P is for Potpourri of Plastic Peeps! Modern Combat Types

Toy and Model soldiers; where it all started! Onwards and upwards as they say, with the next batch of donated figures from Chris Smith's last parcel, and we're into khaki military, but as I've added some sailors it's really 20th/21st Century!

 

Two Toy Story chaps flank the last Blue Box WWII figure I needed to complete an at-least-one-of-each sample of them, and it wasn't the usual 'I don't need this so you can have it' donation from his purchase sorting, it was a 'I have one you can have' from Chris's collection, so double thanks for this chap. I have quite a few, painted and unpainted, but they are all missing their mine-detector, which is too easy to pull-off, or be short-shot in the moulding-tool.

 

Not sure if I have the other two, but there were several sets over the years, and until I get them all together, I won't know!

I think these are Pilsen from Turkey, but the Solpa figures from Greece (next door) can also have the contouring on the base some of these have, and as Solpa also sourced capsule-toy robots and Hong Kong small-scale stuff, it may prove to be that Solpa were using Pilsen?

A mixture here, with a Galloob Micro-man, some HK chaps, a bubble-gum premium and what appears to be a homemade/home cast clone of a French plastic? The two HTI's (right) both have the base marks we looked at briefly a few years ago, but they are different marks, so when I get round to an HTI A-Z page, there will be a few of them to study!

These are second generation copies of New Ray, I think, I got quite excited about a couple of the poses a few years ago, following one of Chris's earlier parcels, but more have come in, overtime, and they are less exciting now, maybe, but there seem to be two tranches/sources, so there will be a full article one day!

Arguably common, but there are many, many variations of these mid-80's rack-toy clones of Airfix British paratroopers, with or without beret/helmet conversions (at the factory) and in dozens of sizes and many plastic colours, so always welcomed for the final sort-out!

Kit figures, two Aurora Russians on the left, and two early (1950's) 'box-scale' on the right, but the chap in the middle is new to me, a scale-up of the Nitto 1:76th German (which was a copy of the earliest Tamiya German set I think?), and in a 'German' blue-grey plastic? All five are glueable, brittle polystyrene.

Probably Kwong Shing  (Kamley-Kositoys-KS) figures, but these coloured ones are less common, and well worth adding to the stash for the final A-Z line-ups! Here, oxide red and grey, rather than the silver we've seen before, I think?

Still need set titles or a maker's marque for these Hong Kong sailors, originally thought to be Navy or Police, for a while, and in discussion with other collectors, the turning-up of the semaphore chap rather confirms the former at the expense of the latter, and probably from a 1980's big-box naval vessel or aircraft-carrier playset? they are around 18/20mm.

M is for Many Moulded Malleable Mammals!

Part three of Jon's big box brings us to the Mammals, although a bird snuck-in under the radar while I wasn't paying attention, and the rest are definitely from the Zoo/Jungle/Wild zone, farm and domestic will come later!

Big cats, 1 of 3, cheetahs and leopard'ish critters, I like the big cats but there is a tendency to use the same moulding for different cats, or just not pay much attention to the things at all, so while the Britains one is a 54mm leopard, also found in black as a 'panther' (melanistic leopard), the pair in the next size up look more doglike, as does the orange one to the right, he has quite a hyena'ish head/jaw!

There was a bit of a comedy involved in this image, as I shot what I thought was all five Cheetahs, then reshot 'all' six, before finding another one under the dinosaurs! The big, dark, stretching one (lovely pose) is Triple-A (the 'AAA' mark), the others, all generics, for now.

A pair of colour variations of the same toob' animals, and a larger one which is actually a lighter-weight than either of the smaller brethren, being manufactured of some slightly-foamed polyethylene?

 

Big Cats 2 of 2; hunting! They don't often bring down any but old, infirm, or very young, lost giraffe's, who otherwise enjoy a relatively blessed existence. The larger lion is a China-marked newie, the other, a similar sculpt, is an older Hong Kong toy.

