B is for Britains Swoppet Khaki Combat Infantry Hong Kong Piracies Bagged Plastic Toy Soldiers Part Something or Other . . .

. . . just trying to keep-up with current trends for title blocks elsewhere; I'd hate for Google to forget me!

So, following the ID'ing of one of the Swoppet poses as being in with the Khaki (or 'Combat') Infantry poses when sorting-out Kamley-Kositoys the other day, I thought I'd better return to the box and see how many of the other Britains Swoppet clones I could tie in with Britains Herald sets of Khaki Infantry copies.

It helped that in going through the HK carded boxes looking for stuff to photograph for RTM I'd found these two and was able to sort their mates out of the Britains Swoppet tub - where the clones and the originals have been rubbing shoulders for a few years.

The notable one here is the crouching mortar-man who has been converted to an officer with a crude automatic pistol. Although the standing mortar-man seems to be waving a bottle around . . . "Com'mon  yoooo wang'kers . . . I'll take you all on . . . bloody ruskie-sovs! Hic!"*

I took the opportunity to shoot some comparison shots, we have looked at the Swoppets in more detail previously, so this is really about the clones which as you can see are much reduced in size and quality and; having been copied without their webbing, look bloody odd! But then - the originals were all wearing barrack-dress ties, so . . . yer pays yer money!

With the Kamley and 'Soldier Set' figures gone from the tub, I was left with four figures to sort out, another of the crouching officer conversion, a marching and two - differently marked - being cut-'n'-shut's of the kneeling firer from the Herald Khaki Infantry set with the Swoppet standing mortar-man's torso.

Two have similar marks and the same shaped cavities under the base as the 'Soldier Set' figures, so I wouldn't mind betting (especially after seeing the generations of Kamley sculpting) they are earlier runs from the same source as the generics in the above bags.

Apologies for this and the next two images, they were taken in a heavy thunder storm with light-levels all over the place but I was keen to get-on and they're left looking like I hired Paul Stadinger to take them!

As the Kamley set had included one of the cut-'n'-shut' poses with an otherwise clean sample of Herald Khaki Infantry, I went first to that tub and found that yes, indeed, one of the unknown bags would happily accept one of the orphans, the shot notwithstanding - they are all unmarked with large release-pin discs visible.

The same exercise found a home for the other two-way, nice matching ovoid-cartouche recess with a neat, small "HONG KONG" this time, saw the chap home to his family, although it's only a family while you're still serving!

Which left the other two to join the three grenade-throwers in the mongrels bag! I still have about 14 'sets' to attribute, but have at least brought four lots together in the last few weeks.

* Humourless PSTSM readers and thicko Vichy-French should accept that that is supposed to be a humorous report on the fictional dialogue of a drunken cold-war warrior I invented, but in no way is intended to reflect my own opinion of my comrade-brother worker's from the East, nor is it to be taken remotely seriously by stupid people, of which - the world is currently, sadly, over-supplied.

T is for THAT Horse . . . again!

Well . . . it's getting silly, the old Bergan-Beton horse rides again, this time yanking a chariot which is equally stolen; but from Thomas not Bergan!

I have been resisting opening this for a while now, but the damage being done to the bag by the sticky-out axle, along with the fact that someone back in the 1960's thought it would be a good idea to fill a warehouse with these - leaving them less than rare - meant that there was no good reason for not getting it out and having a play!

The central pole or drawbar is taken from Crescent's Wild West wagons, the chariot from Thomas Toys along with the driver (who's not doing much driving as he's had a shield added!) and the aforementioned Bergan Toys provide the horses (although to be fair I think these are taken from the Tudor Rose versions going on the saddle decoration).

Assembled, I love the colours of this toy, all metallic with a fine aluminium-silver for the horses, a gold spar, deep bronze for chariot and wheels and a metallic maroon plastic toy soldier!

Various close-ups; the toy figure has a locating stud to fix him in the chariot floor unlike the Thomas one which relied on flat-feet and/or hooking his arm over the side of the chariot.

Speaking of the Thomas one, I shot this on Adrian's stall at Sandown Park nearly three years ago (December '14), but never got round to this post! I would have bought it but I think I have both in storage (another reason why I was wont to unpack the above example!) and although not really what RTM is all about, they were - as Thomas - a 'dime-store' toy which is the same basic principle and - as a 'weekly-shop' or pocket-money item - was replaced by Hong Kong rack toys.

C is for Chinacars!

There's no real point to this post other than things are hardly ever what they appear to be or claim to be when dealing with modern contract-manufactured rack toys, as while some of these are technically 'shelf-sale' items they are all priced at the pocket-money budget!

So we'll just ramble through them in no particular order, looking at the odd detail on the way...

I bought these a couple of years ago (in The Works), can't remember if I Blogged them at the time, but I suspect not as they became the kernel for this post, the folder for which I've been adding -to ever since. Both branded to High & Drive, you may recognise them as being otherwise the same as the previously Blogged Funtastic for Poundland vehicles.

Is it me or are there shades of the 'Stalone's Dredd' Land Rover in that Police SWAT vehicle? The other is VAB'ish, SAM-equipped and seems the commonest of these, being added to most of the 'ranges' below.

