BMC is for the Wing Wah Plastic Factory!

This was - as far as I was concerned, I'm sure some of you know more than I did, certainly Ed Berg helped - a mystery, then it wasn't a mystery, then it sort of was a mystery again, maybe, now I don't think it is, but it does point to the firm who might have been supplying early or pre-BMC mouldings.

 

Firstly, let's get clear that these are not rare figures, they are in fact, all over the place, in various configurations and colours, of which this azure blue is perhaps marginally less common than the current darker blue, but the dark chocolate may be more common than the paler shades, a situation made harder by different sculpts. And then there's a paler sky-blue and a mid-brown!

This larger 'rack toy' set, badged to Wing Wah (formerly, and for some 30-odd years, of Kennedy Town, Hong Kong Island, before moving to the New Territories, where they seem to have folded in 2021, or thereabouts), who's over-imposed WW-mark is quite common in rack-toy circles.

 

And it was bought from Greece, where the air-miles of an HK import would be considerably less than from the States, especially if they were so imported, before BMC ever put their moniker to them?

A limited pose-count (which may not be original, the blister was loose), has a nice firing line of the shako'ed Mexicans and a handful of armed Texan terrorist-insurgents.

The guy on the left had escaped the packaging, but I didn't find him until after I'd taken the card-shot, I have more of these in storage, from years ago, and hope I have a couple more of the poses, but I only previously had the Texans I think, if I have the Mexicans, they will be the newer ones with rimmed bases, and the poses with the wide-brimmed 'Poblano' sombrero, rather than these shako wearers, although I think I have the CTS ones somewhere!

 

Anyway, I wasn't sure of their heritage, as the ones on the Internet seemed to have BMC on the base underside, and sometimes the extra rim, so I asked Ed, when he was Blogging his 'Frankenset' a while back, if they were BMC and said he thought so.

 

But me being a Doubting Thomas, without empirical evidence, still didn't post them for a year or two more, until I was clear they were all the same Wing Wah / early BMC stock, which I'm now convinced they are! The three to the left are BMC, rimless, but the newer colour, I bought last year, at PW's show, specially for this post, which has been in edit-hell since 2020!

I seem to be missing a pile of boxes, to which the two small ones were positioned either-side, in the blister, and I keep seeing various gun ramps, but I think they're all CTS, Marx re-issues or TSSD!

 

I'm not one to comment on the exactness of the authenticity, but they don't look that accurate to me, especially the Texans, and they are definitely not Action Figures in the normal use of the term among both collectors and the wider toy trade, but when did the Hong Kong toy-men pay more that lip-service to accuracy?

 

1965-1990-something (?) on the left, terminal logo (1998-2021?) on the right.

Wing Wah - formed in 1965 and - apparently - the original supplier/manufacturer of BMC's Alamo figures/accessories, joining the Wing's Luen, Lung and Mau in the Tag-list. There is a current Wing Wah (Wing Wah Precision Mould & Plastics), in Dongguan City, Guangdong, mainland China which probably has no connection.

 

And, of course, this is a red-letter day for your diary's, as it's the date after which Deadleaf Hairband, Master Baiter Sell and Pericles over at the HK toy soldier site, will all start using the Wing Wah attribution, like they knew all along!

Above we see an early BMC set with the same rimless figures as the Wing Wah set, with the current Amazon image of the side-rimmed versions. I have also seen the Texans in the paler blue of my Mexicans.

 

I don't know if BMC licensed the 'generic' Wing Wah set for Greece, or other territories it wasn't then interested in, or if it was before BMC's involvement, most likely, while a third option is that WW were just being naughty behind BMC's back, or didn't have an exclusive with BMC for the sculpts/production.

B is for Britains' Mini-Clones!

For such a  relatively short-lived and unsuccessful range as the Britains Mini-Sets, it is rather amazing that there are not one generation of copies but two!

These came in with a mixed lot of figures from Greece just in time for rack-toy month; very crude copies of the Britains Mini-Set US GI's with new, integral bases - I think the standing-firer's base is a truncated 'short shot' moulding, not the intended extent of the design. And - sorry; I still haven't learnt about red backgrounds, especially with tangerine figures!

There's an Indian too! I wonder how much of the range was copied and why . . . die-cast toy vehicle accessories . . . not an Indian surely? Sweet or candy premiums, 'Lucky-Bags'? Ice cream . . . something like that, and likely to be Greek production rather than Hong Kong? The clones are polyethylene against the PVC of the originals and slightly below the donor's 40mm.

I live to collect this stuff!

N is for No Spanish Horses!

But more odds-&- sods of a ceremonial or 'on-parade' nature, indeed the first quartet started life a week or so ago in the same tub as two of the mounted reamsa's and the Argentine Lifeguard look-a-like, so may also be from the collection of Barry 'the legend' Blood, from that 2010 sell-off?

