OB (?) is for Toy Leader, Pioneer, Woolbro and probably Zita et al?

Those loyal readers who have followed the Blog for some time will know there's usually one or two posts in RTM which get bogged-down in the minutia of branding, phantom-brands and brand-marks without proving much beyond the fact the Chinese/Hong Kong/Jobber branding can be a nightmare!

This is sort of one of those, but it also adds a bit to the Pioneer story (mostly uncovered here) and gives us a couple of what I suspect are quite late (i.e. quite recent) Woolbro items.

A couple of different sets, credited to a Toy Leader and imported into the UK by Woolbro, we'll do the brand stuff at the end. Contents are similar to the Realtoy military sets, or the Peace Enforce set we saw last year? If you then click 'older post' you'll get the contemporaneous Woolbro set we also saw then.

One in temperate combat scheme, the other desert, are they post '90/91 Gulf War, or earlier, there's no clue on the packaging? The contents however are really quite interesting, with references to various other Asian toy-lines/Marques.

The figures, are they the same ones Stonegalleon carry, softer versions from the Realtoy tool, or straight Pioneer production . . . well, they are the larger size, so it would seem they are from the tooling used for the Realtoy (and other) sets, and it may be that the sharper, squarer based figures (last year's and the Zita set) are from the same tooling, but weren't commissioned by Realtoy (or whoever was behind Realtoy - Dacron, Smart, Supreme?), so don't turn-up in the harder vinyl with consecutive numbering.

The trolley I have loose in my collection, it's a darker green, and better engineered (I think, I'll have to compare them when all this shite is properly sorted) and I assumed it was someone like either Corgi (all those 1:48th 'planes in recent years) or New Ray, and the recoilless-rifle here looks ex-New Ray too, so it would seem we have a pattern emerging?

I think the trolley is some kind of air-force ground-equipment, a charger, tester, starter or something, while the AT weapon is looking a bit TOW-like so second-generation ATGM? I would add that the stadium/marshalling-yard lamp-stands were seen in that other 'group' of sets branded Supreme/Ackerman/Titan etc?

Neither picture is perfect I'm afraid, but two new poses (in these softer ranges), both known from the harder Realtoy sets; kneeling pointing in jungle-hat (boonie-hat)a nd the prone gunner.

Again, I think some of these have been seen in New Ray's superior (for rack toys) 54mm sets of ten-or-more years ago, namely; a four-crate, WWII German werfer of nebels and a US/NATO M252 Mortar, while the sandbag emplacement looks prety-much the same as the Realtoy ones.

The temperate set has a GS-bodied truck, while the dessert set has a lookie-MLRS-likey rocket launcher get up, which seems to fire the same 150mm Werfgranate as the crated infantry-support Nebelwerfer, from two side mounts with hinged covers.

The slogans on the trucks is interesting, they both have Aoutca Dnphentkul written on the cab-doors, which Google-translate identified as Hmong, an ethnicity from Laos, Vietnam and South Western China, allied to the US in the second Indochinese war, many now live in Thailand or the USA. There is no direct translation.

While the Myo Niutop Buti on the rear of the rocket launcher was tentatively ID'd as Pilipino, with a translation of something-something-'good'? Both also have a hawk or falcon with the English message 'Fighting Action'! The two odd messages point to a Hmong-staffed factory in the Southern Chinese Yunnan province, making stuff-up 'on the hoof'?

But the Vcuneld on the back of the GS truck gets no suggested language, so it could just be a random-word generation robot/algorithm, but these are probably 1990's and such things weren't common back then, especially in an Asian toy factory!

So, to my thoughts on the branding . . . obviously imported by Woolbro, and marked-up to 'Toy Leader' the logo can't possibly be made to represent TL, looking distinctly like an OB? It's how they roll out there, and why Lik Be are LB, not LP or IDL!

And on the other card, the logo has been covered (before the blister was applied) with what looks like part of an Easter-egg artwork (or something equally bright and cartoony?) sticker, suggesting even they (the factory or shipper/jobber in the Far East) realised the logo-type was daft!

There is a prominent consumer message in Greek on the back of the cards (along with various other nationalities) so, given previous posts here at Small Scale World, it may be that these could be found in Greece with Zita stickers, and I'll add them to the tags for completion, even if they weren't, the connections are all there!

I suspect this is Pioneer production, a generic, given a phantom-brand wash which hasn't helped, copying from New Ray's more original stuff, and rehashing some of the stuff they supplied to Realtoy, but in new colours and with the softer rubber-figures?

