J is for Jean Höffler - 1: Wild West Jean Originals

I don't have a very good sample of Jean originals, a few odds and sods which have come-in with mixed lots and a bunch of mounted which I think came as a single lot? As a result I shot all the copies and things, but then ended-up with too many images for a post, so broke it into three, leaving the rathey-crappy sample of Jean originals as an intro'!

The samples we will be looking at - with a few additions - there are smaller copies, lots of them, but they are of little merit and poor quality so can wait for another day! The trouble with the originals (as far as my acquiring them goes) is that there are loads of them and the best place for a check-list/images is Kent's page.

My cowboys; the two prone ones seem to be additional poses, less easy to find and mine look to have never been painted, I also think they were on another tool, while scale wise they are a little larger too, but probably the same sculptor? The white horse has no signs of paint either.

Foot Indians; hardly worth showing and no prone figure, but I have the female with papoose which is another less common sculpt so you win some, you lose some!

However I can chase down Mr. Custer and give him a good spanking, as I have  a decent load of mounted Natives, albeit rather tatty on the paint front, but rather like Crescent or late Cherilea (&etc!) the later, shiny polyethylene meant the paint stayed on long enough to get them to the shops, and little else! It's fair to say these are play worn, and some of the horses have silver manes!

I shot this on John Begg's stand at Plastic Warrior a couple of years ago, and the horses are of note as we'll see some similar ones soon with a question-mark over them. Similar to the Cofalux one, but with a really naff slot-base system for the horse-team.

Variations on a theme; A Hong Kong version in pink (next post) stands with the Manurba-Big swivel-waist and a 30mm figure (another 'left-hooker'), both also used (like the set we're looking at here) as various premiums and in the Wundertüten 'sweetie' bags.

So that's a bit of a box-ticker, but it gets them out there and we'll look at the Hong Kong marked ones next.

S is for Swivel not Swoppet!

Although the actual reason for these probably has more to do with sculpting limits vis-à-vis undercuts, rather than any desire for added playability, the bandsmen look silly dancing on swords, while the dancer is - frankly - mincing on the marching legs!

Three of the marching figures, all the 'Pipes & Drums' poses, although they all have the same legs, the Plastic Warrior magazine (link) 'Special Publication' on Crescent (for these are theirs!) makes clear that each figure is individually marked on the base, and the bases do differ slightly!

I didn't check mine before shooting the photographs, so you'll have to consult the above publication, especially as I am still missing a pose - gives me a chance to return to them one day!

The sword dancer; going back to the PW special; they suggest a surrendering pose is the result of the leg swap, and I can see it, my mincing comment was unfounded! Also I was going to use my favourite 'Dancing L....' phrase, but firstly, this isn't Cherilea and second, I don't want to be making enemies North of the boarder when I may be needing my McDougall credentials to seek asylum from a neo-fascist Bwreaksitian any-day soon!

Five of six; I'm missing the officer with drawn sword. This chap came in this year I think, can't remember if it was PW's show in Twicker's, Sandown or one of the boxes from Chris or Jim, so thanks to anyone it may have been! He is unpainted 'on top' but fully-painted 'underneath' which is a bit odd, until you realise . . .

. . . as a set/line they are shedding paint like there's no tomorrow! I can see a day, fifteen or twenty-years hence when I just strip them back to two-coloured unpainted figures, and that may be what happened to the marching torso?

 Crescent - especially late stuff - being not that chalky have always been bad at holding their paint and there's nothing you can do about it, short of adding a coating of something clear, which A) may discolour going forwards, or B) start flaking as well, bringing the paint underneath with it anyway!

A is for Ajax, Archer, Bergan, Beton . . . Not!

This pair was donated to the Blog by Brian Berke a while ago, he found them as old store stock ages ago, so many thanks to him.

Marked MADE IN HONG KONG down one leg, the horses are nicely finished but poor copies of the old Bergan Toys horse, although the riders are from Ajax poses, and a quick study of the horse - especially the mane - reveals it's a copy of the Ajax copy of the Bergan horse, specifically the Ajax 'Large Horse and Rider' range.

The un-carded bags don't have any staple holes or tape marks, being heat-sealed like old bread-bags! Therefore they probably [almost certainly] weren't mounted on a larger backing card either but rather; sold from a shop stock box, or transferred from a generic shipping carton to point-of-sale 'bin' type thing?