These being they! Two Danish guards from Reisler, in the everyday uniform, the red is the ceremonial, the black for day-in/day-out wear. To their left are two Mignalu plastic Monaco police (Carabineers de Monaco) in their summer dress uniform (they also have a dark version for winter), these are taken from a short experiment by Minot (CGB, not Barry) in Aluminium production back in the 1950's.

My three Athena's, I couldn't begin to explain anything else about them as there seem to be so many variations; red and blue, white and blue, kilts, bloused trousers, pom-poms - large, small and no, single or double 'deputy dog' ears, 'wing-boards' . . . and I must conclude that every regiment has its own uniform, or that several guards have summer and winter versions, there is an excellent book or two on them by Markos Plytos and they should make it clearer, in the meantime - my three are a good mix!

The first four were going to be with the Cavalry, before they expanded and I decided they must go seperately as a 'foot ceremonials' post, off to find the Evzones above, I checked Brian B's folders and found this 80'mil-odd chap, who's from Processed Plastic (thanks to Kent's site)'s US Air Force set.

Which in turn reminded me I had this chap (on the left) in with the unknown navy (or navy-like) figures, looking at him anew I suspect he's actually a chauffeur or doorman from a 1:35th scale car kit - Monogram, MPC/AMT-Ertl, Pyro or Revell? He's in hard polystyrene plastic anyway and someone's tried to glue him down by melting his base!

He - in turn - reminded me there was the other black plastic figure hanging around, seen on the right; he's soft polyethylene and I know nothing about him, I thought he must be Marx or MPC but doesn't seem to be either, has some features in common with the Remco Romans, but is lacking the fine detail seen on their shields, he's close to Marx's 60mm naval cadet marching, but of poorer quality and without the shoulder flap on the Marx figure's greatcoat, and, if it wasn't for the base, you might mistake him for an early experiment by Pater Cole's Replicants!

Anyone know, he seems to be a modern re-issue so I guess somewhere someone has a bucket-full of 'um? To be honest he looks like a neighbouring dictator's guard from the Trigan Empire and seems to be carrying an Elephant Brontosaurus-gun! The gun actually looks to be damaged at the tip, but inspection under a magnifying-glass suggests it's all there? Steam-punk Nazi!??!

ABC, Hong Kong rip-off's of Britains hollow-cast marching troops, they look better en-masse than they do individually!

A mix of French troops marching, seen recently here, but again looking better as a group, and also HK copies, this time cloned from Starlux.

A Salvation Army chap I shot on Adrian's stand years ago and which has been sat in Picasa ever since! I may actually have one myself, but either a different pose or a different flag, and I'm not sure where I put it? He's aluminium and Wend-Al.

A scaler on the left, while on the right - they are all ensconced in their new tub! the HK stuff (ABC/Starlux-copies) have their own tubs!

The cavalry grew to fill two tubs, Reamsa and 'others', and the foot got one of their own. The red plastic Reisler's (which we've seen; Blog passim) will stay with the British guards for now, but as this sample grows and fills a deeper tub, they may migrate across (with the correct paperwork - no illegal's here!), while you can see the lovely RHA chap Chris Smith sent the blog a while back has joined them.

Because PVC can melt polystyrene, the three Greeks and the artilleryman get PE bags, which prevents that kind of damage occurring and provides padding for all the figures in the tub.

C is for Caryatids

Caryatids are a specific form of column, used in Classical Greece and to a lesser extent in Rome, where the main body of the column is carved into a human figure, usually female I think, but some males exist (as 'Atlas' . . . architecture stuff is all in the garage!), and occasionally only half-columns (like relief-flats) coming forward from a load-bearing wall, due to their being less able to take weight, but a small temple with a relatively light roof, or a porch for a small building have whole caryatids - I think there's one among the ruins on the hill-side at the Acropolis.

The TARDIS Temple to Aphrodite! Hic!

My mate John Begg - who some of you will know has links to Greece - had one of these on his mantelpiece as a memento, and when he was visiting Greece I asked him if he could get me one, empty or full of ouzo. . . a couple of weeks later he gave me this; empty, sadly!

I had intended to undo the caryatids and hot-glue them (polyethylene!) back to back to make two full-round columns, as photo-accessories/scenics. Two of the faces would have needed to be turned into hair, and a fair bit of fettling and filling would have been required around the join-line, the whole then needing painting, but in the end I didn't have the heart to damage them, so it is still in its little bag, marked Ouzounis 'Maiden Ouzo'!

All polyethylene; I hope you can see from the photo's the 'miniature' bottle is a blow-mould with the wide shoulders on top of the flocked 'box', the caryatids come as a flattish moulding with thin hinge-joints between the figures allowing it/them to be wrapped around the 'box' and clipped into place, the clips are under the stickers somewhere, if they exist; the stickers may be the 'clips', the column bases also become the bottom of the bottle and the figures are 45/50mm?