J is for Jeep

Having passed-off two of these as a 'whole post' earlier in Rack Toy Month, I feel a bit of a fraud having them again so soon, but A) I did follow them up the same day with something else due to the frugality of that post and B) one of the features of this year's RTM has been the leading of things into each other, and this is a case in point.

I hadn't put the other two away when I blogged them and in doing so realised there were others among the bagged ones, which led to this comparison shot, however by the time I'd taken yesterday's shots for the Saracen Saladin hybrid follow-up it all grew a bit, so we'll have a bit of an inconclusive ramble here, now.

So, these are all very similar although there are differences, given the fact that those differences are found with the same cards, while similar Jeeps are found with different cards, it would appear that those differences are probably no more that either generations of the same moulds, different mould-tool cavities or shippers/packers using several suppliers and going through different generations of header-card . . . whatever the truth, let's have a closer look . . .

... or as close as can be with 50-odd years old polyethylene bags in the way!

The red one we looked at the other day is the better of the two; marginally, having a smoother pinch in the bodywork, forward of the seats, as found on the real-life originals while the orange one has the pinch sharper and further back.

Likewise where the body meets the radiator grill is simplified on the orange version and going back to the previous shot; you will also notice that the trailer is smaller with both the examples in the Army Vehicle carded bags.

Here is the other of the Army Vehicle carded pair with my loose green one; another telling difference is that the two loose ones have matching length axles, while the two bagged examples have too-long yet inconsistent axle lengths, something that you may recall differentiated types of the 1-ton Humber mini-trucks.

At some point in the future it may/should be possible to tie the one in with the other using these markers, the three letter code on the loose Jeep being another parallel with mini-trucks, swoppet Wild West copies, beach-toys and etcetera! Plastic colour in another signature, card art or the fonts or stamps employed to mark the toys are more ways of sorting, but you need the stuff preserved for such study to have any effect. And - of course - the other things in a set or bag, such as any accompanying figures; are also good markers.

However; . . . with over 600 makers, in plastics, in Hong Kong,  in the late 60's (he says from memory?) feeding maybe a couple of hundred shippers/agents and a few dozens of major importers/wholesalers/jobbers, the most we will ever be able to do with any certainty on a lot of this stuff is link them to the same factory gate, but we may never know the name of that factory!

Here we see the two in the Army Jeep header-carded bags to the left in the second image above; the gun-tractor is identical to my loose two, but the other is a third design with all plastic running-gear and a simplified body-work boundary.

Was it later (the card is glossier), or a deliberate copy by a third-party? We may . . . hell; 'will' . . . probably never know, it could have been an emergency purchase, to fulfil an order after another tool got damaged? I would imagine simply a later version/replacement moulding, designed [re-designed!] to reduce costs and make assembly simpler, but whether it came from the same source is a different matter?

Finally; to the two smaller bags on the right-hand end of the comparison-shot's row. The one in the newer-looking, glossy-carded bag is the same as the better quality loose pair, but with all-plastic wheel/axle arrangements, while the one in the much older-looking card is the simplified version, so as far as clues to research go - no bloody help at all!

However, both contain figures and there is a difference, the set on the left above; Larami's 'US Combat Tank and Jeep', contains the same little Airfix '1st version' and Britains 'being shot' copies we saw with the SF sets two days ago (I shook them out of the way for the shot - they're on the Airfix Blog somewhere!), while the set to the right 'Army Jeep'; has the same copies of Blue Box Germans carried by Nadel & Sons in little bags, so actually the clues to future research are sitting there after-all!

Moving away from the bagged/earlier Jeeps, we find these two which are interesting as the better of the two (the herb-green one with bigger wheels) is almost certainly the copy, while the rough-looking moulding is almost certainly the original!

I say 'almost' in both cases as there is a lack of packaged examples, but the olive-green one with little wheels is a late-1970's/80's one, which came-in with a bunch of contemporaneous stuff, while the later one (actually the four inset, with red backgrounds) came in Peter Evan's 'Big Bag' of recent/current rack toys.

They may come from the same place, may even come from the same tool, but the newer one has been cleaned up, release-pins have been moved and it's got better wheels, but from the currently common chalky-feel polymer.

The big boy on the left is the Imperial/Rex one from the post a week or two ago and lined up in front of him in the top-right shot are my loose green one form Adrian and three others; the earlier one from the previous image and two littlies, one a common 80/90's moulding and the other an unmarked copy of the Giant Jeep.

