H is for How They come In - Even at Christmas!

I had an emergency Christmas parcel from Peter Evan arrive out of the blue the other day, small but perfectly formed with several items of interest, so let's have a look at it . . .

Two Disney figures (centre) and two Disneyalikes (outsides), from three sources, I think the Jasmine is Kinder; she's a polypropylene kit in three parts, I don't know where the Wasabi comes from, he's a bit Phidal-like, but on the small side and a softer PVC as are the two 'princesses', but they are not actually Disney, being Papo's 40mm fantasy models.

I love these! I think they are probably cavemen, but Peter wondered if they might be South Sea islanders (she certainly looks the part!), which would be nice, as there might be palm-huts or a dug-out canoe somewhere, they are also interesting for being two-part hollow mouldings like those dinosaurs we looked at a while ago. I guess a rack-toy thing and large'ish at 80mm

Wing Lung's copies of Matchbox US Infantry in 30mm, the MG gunner was missing from the end of the runner last time we looked at them (also courtesy of Peter!), and I think the other missing pose is probably the shooting officer as seen here, oversized and marked 'China', and also in the lot sent a couple of days ago.

These are some kind of rack-toy Transformer knock-off, there are no instructions, but trail-and-error will probably suffice, and I will build one, one day, just for fun! I have a yellow one somewhere, which probably also came from Mr. Evans, and the red one has a short-short component, otherwise they are the same tooling.

Cheers Peter - fun post for Christmas, and "Happy Christmas" to all Loyal Readers, let's hope 2022 is an improvement on the previous two!

Which also means that at some point in February we will have 22:22hrs 2nd of February 2022 which could be shortened (at twenty-two seconds past the minute) to 22:22:22-2/2/'22 . . . if that's not an invitation to one of Beelzebub's underlings - I don't know what is! Look out Yellowstone - your time may be at hand!

RTM is for Return To More - Wing Lung

Looked at these when I first ID'd them even though my sample here was rather pathetic, and despite the bulk still being in storage, enough have come in now to give a better picture and confirm better the base marking which makes these easy to sort from the chaff of all the other clones!

RTM is the best place to do that and having mentioned them in the previous post now is the time! With thanks to Chris Smith and Peter Evans as the latter sent the on-runner examples, while the former sends a few in each of his donations to the blog, to be shared here with you!

Starting chronologically; the Wild West are all Airfix clones and come in the same colours they used for their WWII stuff, six poses each of foot cowboys and Native American Indians, gives plenty of play-value from a rack-toy. I haven't got a bagged or carded set yet so I don't know if they got accessories or what they may have been, maybe a Tee-pee/Tipi or one of the smaller-sized Britains Herald totem-poles, which do come in oxide-brown?

American infantry; before and after cleaning! Im not sure what poses are missing, Matchbox bazooka and Airfix running Marine clones; is my best guess! but it's not that simple as we'll see next:

The Afrika Korps; All Matchbox piracies, but with the British officer giving commands instead of the original German, in a larger scale sample of Brit's in oxide red I have the other pose, clearly in a clean 'British' sample, but I suspect that the larger missing samples will have loads of this chap in the wrong bag! The running chap - bottom left on the green baize - looks a bit suss' too!

The British; Again all-Matchbox clones, with the conversion Tom spotted years ago, the prone Bren-gunner is also ex-Eighth Army, while the crawling guy is taken down from 54mm.

In all four cases they seem to have gone with ten-to-twelve poses (as per the 20mm), being the non-support-weapon/accessory-needing poses. Which is easy with the Brit's and Yank's, a mystery as to the missing DAK officer though, while the German Infantry however . . .

. . . get three Americans - MG-gunner, grenade thrower (Matchbox Germans had their own Airfix-likey - seen opposite him on the runner) and the platoon commander with walkie-talkie! And so little effort has gone into converting the helmets, there will be a big ol' sorting when I do get the others out of storage/the garage!