One of the bags wasn't sealed very well at all, and had opened itself with a little help from Royal Fail so the Indian can run free, his black Mustang carrying him majestically across the central plains his ancestors enjoyed; the cowboy will remain a prisoner where he will be unable to wave his 'legally-held' firearm about with quite the gay abandon he might otherwise claim a constitutional-right to so do!

Left over from a post a while ago (the shot was in another folder and I forgot it!), these are cheaper Hong Kong copies loosely based on European posts, the upper pair being found in a similar bag to Brian's two; it's a copy of the Britains Trojan horse with a swivel-waist Indian harking back to Crescent I think.

Below the 'mint' pair; are a few that appear vaguely related, from the right; a same size - as the Indian above - cowboy, again swivel-waist, but with heavier leg sculpts and factory paint. To his left are two smaller swivel-waist clones, following the pose, paint (and plastic colour in the case of the middle figure), these will be copies from a smaller firm of the larger figure, just to grab a slice of commercial-pie!

The middle guy being a direct clone, while the chap on the left only has paint on the upper half and seems to be an earlier version of the unpainted foot-figures we looked at here and which were carried in Baravelli sets Indiani e Cowboy - I noticed the other day that that's still 'Barabelli' to the PSTSM!

Z is for err.... ZZ!

An unknown maker, or at least; we know it because it marked all its stuff with a very distinctive logo, but it's unidentified, in that we don't know the whole name of the company, or whether or not it's extant like Blue Box, or gone for good like Lucky Toys?

A year ago I still thought they might be an East German outfit, as they were always turning-up in Germany, and seemed to have a Soviet-bloc 'quality' to them - i.e. better than Hong Kong, but not up to the mark of West European toy finishing.

The distinctive logo being two letter 'Z's superimposed on each other, which I put up here a while ago, the serif is a bit lumpier than I CAD'ed, but the basic idea is there. Sadly there was no feedback that time, maybe these will trip a memory or two...

These are some semi-swopett Indians I photographed on Adrian's stall a while ago, they are around 70mm, and I say 'semi-swopett' as they only have a swivel waist and plug-in bases, or the foot figures do, the mounted figure doesn't even get a base. The figures are copies of the Elastolin swopetts, which were more articulated, with separate weapons etc...

They also copied the cowboys (see the Figuren Magazine link at end), and I suspect knights? I've also read/heard somewhere that VEB Plaho might have been similarly plagiarised by ZZ, but have seen no evidence?

Some close-ups of markings and some more shots of the figures, you wouldn't know the mounted figure was a ZZ if it wasn't found in situ with the foot figures. Equally; if you find foot figures without a mounted figure, there's nothing to indicate that they are from Hong Kong!

In addition they made farm and zoo animals taken from Britains' 1:32 scale range and Elastolin's 1:25 scale range, along with some unique designs (see also the STS link at end). I suspect from the logo's on the cards that they were premiums for the chocolate brand; Riesen [Giant, Colossal], but due to the size of each carded bag, possibly a mail-away, or token-save exercise to be exchanged at the retail outlets counter? If not; they were definitely trying to link themselves to the - rather lovely - chocolate-coated toffees. However, they were also distributed in the USA by R. Dakin and Co., San Francisco...claiming to be a product of West Germany? And Skyline of Milwaukee "Made and hand-painted in W. Germany"

I also have two (or three?) small tin-plate toys with the mark on, basically either copies or modern designs of old penny-toys, one is an airship, the other a WWI type 'plane and there may have been a third, but I might have let it go as being well outside the collections range (interactive toy? clicking frog? something like that), but they are in storage so we'll have to look at them another time, the thing about them though, is that they seemed brand-new about 6 years ago, and it's very hard to fake newness with tin-plate, you can fake age, but that shiny, mint paint is err...shiny and 'mint'! So they may well still be manufacturing, now 'Chinese' not Hong Kong per se, but Google's no help.

Couple of Links

German language Figures Journal page - the 54mm mounted Indian with base and bag of Cowboys near the bottom of the page are probably not ZZ originals, they're more common Hong Kong 'generic' figures.

Riesen Zoo and Riesen Farm on STS Forum

Can anybody add anything to what's been found on the two links? It may well be that they ARE a German company, copying animals from closer at home, while buying-in the Cowboys & Indians, and sourcing the tin-plate from a third company? But then why the ZZ logo on the HK bases? I think they've got to be HK and the Dakin packs were (deliberately?) misleading...help!