The giraffes are three old HK's, probably from different tranches of the Corgi Chipperfield's Circus giraffe carrier, and two larger modern chaps, one clearly marked KS in a similar oval to Toy Major, the other a generic for now.

 

Three generics here, and the really big one is a Toy Major, probably from a pick-box/counter-display. And when I say 'Generic', the hope is a fair quantity of them will be attributed in the near-to-medium-future?

 

Smallies; seem to match each other with plastic type, sculpting, size, China-mark etc . . . and probably came together in a toob or small-tub, but sometimes the small ones are chucked into tub-sets with larger animals to make-weight, or add to the item count

 

Big Cats 3 of 3; The big orange beast at the back is a Toy Major animal, marked Cheetah! The cub to the right is another AAA, while the flocked guy to the left is just lovely, but of unknown origin, with no dinks or worn-patches, he really is sweet!

 

Three generic elephants, one of which was marked ELEPHANTCHINA and for a moment, just a moment, I wondered if I'd left it out of the prehistoric animals post! And, all three newish sculpts.

 

Thanks again to Mr Attwood for sending us these, they make a nice change from 'armymen', Wild West or space/fantasy, especially as we head into the Christmas season - Fleet had its night market tonight, nothing on the council or Fleet BID Faceplant pages . . . of course!

News, Views Etc . . . Kwong Shing et al.

I've added the Kwong Shing entry (Kamley-Kositoys-KS) to the Khaki Infantry page, to which we can now add Larami (LIC) as another importer of their output. The above comparison image is from Brian Berke in New York and shows two sub-piracies, or probable sub-piracies, one lot may well be KS's own? I've included all the similar copies under the same heading until more is known about any of them.

F is for Follow-up - Toy Truck-Mounted Rocket Launchers

So, managed to find both the rocket launchers mentioned in the previous article (making this a follow-up to a follow-up!), so without further ado - 'cos we don't want much of an ado about nothing! - let's have a closer look . . .

Both the vehicles I'd previously said I had 'somewhere', I knew where the paint-stripped one was, but Brian's shots were of two painted versions, so there was no point digging it out, the plastic one I knew I'd got, and recently, so it should have been findable, but a cursory look - the first time - failed to locate it, it (the Hong Kong copy - lower image) then appeared - as if by magic, a few days later! Hence digging-out the Crescent one (upper image) for a full follow-up!

The Hong Kong one is a copy, with simplifications like the 'torsion-bar' wheel attachments instead of the through-axles clipped in, as on the Crescent original, but there may have been some pantographing to get the basic moulding as one or two quirky details have been retained, albeit at about a 10% reduction in overall scale/size - I've cropped them to reflect their relative sizes.

More comparisons, the Hong Kong rocket is basically a Thunderbird (Army) or Bloodhound (RAF) missile, probably copied from Corgi, sans booster rockets, with colour-bleed from an unstable red polymer-colourant in the nose gravitating toward the 'rear' through the white plastic of the body it's plugged into.

The 'trap-door' of the Crescent cap-bomb 'missile', you can see how many caps could be stacked in the 're-entry capsule', and the substantial free-moving hammer would detonate them all against an equally substantial anvil-nose.

The trouble was you then got (in a Norwegian accent) a helllll-of-a-bang, which tended (in a cockney accent) to blow the bloody door off . . . which then got lost in the garden!

My rubber-band has perished in storage, but has retained its shape. It will need replacing with a dental-brace band - coincidently - the same item required by the little N-gauge vehicles in the Lone Star 'Treble-O Trains' rage!

Completely stripped of paint, there is a slight remnant of gloss red inside the elevation-lock wheel, suggesting this was the 'civilian version, and I'm quite sure someone was planning on repainting it as one of the two military versions, weather for home use or a fraudulent sale is anyone's guess! If I ever find the time I'll repaint it in an urban camouflage of blue-mauve-grey-purple, so there's no doubt as to its origins!