But this is why I'm reticent to commit to more than a guess on the two Americans missing from the runner above, until I get the whole lot together (there's loads of these in store, including metallic green ones and chocolate brown ones in a very small sort of 15mil who may not be Wing Lung) there are still questions to be answered.

However a small sample of the 20mm's (one of each known pose) does suggest the two missing figures might be taken from Airfix, as Airfix seems to have been the No.1 donor in the smallest size. And the German para's are a rare beast in rack-toy circles, not as common even as the US para's where I think we've ID'd three with two still looking for a surname.

Confirming my previous wittering on base mark, the real giveaway is not the marks themselves but the fact that the ovoid cartouches are pretty constant between sets and/or lines/scales.

I think I've only found the Wild West in 30mm, where they go well with the various cake-decorations, Lines-Waddington/Rosas y Malarat and Gulliver clones. The WWII might also be in a 50/54mm size, but I've not found any and someone (early Rado Industries?) has similar Airfix 8th Army clones in the larger size, with similar bases, but the are not so uniform in their geometry, and the marking is different with a 'made in-' prefix.

So - as a final aside - to answer Tom's question of a few years back, I think the Matchbox poses were limited to the 30 and 40mm sets, while the Airfix were confined to 20mm, with the odd figure (Airfix US officer) in all three sizes?

We will return to these, probably twice (three times with the A-Z entry), but for now that's a quick overview!

M is for Multiple Branding

We seem to have a post or two like this every Rack Toy Month, not so much out of design, more by accident, but they do serve to illustrate how these things are never as simple as even I might make them seem sometimes, and definitely more complicated that some people like to make them out to be as they make it up as they go along!

So this is a right minestrone of a Curate's egg; the figures are definitely Wing Lung, the packaging carries branding for Knight and Gausini, import details for Fancy It Agencies and there was probably another agency (packer/shipper in Hong Kong/China) bringing the contracts together?

I thought Knight has been seen here before, but they haven't (there is another one coming), Gausini seems or sounds Italian, but now redirects to Dteinei which also sounds Italian but has Chinese spellings and seems to be Canadian? Fancy It will be the bone fide UK-importer, and the contents could be bought-in from several sources of which one is definitely Wing Lung.

The contents are run-of-the-mill stuff and with the exception of the known Wing Lung figures, nothing more than generic fare, stuffed in a toob with a cord carry-handle which dates them to the 1990's/2010's . . . not that such toys aren't still around, they are! Just that that's how long they've been in the collection!

The toob is packed out with two vac-formed end-cups; another recent practice, while the rest of the contents are second or third generation copies of old 1970's products found in one version or another in many rack-toy play-sets.

The known Wing Lung portion of the contents (and everything in the previous image may also be Wing Lung's output?) consists of a small number of copies of the Matchbox US and German WWII figures (and a couple of Brit's) in the 40mm size, going quite well with the Ideal radar trailer - bottom right.

F is for Follow-ups - Combat Soldiers

Technically I'm a 'toy soldier collector', but it's a long time since the collection was more than 50% military, if it ever was, and even if you include all the cowboys & Indians, armed spacemen, the sailors and airmen, it probably won't get far over the halfway point! But I try to deliver a decent number of green 'army men' here, and these are follow-ups to they!

I've known for some time that my Taffy Toys stretcher has damaged carrying-handles, so I was very pleased to pick this up at Sandown the other day. We've seen them before more than once and with Brian Carrick's also on the Khaki Infantry page, they've had a lot of column inches here for 8 or so poses of odd-scale, odd era figures, with non-service weapons!

Also of interest with the new acquisition - he has clear signs of paint? The fleck of green on the pillow came off the base of one of the Timpo Brit's he was bagged with for a few days - I suspect, but the flesh seems to be all his, what's left of it! Given the number of other companies [possibly] in the frame with Taffy, could one of them have had a painted issue? For instance those TN Thomas space figures have a painted PVC version; alongside unpainted PVC and polyethylene issues and it's not 'firm' that they all came from Thomas?

