they are copies of the I's while the Type III is a new or re-engraved mould?

Western wagons, the upper one is likely to be the later one with it's (P) conceit, while the lower one was typical for earlier sets. Note also that the early ones have no seat/footstep and are - apart from the marking - identical to many other non-Giant HK wagons.

B is for But is it Giant?

So, are they Giant or aren't they? We'll look at all those Wild West sets in my collection with some element of Giant in them and try to make head-or-tail of them...

The upper set has properly marked Type II figures (you can see straight away the poor quality of them) and reasonably good Smoothies with a Giant-marked wagon, yet is clearly not Giant, nothing about Giant on the packaging (bought in the UK - along way from New York), not typical Giant packaging or layout, this is 19660's salesman's sample-case sell-through and nothing more.

Below we have a similar pack without foot figures but including Giant quality Mexican Smalls (post-Giant versions of this horse can get very poor indeed, these are good though), but again NOT Giant in my opinion, not least because one has been overprinted with W.H. Cornelius's (WHC) 'Success' label! [They were still taking a stand at the January-dated British Toy Show about 6 years ago, so should still be around somewhere, still shipping-in HK rack toys 48 years after they took delivery of the pictured card.]

These are all Giant-marked horses, with Giant type riders and the set to the top left has Type III foot figures,all in typical Giant colours, I would say they are contemporary with Giant, but again not Giant product, just production from the same plant/s supplying Giant Toy Corp Co Inc Ltd of New York, New York NY, NY! But it's just not the same thing...

Note the set bottom-left; yellow Indians on black Smoothies, green Cowboys on brown Mexicans (both large and small).

Here we have Giant product in Giant style packaging with Giant style graphics, but no Giant logo. I believe these are Giant, shipped over to Europe by Giant either from NY, or by pre-arrangement with the HK suppliers - direct from the colony? These are probably worth a premium to a dealer, but not the silly money people were giving for Viking sets a few years ago!

On the left we have a genuine Giant set with the logo and address and the whole nine-yards, but instead of the oh-so-collectable little 'one inch warriors' we have a poxy piracy of a Thomas/Tudor*Rose paddler! Notable for the brittle state of the figures - boats are OK but the figures are shot.

Which brings us to the last one, more brittleness, more Giant in a non-Giant set. It doesn't ever get more Hong Kong than this, two Cowboys and and an Indian on Giant Smoothies supported by a Giant wagon fighting six Giant-marked mediaevals who are - apparently - Crusaders!

Points to note with this mish-mash of a set; the card was never used, the chads for the towing horses are still in place as are all the other cut-outs; the entire contents of the bag were in a heap at the bottom with the shrivelled and crumbled remains of a couple of elastic bands, but nothing had been placed.A Friday afternoon job if ever I recognised one!

Secondly is the brittle wagon; the Coyboys's horse - same colour - is also brittle, while the wheels (different shade of brown) are fine (as is everything else in the set) and can still be bent double, which backs-up my theory re. batches and production problems with over/under or re-cooking leading to the flaws that heat, damp or - mostly - ultra violet then exploit to release the free-radicals that lead to the polymer breaking-down.