Below them . . . the state of play today - pretty poor really! The grey one (apparently missing a plug-in) is hideous, all tall and squished; it looks like something you might find on a coin-operated roundabout in a shopping-precinct or whizzing around a regional mail-logistics depot . . . when not plugged into a charger!

The other two are sort of OK for what they are and while both would benefit from a re-paint, the Willy's looks like a Mahindra copy and the Wrangler looks like it was requisitioned from Barbie!

That common 1980-90's one in two sets, both shipped and sold by LB Ltd (Levy Brothers), later than the Mini Army sets we've previously looked at, these contain very poor, crumbly figures, a third or fourth-generation copy of Blue Box's Patton tank (itself a copy of a larger battery toy by someone like Marx) and the worst copy of Kamley's little truck - look closely and you can see how it was cut straight into the tool-steel with a router and a drill; CAD-CAM at its most basic, if they were even involved - it may have been done by hand!

I have a shed-load of later Jeeps and/or smaller Jeeps along with a few larger vintage types and lots of Land Rovers, in storage; so inevitably we will return to them here!

The other day I mentioned the missing crew . . . well these (red and yellow sample) are the figures I was referring to and they are in two sizes, I think we've seen a carded set here with them (I can't find it so that may be a post to come?), but it may be on the Airfix Blog? Not only have none of the Jeeps in today's post got their figures; they are nearly all equipped for figures with ether male spigots or female receivers evident on most.

The provision of spare tyres and Jerry-cans with the vehicles is also a bit hit and miss with some having both and some having neither! And I was guessing the kit responsible (UPC - but who made the original? Renwal, Hawk, Adams?) for the figures also provided the material for the various HK Jeep trailers, even the Blue Box one, but it might be taken from MPC's Korean War CJ-5 kit?

To the right are the originals at around 40mm. The guy looking straight-forward has two levers between his legs and another in his right-hand and may be operating plant or a weapons system? He may be the rear-unit steerer/driver for the old atomic cannon model-kit?

Below the whoever (UPC et al.) poses are a few of the others you will find in cheap, mixed lots, all orphans until you see them in the correct vehicle in a carded, boxed or bagged set, after which you can pair them up or at least label them!

B is for Battle Ground...or is it?

Having now decided to have a Hong Kong small-scale Blog (which I tried back in 2008, but I thought I had to trick Blogger with a separate ID and it all got too complicated!) these will appear on that Blog at some point, both singly and as a group comparison (mirroring this post), but as I loaded this here back in January it can stay.

So; to the nature of 'Generics', a post that could almost as easily be done with 1970's bagged or carded small scale Cowboys & Indians or 1960's dime-store 'penny-whistles', but I'm using these as they were pretty much the swan-song of small-scale 'army men', also: having got out of the army and decided I was old enough to blow my money on what I wanted, I spent a few years hoovering them up as they appeared, so - hopefully - should have most of the variations!

I say rather pompously "so; to the nature of generics" as if I'm about to deliver some great treatise on a grand secret of the Hong Kong toy industry...I'm not! There is no secret, basically, all the figures in this post came from the same source, we just don't know who, and - in point of fact - it's probably not an HK source, it's probably a Chinese one! Indeed, because these appeared as the run-up to handover was looming, they carry neither HK nor China on any of the packaging; itself unusual, nor on the figures bases.

These first four are all 'branded' to Battle Ground; the clear 'generic', although several have stickers on the card or reverse with another ID entirely, while the same sets can come with different cards, and the same brands carry alternate and different-sourced products. All importers (jobbers) - to a man.

The shot shows single and double-pouch header-carded bags, and both single and four-blister bubble-packs. I'm sure that elsewhere other formats could be obtained - as Battle Ground - to order, but these were available in the UK between 1988/9 and about 1998/9 and I should also add that other products in other scales also come in packaging with both types of the Battle Ground artwork - again: as generics or with over-stickers.

As well as stipulating different formats (or accepting them 'off the shelf'), end-users/clients could have customised artwork, again to their own design using the Chinese company's designers, or off-the-shelf graphics or from their own art workers, and here we see the same four-pocket blister attached to three different cards, the French artwork seems to have been lifted or part-lifted from somewhere else, see the white areas round the hand/butt of the gun, this was before digital patches and colour-matching, and as they were budget toys: cheap-cost artwork - whoever was responsible for it - was the order of the day.