R is for Rubber Raider Rack Toys

Except they aren't rubber, they're polyethylene! Actually the Britains one is dense PVC which has some of the properties and is given some of the tasks of Rubber, but it's not what we're concentrating on here, except in so far as for comparison; it's the Greek rack-toys!

These were on feebleBay for ages and for very little money, I think I had them bookmarked for over a year and no one pipped me to the post, so when I finally had a spare tenner a few weeks ago I grabbed them for RTM@SCW!

They came from Greece, and while they could be Solpa they are more likely to be Stam Toys (who did use silver-coatings) or Petalo (lots of rack toy - until quite recently or still going) or even an early import by someone like Zita Toys, although they are lacking any Hong Kong or China marks, which can be a sign of domestic production, but can also just mean that local laws don't insist on origin-marking? Nevertheless they are definitely 'in the style of' Hong Kong rack-toy tat!

Obviously copied from the Britains assault craft; 'Gemini' or 'rigid raider', the three figures are quite different, with one being in a bright-blue polymer, another manufactured in gold-flecked resin and the third has an overall coating of sprayed-silver paint with a dark-red plastic figure underneath.

All three Greek vessels have retained their 'Allied Star' stickers, but my Britains boat has lost it's little MOD crossed-swords thing. I have a feeling I know someone who has a sheet of them (probably left-over from an out-worker's stock) , so if he's still got a few I'll get that sorted!

All three figures have a hole in their base to fit the forward spigot copied-across from the British model; in point of fact, both spigots are reproduced (larger than the originals, but in roughly the same place) but the base sizes (of all three figures) preclude them from lining-up with the rear one.

The other obvious difference is the addition of a cord-loop at the front, to help pull it along, but I don't know if they were fitted with one, if they were part of a hook-wall display-hanging, or something you had to add at home?

Although copied from Britains, they lack the buoyancy of the donor, but do still float so all is not lost . . . when looking to shoot them in the pond (left) or water-butt (right)! I suspect it has more to do with the properties of the Britains' PVC (more air trapped in a less dense material) rather than anything else; the design - otherwise - is carried-over pretty-much intact.

S is for Some of Them Are . . . and . . . Some of Them Aren't?

The products of the Pioneer Toys Manufactory Limited works, that is, from the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong, now in China and founded in 1992.

Some of these I've suspected for some time, some are now confirmed and the rest may or may not be, but as the output of Supreme-SP gets nailed down, Soma's is usually marked and Smart seem to have concentrated on smaller scale figures, we are running out of cheapie, rack-toy die-cast, PVC-figure accessory origins and; as we'll see, the patterns point to Pioneer as the likely source for most of this stuff?

We have looked at a few Pioneer bits over the last few years, I've dropped the odd mention into posts and they've had some tag's, albeit with the odd caveat or question-mark. But working on the other three this week; I thought I'd pull what I had together, go Googling and see where I was, and the answer is this post.

Unlike the other three (the two Kwongs' and Star), this lot are definitely still going, and the above is from the website which is a bit basic, but they are very-much contract manufacturers, so the site is more B2B than trying to pander to your or my desire for high-resolution imagery - Hing Fat's website suffers the same fault.

I picked these two shots as the one has relevance to the question marks further down the page, while other confirms the next lot!

Now, I know we've seen one of them five times in the last six years, or is it six times in the last eight years, I've given-up counting . . . but here's the rest of them!

There would seem to be at least three generations of these, plus the unpainted set (one of which is below); the lower lot with bare arms and white overalls, the upper lot in yellow with gauntlet gloves (unified by the dumper-driver, who remains unchanged) and the current/web-site set who seem to be better painted with an additional, separate, base-colour.

The above is all fine, confirmed through the web-site, now it starts to get a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty confident time will tell most of these are Pioneer, but for now the possibility they may not all be, has to be retained.

The Buddy L is just for comparison, he's also . . . also PVC vinyl-rubber! Of the two sets of air-side crew, the lower lots are the most likely to be Pioneer while the upper three are a bit dodgier, being a much-softer, silicon-rubber.

Note also how the odd digger matches the lower set in base style, material colour (and density) and the jacket colour - which is closer then the photographs suggest. There are also parallels with the three-sets' gillets/body-warmers.

Both sets of ground-crew have been shown here before as question-marks, and I assumed the lower set were aircraft-carrier crew, which they may have been, but I suspect they were also in airport sets.

The set of four poses currently on the website, are much nicer figures, but clearly they (Pioneer) have had generations, and they tend to improve in China as they degrade in the UK (think Britains; herald→swoppets→deetail→hong kong shite), so that's to be expected, also there is (like Supreme) a tendency to different scales (see below), while I haven't said Pioneer definitely made/make any of these?