We've seen the Chap Mai Land-Rover quite recently, with the figure frame Blogger a while ago, but I picked-up a few spare figures so shot them with the 'rover, and then looking for something else found this . . .

  . . . which is the whole set, beautifully shown-off in a box-opening type video, but she can't resist playing with them, para-drop AFV's! And THAT's obviously what the funny thing under the Lanny is - that fouls the carpet - it's for attaching the para-drop frame and parachute! I've got to find the whole set haven't I? . . . God knows where I'll stash a two-foot-by-three-foot polypropylene Hercules!

I believe it was sold here as an unbranded generic through both Argos and Index (before the latter folded), but may have been branded to either of the stores or Chap Mai (but not in the catalogues) and will have had different packaging and/or branding in different markets.

Argo are now selling the Chinook version under their Chad Valley branding.

I had one of those anonymous eMails from an anonymous fuckwit with the misfortune to be born fuckwitted who suggested I had used the same few figures to pretend I had all three sets of the DFC-MTC  Mini Military Playpack's I posted on the Hong Kong small scale, Giant or Not Blog back in Rack Toy Month, he said "I guess you think your [sic] clever and you tricked folks", so - fuckwitted one - actually I think I'm clever 'cos I can guess which 'folksy' side of the pond you reside! 

Dude - if I've got all three boxes and all three playmats, I don't think it actually matters how many of the figures I might have in your addled brainbox. Wotafuckwit.

To add weight to his conspiracy theorising; there may well be a difference in the figure count of one set (or two sets) compared to the three published posts as I found a crawling figure on the floor a few weeks later and added it to the Battle for Berlin set, as A) it only had one prone figure, B) it only has one vehicle and might have an extra figure and C) I didn't want to upset the count of the other two, when B has some validity!

And I can't be arsed to check my own posts to further 'trick' folks! Sometimes you do have to wonder why you bother . . .

 . . . anyway; while I was at it - I did a better colour comparison!

Also now on the Gaint... Blog, but shown here in last year's RTM was the Wing Lung post , and here's the missing larger scale base mark, it's not quite as neat as my 'from memory' graphics, but it's not too far removed!

W is for Wing Lung

So, the day Rack Toy Month started (I haven't heard back from Kofi or Teresa yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it's properly recognised!) I got an eMail from Tom Clague, along with three images that were very useful (I also got 7 eMails from Brian Berke - the same day! A lot of which will be featuring in RTM - there; now I've abbreviated it, it's part of the social fabric!), he (Tom) also posed a couple of questions, so this post is half Tom's and half whatever I can give in answer to those questions . . . which is not much really!

Tom's contribution: Wing Lung; Pirates of Matchbox (and Airfix) to the gentry of the West. This is actually a set of Matchbox British Infantry clones, in around 40mm (or about 1:45th scale). Tom points out that one of them (bottom right-hand image) is a clever conversion of a Matchbox 8th Army figure, with the addition of fully trousered legs, and of note is that they seem to have done the work themselves, it kinda' shows round the gaiters, but it's not a cut-n-shut from another pose as no other pose has legs/feet in quite the same position.

Sold on the runner, as most (but not all) their sets were, there are 12 poses for a twelve-figure count. Missing are the 'alternate' prone crawler, the stabbing-down pose (clearly replaced by the conversion - which actually makes a better figure), radio-operator and AFV crewman in coveralls. Also missing are the No.2 for the Vicker's MG and the sten-gunner.

I suspect that it's pronounced Wing 'Loong'. They only seem to have produced a basic five sets of figures/moulds, but with packaging variations and a green set of British clones issued with US header-cards there are a dozen or so to collect, although if they were dedicated toy-manufacturers they will be responsible for all sorts of stuff hidden as generics or under the made-up or actual brands of European importers/chains.