Here we see the contents of the single pouch, now with new header-cards and a squarer bags - which are softer PVC. One colour, or several, and note how with the multi-coloured set each colour has been dumped in the bag on top of the last, but the first (bottom) layer seems to be the dregs of several batches!

Mini sets were also available, each with the flag and there is no relationship between the colour of the figures and the design on the flag's sticker, with the same flag accompanying bags of different coloured figures, and different flags being put with the same coloured figures! I have to thank German collector Andreas Dittman for most of these, and they were a bit later than the above dates, he picked them up on the continent about ten years ago, and I then found a few others in one of those glass-shelf partitioned 50p pocket-money displays at/around the same time.

Some of the logos/trademarks connected to these figure's 'brands'. The LB sets are almost certainly from the Glasgow-based Levy Brother's LB Group (correctly: Levy (LB Group) Bros. Ltd.), I seem to recall that they were bought a few years ago by H Grossmann/HGL (their postcodes were a few streets apart!) who have themselves recently been sold, but I'll check that.

The figures are all copies of Matchbox German Infantry and Airfix US Infantry, to which is added a crude version of the old Monogram radio operator, although see the note on the Japanese (2nd following paragraph).

The bases - as mentioned above - are blank, which is as uncommon for Hong Kong products as it is for modern/current Chinese products, suggesting that the originator was either an HK-based company, obtaining finished product from the (then still slightly 'enemy' Communist State) mainland OR already producing on the mainland themselves, but not wanting to admit it (for the same reasons) until the handover of the colony, which actually/eventually happened as these were drying-up in UK shops.

As an exception to the rule, the smaller two-pouch bag has some ex-Airfix Japanese added; these are earlier figures, which I looked at in One Inch Warrior magazine's 7th edition. They are the same size and style (but with sharper-edged bases), and share the wacky colours so will almost certainly come from the same source (which is why they're in the bags!), but were definitely originally issued earlier, as they had been turning-up as loose figures for years(#) before these 1990's figures. Their original HONG KONG mark has been removed for this issue, although the scar is visible on the base. [# When they turned-up previously (and with the full base mark) - it was usually in small numbers, so probably from Christmas crackers, end-of-pier crane-machine bags and/or vending capsules &etc.]

The loose stuff is all in storage at the moment so we'll have to re-use these old pictures from something else to just show that: A) as loose figures they are not that rare (upper arrow - both stacks), but they are not as common as some of the 1960-80's small scale, and: B) they come in various other colours or shades, but green and blue remain the commonest (from the big bags!) also: C), there is a second issue (lower arrow) which are of poorer quality with thinner bases and lots of flash which I haven't tied into specific packaging yet, but they may just be from late versions of some of the sets listed here. These points are - of course - UK-centric; it may be a different story elsewhere.

 

Known Sets
As Battle Ground (generic)
- Single blister pack (J.A.Phillips, 1992)
- Quadruple blister pack (HCF, 1996)
A7/521 - Single pouch bag with header card (Herbert Kees, early 1990’s)
- Double pouch bag with header Card (late 1990's with older 1980's Japanese figures)
As Bestoy (generic)
BES142 - Soldier Set (quadruple blister, an earlier logo was written in baby-blocks)
As HP (Hans Postler, France and Germany)
51353 - Small header-card Bag (French language version*)
As LB Ltd. ('Super Toy Packs'**)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (Clown and 3-balloon graphics, blue figures, 1993)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (4-balloon graphics, multi-coloured figures, 1994)
ST-11-2436 - Mini Army (4-balloon graphics, blue figures, 1995)
As MGM Super Toy International (France?)
Ref. 2295 - Les Minis Armees (quadruple blister pack)
Other (generic)
- Attack Force Set (multi-blister with AFV's and scenics, late 1980's***)
- Title-less mini pack (France/Germany? Mid-2010's)

* The same packs came with the larger Airfix piracies with striated bases; each bag also has a small-scale Saladin-type armoured car.
* * The same bags were used for very poor 'last generation' Airfix piracies (Russian Infantry and Paratroops) in a pale blue crumbly kind of polyethylene, almost 'scrap plastic'.
*** The same card was previously used for Airfix piracies of an earlier 1980's type, which may make this the earliest use of the later figures - from the artwork re-use.