Their 'thing' is die-cast vehicles at the pocket-money end of the market, so Pioneer may be buying the accessory stuff in from other contract-manufacturers lower down the feed-chain, a point we'll get into more in a minute.

We have seen - on the blog, marked-Pioneer vehicles being sold by The Works, the same vehicles were in the same post (link) tied to Poundland (Funtastic), 99p Stores (PMS) and others including generics and several phantom-brands on Alibaba, since when we have encountered them in HTI and Flying Tiger packaging . . . and here's another one, Greek importer Zita Toys.

Obviously the vehicle range has improved since this, what, mid-1990's (?) set was put together, note that the helicopter is from similar generic Thomas the Tank Engine sets, where he wears a face! The jeeps however survive in some sets, I think, including the large one I shelfied in Smyths under the Streetmachine logo a year or so ago.

Note also the two building relief-frontages, taken straight from Supreme (but slightly different) or by Supreme (?), the two clearly spent the 1990's fighting for the same market; the older firm is also still going and also supplying lots of brands/customers. However the figures are the interesting thing here.

Erwin informed the Vichy a few years ago in his normal lecturing, hectoring fashion ('attack dog mentality' one of his 'friends' called it the other day!) that the left hand figure was . . .  well, I can't remember who he ascribed them to (with no empirical evidence whatsoever) and I think I corrected them at the time with '...probably Pioneer but not what he said!' His trouble is he makes it up as he goes along.

I knew they were Pioneer through the Die-casts, but hadn't made the connection with . . .

. . . the smaller trio (bottom left), which have also appeared here before; under a question-mark post, or two. The significance of this is that the larger figures have bases which match the softer ground-crew figures above, the smaller figures have bases which match the smaller ground-crew and the road-workers after a fashion, but are unpainted - like the blue road-worker.

Hopefully, if your logic circuits are firing (I schedule these for 9.30 to catch you fresh in the mornings you know!), you can see how it's all coming together!??? The upper shot is another one I'd forgotten I had with a colour-variation of the Zita Toys set (probably HTI over here? Woolworth's or Chad Valley before the former's demise; an early Smyths set?)'s figures.

Now, I've mentioned Soma, Smart and Supreme as being contenders for anything here which isn't Pioneer, but there is still a hornet in the wood-pile; the figure bottom right (it's a reminder shot we've seen before) is from the group that might be Realtoy (namely; Realtoy-Daron-Sky Marks) and which I've been told is Galoob, but over which ascription I've muted some doubt.

Galoob have produced (or had produced for them in Hong Kong/China) lots of PVC and PVC-like stuff over the years, with different bases or no bases in dense, medium and soft materials, and the 'Realtoy' figures (a harder-polymer than most of the above, or above mentioned) share posing with Micromachines' late 'armymen' series, which is a separate can of worms, but they both have to be contenders too, and Realtoy have at least one road-worker who looks like a Pioneer one!

My own feeling - or I wouldn't be publishing the post - is that most or all of the above (whether bought-in or internally-manufactured) originate with Pioneer, and have come to the market (which is our hobby) via die-cast play sets of the sort seen above or in previous posts, which may have been retailed under - globally - dozens of brands, brandings, brand-marks or phantom brands, and that they occupy a similar/the same niche as Realtoy (whoever they were/are), Smart and Supreme.

I've said before - in passing - they will be responsible for some of the many vinyl astronauts from 25-50mm out there . . . which aren't marked K&M! And I have several sets unopened somewhere which will lead to a series of posts on them all, but some of them may prove to be Realtoy, as the packs are similar to the Daron/Sky Marks sets . . . in fact I think one (with a die-cast missile) may carry the same Toy Galaxy logo as the Airfix Australian copies I posted on that blog the other day! It's wheels within wheels when researching Hong Kong toy production.

Those Police, Medics and Firefighters HTI included in their Teamsters sets - possibly Pioneer for the older - full painted - ones, probably for last Christmas's part-painted shelfies - Teamsters are re-badged Streetmachines? Likewise; the little vinyl HTI pirates?

As a die-caster Pioneer are current, it's the ID'ing of ephemeral figures from their early days which is the exercise here, the new airport figures will start appearing in mixed-lots any-day now, if they haven't already for some of you, and we need never see the road workers again, but probably will - when I get a complete spade or road-drill! Or more blue, unpainted ones, or different coloured ones, or new poses, or a need to do comparisons . . .

Thanks to everyone who's ever saved me odds and sods (I know some of the road workers came from Peter Evans) and Paul Morehead for the stuff in the first image.