They must have flourished after 1971 (when the Matchbox started issuing these figures), so reasonably recent in historical terms, and possibly still out there contract-manufacturing for the Toysaurus or Wallmart, or making kitchen-bowls for onward shipping to Peru or South Africa, such is the fate of makers who don't stick to toys!

I had actually posted Wing Lung a couple of few weeks ago over on the Hong Kong Blog, and having only one old scan of a photograph of four figures for the post had enhanced it somewhat with a bit of home-made graphical content! The above are those which are best carried-over to this post.

The three header cards are consistent across the 'range' with the US getting a greyish-white card surround (blued on later sets), the British; yellow and the Germans an orange-tan. And base marking in all scales and types was the same neat HONG KONG either lengthwise on longer/thinner bases, or up-and-under on shorter fatter bases, and all bases have 'rectangle roundness' settings of around 100%, that is to say perfect half-circles at each end with parallel sides between, whatever the length/width, a few have flat tips, but perfect 45% radius' on all four corners . . . in fact very easy to ID as loose figures in your 'unknowns' box!

One of Tom's questions was "Does anyone know if they ever did this set in 1:76...", well, no I don't think so. I have a load of these loose, in storage and it's a funny thing, but the above shots (taken from feeBay back in 2006) show all the poses I've found. Being: five US Marines, four German stormtroopers off to Belgium, in all their early-war finery and three Fallschrimjager, all also ex-Airfix.

I have them in green, brown and a silver-grey . . . basically the same colours as the larger figures. Yet while the larger figures are Matchbox copies, each equating to one of the three nations depicted, in the smaller scale you get the same Airfix copies for all three sets, nation being set by colour! And - They are tiny, about 17/18mm, smaller than the Airfix HO-OO figures, but look how many you got - 3 or 4 frames to a stack and three stacks, that's 108 figures minimum, 144 maximum.

Here being sold as an unbranded 'generic' imported by N. Davison and Co. of Sheffield (sometime in the mid-1980's from the 'CE' mark on the sticker), and off-the-runner, but still following the colour rule for the header-cards (except the US, who have gone blue), the plastic colour rule for the figures, the base rules and showing the other sets, badly; I photographed these on Adrian's stall at the Plastic Warrior show a couple of years ago, but the lighting/flash was all wrong.

You will also have clocked by now that they also stole the artwork of the original Matchbox sets as well!

This isn't much better, but helps to show that the Germans are also Matchbox sculpts!

Related to his other question, Tom was hoping the prone figure/s may have been in the small scale as they weren't produced by Matchbox in their 1:76th scale set, at all, either of them? As we've seen, they weren’t I'm afraid, but here they are in the full 1:32 of the originals. One of life's little mysteries!

Listing
Known Sets
HO-Gauge compatible (18mm, mix of Airfix piracies)
- American Soldiers
- British Soldiers
- German Soldiers
30/35mm (ex-Airfix 1:32nd scale figures)
Cowboys and Indians
40mm (ex-Matchbox)
Single Runner Sets
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox US Infantry)
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox British Infantry in green plastic)
- British Soldiers
- German Soldiers
Large Bags of Loose Figures
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox US Infantry)
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox British Infantry in green plastic)
- British Soldiers
- German Soldiers
Small Generic Bags on Larger Backing Card (loose figures)
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox US Infantry)
- American Soldiers (ex-Matchbox British Infantry in green plastic)
- British Soldiers
- German Soldiers

There is also a Wing Mau Trading Co., who carried/exported the same spacemen as Hing Fat and a set of factory-painted 60mm PVC/rubber S.W.A.T Team figures. But going on the number of Chinese restaurants with 'Wing' in the title, I'm guessing it's a common enough name and that there's no connection between the two.

Finally you may have recognised Tom's name, I've plugged his two previous albums and an EP, well, he has another out, it's free, downloadable now, and good. I would describe it as chill-out psychedelia and it comes with CD-scaled cover art, give it a go . . .http://theloveexplosion.blogspot.com