It actually looks quite sleek in its bare, weathered (or oxidised) Mazac/Zamak-alloy finish and is here posed at maximum elevation for lobbing onto enemy trenches a few yards away, or getting the best 're-entry angle' for a big-bang!

As with the other photographs above, where possible I've cropped to reflect the size difference as shooting them together proved awkward due to their length; taking the camera back to get the nearer machine in, tended to blur-out the one behind.

Not for completisms' sake, as there are plenty-more rocket launchers, but because it happened to present itself during the search, this is the smaller example from Kwong Shing-KS-Kamley-Kositoys, with the later design of truck and no card insert with printed 'flat' crew. It's the standard cab-unit with a twin-axle trailer utilising the body-mounting plug to create an articulated 'train'.

K is for Kwong Shing

When I published a plethora of articles on the same day during Rack Toy Month a couple of years ago, on the subject of Kamley/Kositoy/KS and how they all seemed to be one; I'm pleased to say I wasn't wrong! But, there was a piece of the jigsaw missing, and thanks to Bill B, I now have it, and it explains the KS . . .

. . . as the parent company was Kwong Shing. We looked at Kwong Wah yesterday and there are other Kwong-somethings out there! Obviously we have both Kositoy and Kwong Shing together on the one advert graphic here, while . . .

. . . here we tie Kamley and Kositoy into each other with an identical, but over-stickered, set and the KS is brought into the fold through early/mid 1960's sets; where it appears as a sort of brand-marking; and later sets from Kositoy and Kamley (or containing the same product), where it's used as the prefix to stock-codes.

Recognisable stuff from the previous posts along with other items, some generic, some marked up, and some stealing artwork from other1960/70's sets I have in the master-collection (and which probably have nothing to do with the now-four K's). In addition some of the artwork has been nicked from Tamiya!

I'm also pleased to see the 'arctic warfare' helicopter header-card (which was one area where I could have been tripped-up over the previous posts!) is here with alternate and 'known' Kamley/Kositoy stuff in it (Combat Troops - top right) where mine has small-scale Airfix 8th Army (2nd type) piracies.

By this (1986) publicity photo' the Britains khaki infantry clones have clearly been phased out, although a few of the ostensibly '70's sets were probably hanging around to be found in the odd corner shop, we still had lots of independents back then.

The Nazi Spitfire's fun, they did have a few I believe and some (one?) airworthy Flying Fortresses?

A fine spread of civilian rack-toy tat was also on display, with - interestingly - some mini-truck body types never issued with the military trucks, well, two; the crane and the bin-lorry! The micro-cars have helped me ID a couple of mine and I think the tiny jeeps may have been seen in the recent Airfix post on the subject, but the resolution isn't clear enough.

And what looks to be the originator (or an earlier iteration) of the stretcher team we saw in the large set from Peter Evans a couple of months ago, this one is - even at poor resolution - a much cleaner sculpt. With Star's version, the Maymoon/M-Toy (Marty) take-off of the Britains Swoppet one and the brown one with clip-in bearers we've seen here in the past, there is a sub-collection there for someone with little space or a limited budget.

S is for Sahara . . . no . . . Stephanie . . . no . . . Serendipity!

I knew it was a girl's name! Turned out I had the Kositoy version all along! In fact I had another four trucks but all the same cab we looked at the other day . . .hey-ho!

Also turns out I had positioned it near-right in the mock-up, but it was smaller and higher with a new KH code underneath! These both have the early wheels as you would expect, but the card is a copy of the earlier (?) non- Kositoy, KS artwork, with heavier lines and a yellow background.

Kositoys/KS now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

News, Views Etc . . . Kamley

I always fuck-up when I try to tie posts into other posts, and it turned out that the Kamley entry in the A-Z was on Pacific Standard time or some shit, so it was sat in 'edit'! And I had forgotten to give the Wild West header-card's post a title!

All sorted now and the hot-links have been added to the bottom of yesterday's post - 2nd article below. 

All now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

 

K is for Kamley, Kositoy and KS . . .

. . . I had hoped it might also be for Kamco but they seem to pre-date Kamley's existence by a few years (it's not clear) so even if the '...co' is for Company, it looks like it's a different 'Kam... '!

Famous last words! Not only have I watched a fair amount of paint dry since writing that (I painted the gable-end this time last year!), but here I am doing a "...substantial blog-post...' on some of those figures!

Bought these the other day (from the Swagman's Daughter - same source of the PVC fish we looked at the other day), I knew I already had one, and I had downloaded images of the other card from old evilBay lots, but I wanted them while they were cheap, so I now have three of four possible cards . . . except there are other cards and other contents so I don't really!

In the meantime I had two shots from Brian Berke sitting in his folder waiting - ostensibly - for use in future posts on the Hong Kong/small scale 'But is it Giant' Blog. Checking the 'KS' folder for the other images, and seeing the Kositoy folder I was reminded that there were Kositoy versions of the trucks in Brian's image.

Long story short, within minutes I had realised that the contents of three 'K' folders were all the same company, and 'probably' a forth (Kamco) as it's another HK firm of the same era, and Kamco looked likely to be an abbreviated or short-form brand logo of Kamley [Industrial] Company .

The Kamley folder having a larger carded set also found in the Kositoy folder and Kositoy being usually the KS generic cards with an overprinted logo, the relationship between the three is beyond doubt, but the likelihood of a Kamco (producers of robots and train sets) connection became less hopeful the more I looked into it and I now doubt a connection - however I don't have the address for Kamco here, so who knows what may turn-up?

'Technicals' in the artwork; before the term was coined! Other sets contain a Jeep, or up to 12 figures (the Attack Force Emergency sets) while later sets were carded with shaped blisters for a more standardised display of contents. These are the generic cards, with only the KS stock-code as the clue to their origin.

In the research of the last couple of weeks I've also ID'd other large-scale figures from the K's and ten minutes on Google will enable you to too, you will also find the connecting sets that confirm the news in this post.

These probably date from the mid-1970's at the earliest, and the company was wound-up in 2003 so they are (as I said on the Khaki page some time ago) still quite common - if you dig about a bit!

These are the figures from all the early sets whether generic or Kositoy, of the various versions on the Khaki Infantry page, these are the only ones so far seen in these 'K' sets, and with the exception below are all copies of those Britains Herald Khaki Infantry on the page where they first appeared here as unknowns.

Close-ups of the bases; these are most easily identified by the numeral 3 on the base underside, otherwise you start obsessing over the size and font of the HONG KONG mark - and in the past I have! There being several other versions of these figures . . .

. . . as there are of this chap, who was in another tub in another corner of the collection. Now ID'd from those mint sets on Goggle, and then found in their tub by way of confirmation of guesswork (call it assumption if you like!), only this pose is found with the matching base-mark.

I've shot him with two sub-pirates, you can see the dropping-off of quality and these are two of four different batches of Britains Swoppet copy; what I haven't done yet is compare them (the other swoppet copies) all with the other Herald copies to see if there are any other 'go together' matches.

So, having sorted three brands or 'unknowns' into one 'company', let's look at some of the other pieces seen in Brian's shot as most of mine are in storage. I have collected enough or happened to have a few shots around in Picasa for a decent overview of the whole, but we will definitely return to the trucks one day as I have a whole tray of them in storage!

The gun first as it represents one of the main or obvious factors about this range from Kamley - different generations of production/moulding. Guns issued with the larger figures don't always have crew, however if you do the Google search you will find some do, and they come in two versions, early crew-men are basically astronauts! Later figures are the GI's shown here.

The other obvious difference is in the wheels; early sets have domed wheels like they've got old chromed hub-caps, while later sets have more military wheels with six wheel-nuts and a small central grease-hub. This wheel 'rule' extends to the trucks and helicopters.

However, there is another variance; the two guns are not quite the same . . . the differences are subtle, wider seats, smooth underside to the trail-legs; little things but the gun was re-tooled, as was the helicopter (but it got at least three generations!), while the trucks just got added-to; new cab designs and more body plug-ins.

I don't know if the finding of a brown figure suggests a whole brown run, but there are certainly a fair few grey vehicles and while I haven't found them yet, I suspect grey figures will turn-up, either of the Herald infantry or some of the many unattributed Airfix 1:32nd scale German Infantry copies?

The early 'astronauts' and later GI's. In the image two up, the third gunner - in the towing-eye -  although put there by me, is mirroring examples in storage who came-in like that, whether they were sometimes issued like that or placed there by their human is currently anyone's guess.

The truck or lorry . . . in the card artwork for the Combat Set they are depicted as pick-up trucks, but the models are more like small lorries; 3/4-ton or 30kwt types. We will need to return to these as not only are mine in storage (for all the body types and later trailer), but between what I have here and Brain's shot we only really have one type to show of the three designs Kamley used.

The three to the left are early Kositoy trucks with the card insert which was dropped from later issues; I call this the generic Ford-GMC type. To the right is a 'CHINA' marked copy in green of what I call the generic Volvo type, and then there is a third intermediate design with three small lights on the cab-roof which I call the generic Mercedes . . .

. . . and yes I know giving a 'branded-title' to a 'generic' is a bit oxymoronic but you have to start somewhere with the naming-of-the-parts when it's all make-believe toy stuff!

The blue vehicle is earlier than the China marked copy; a poorer Hong Kong copy which has been stretched and given an additional front bumper-bar (fender).

From the left: Kositoy early version with card-insert, Kamley issue, China-truck and the HK-marked clone, note the reinforcing a-frame on the underside to prevent the longer (but as thin, or thinner - I didn't check) load-bed from warping

Another reason for needing to return to the trucks is that the card inserts shown here are from the very early KS generic sets, Kositoy sets had Kositoy over-printed inserts which I can't show you. However I have knocked one up in Picasa but can't remember where the Kositoy logo is placed.

I have a feeling it may be over the engine-block (upper white box) with the 'Made in Hong Kong' left in the normal spot, but it may be further back (lower white box) or approximately where I've placed it, maybe just above the 'made in...' mark? As I say; we will return to these one day! If anyone can send us a genuine Kositoy insert (scan or photo) in the meantime; I'll add it at the bottom of this post for completion.

Also showing how the insert is folded and stuffed into the bed of the truck to show the two crew through the windows - card flats, in service caps, too cool for staff-collage!

Finally - for now - to the helicopters, I'm not sure about the order of these, but it seems to go:-

• Blocked-up cockpit-windows, six portholes (front left above)

• Open cockpit-windows, six portholes (blistered Combat Set)

•  Open cockpit-windows, five portholes, rear wheel arch (Brian's; top of post)

• Open cockpit-windows, five portholes, rear wheel arch, crude rotor-blades (back right above)

With the later wheels being phased-in at some point, followed toward the end by the crude rotor-blades of my newer example, but that doesn't explain the fact that my 'early' one has late wheels (which is why I'm not sure about them!).

It may be that the blocked-windows moulding was just another mould or another cavity running alongside one of the other two, or - given that my new one has no wheels and the unrelated vintage yellow one is missing a pair - that there is just a failure in the wheel department of my heavy-lift helicopter tub!!

I will see how Rack Toy Month pans-out, but we may yet return to miniature heavy-lift helicopters?

To cement this post you will find that four posts on the companies/company's small scale output published at the same time as this one, over on the Hong Kong blog (don't get excited, two of them are the gunners, one has no figures and all-four are brief!), while what I know of the companies has published on the relevant A-Z Blog - six posts for the price of none!

Because I can't do the links for what will actually be 8 posts (with another 'kosi' and a disambiguation) until they are all published, I'll sort all the direct links out on Monday afternoon . . . or whenever!

Monday 14th - Links Added

Kamley's A-Z Entry
Small Scale Type 1 Gunners
Small Scale Type 2 Gunners
Small Scale 8th Army 'Combat Troops'
Small Scale Wild West Header Card

 

All now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.