The aforementioned Funtastic in two packagings, same vehicle range though! When I say the same vehicle 'range', the 6x6 is probably an exception proving the rule, as it is in the same packaging as the little die-casts but A) we will see further down the page they have their 'own' 6x6 truck and B) this model is a larger scale, mostly plastic and of more complicated, multi-part construction.

Originally appearing on a blister card as part of a small line of three larger scale vehicles; we looked at the M48 Patton tank and the hovercraft at the time, but again see further down for how these are all part of the same 'whole'.

Here they are claimed by Little Angel on the left with some more shots of the Poundland's on the right, Little Angel use the star option for vehicle graphics, Funtastic take a winged logo and throw a few out-of-scale accessories into the box for added play-value.

Little Angel clearly makes sports equipment or peripherals too!

Another publicity shot from Little Angel, a Jeep from The Works with different wheels (also a pound), the old Zylmex half-track now owned by Tai Sang's subsidiary; Red Box, and an Israeli Merkava tank I photographed in the shop as it is too small to get excited about, especially at two quid to everyone else's pound!

It's not that I don't have smaller tanks/vehicles (I have every size and material) but just that it will turn-up at a pound sometime, or in a mixed lot from a car boot sale or charity-shop's 20p rummage bin! And I was purchasing two other vehicles for this post as I took the photographs, but was too tight to go over the fiver!

Kids Car and Avitalk (probably both made-up-brands) are both on Alibaba claiming the same vehicles as their 'own'! The Kids Car image is particularly useful, as it extends the extent of the line or range and ties three (or four?) wheel-designs into the same set. It also claims 1:87 as the given scale, patently nonsense as the jeeps are bigger than the lorries!

The tank is an M1-looking thing; the Hummers are a different rivet-detailed design form the common one while the VAB'ish vehicle with a full turret would seem to be a copy of a 1990's Majorette model.

Both Red Box but the upper one still has Zylmex on the base-plate, although the original Hong Kong has been replaced with a heavily pronounced 'China', recent examples are now Zylmex-free!

Tucked away at the back is a random incomer, from some half-forgotten charity-shop purchase, it is another VAB-ish design but four-wheeled and is equipped with a water-cannon! In storage I have several of these with different markings and/or different plug-ins, we may have looked at them here - before I got a grip on tagging - or was it the Hummers?

A rather fuzzy shot from an old .pdf catalogue from the recently deceased Marshall's; importers into and suppliers to the West Country and wider holiday/sea-side novelty trade (prior to their demise), with several of the vehicles seen above, although unlike the Kids Car set, these mostly have the same wheels as the Poundland/Funtastic versions.

Also, although unclear, it's obvious that more civilian vehicles have been militarised with khaki/green and camouflage.

To the right is a publicity shot from XY / Xin Yu, who might actually be the source for some of these given that they are claiming to be an 'alloy toys factory', but I suspect not for several reasons, the first that they are calling themselves an 'alloy toys factory' rather than the more obvious die-caster's. Second they aren't showing much of the range/s-line/s and third they have included the mostly plastic hovercraft from that 8-9-year-old Poundland set.

Spare photo's from the folder!                          

Another probably made-up name for wholesale purposes on Alibaba; Wellye advertising four of the commoner casts in the upper shot, with a colour-change for the tank and a few 'lesser' casts in the lower shot, note two different Jeeps - not just the plastic accessories but the whole design - one a chunky-Willy's, the other more a sort of Wrangler.

The other two I bought when photographing the Merkava, imported by Kandytoys the truck having the same wheels as other vehicles seen here, the MLRS been seen as a blur in the Marshall's shot. The truck is - I think - a reasonable copy of a Chinese copy of the late/post-Cold War Russian Ural truck?

However; I'm trying not to get bogged-down in vehicle types here (hence VAB'ish!) as they are all cheap, simplified or fictional pocket-money toys, and as far as war-gamers might be concerned, are what you say they are or paint them to be!

Comparison between a High & Drive from Poundland, a Works 'Metal Car' and the Pioneer Pro-Engine (previous shot - Pioneer toys manufactory Ltd) boxes, it's pretty clear to me they all come from the same place, they even take the same Pantone red for their graphic-design's starting-point!

Now we have Sunny Kids (sounding a bit like Kids Car) claiming them as their own and adding a bus which looks like it's been stolen from a Brio set! They go with a Micro Machines style folding play set and more realistic street-furniture than the Funatastic 'big boxes'.

To the right - more spare images!

Halsall's HTI have the Merkava and the two-axle VAB'ish in better paint (still with a water-cannon!), on a nice if civilian-looking tank transporter in their Teamsterz range (we looked at the firemen and policemen at the start of RTM). I did go back to buy this but they were sold-out!

Which is a good point to place a quick link to Uncle Brian's post the other day, a brace of lovely all-plastic transporters, which although modern Chinese designs, could be painted to look like Faun's rushing your Roco-minitanks Leopard's up to the Fulda gap from Putlos!

Following the link Brian provided - in the comments - leads to mention of Maisto in the product details but a quick Google for "Maisto Tank Transporter" fails to deliver the goods, so I think it's more of a click-bait thing?

To the right - another spare image!

The Army version from 8/10 years ago with the more recent (3 or 4 years back) boxed police one. The blister-carded vehicle has generic artwork front and rear with a consumer information sticker for Funtastic on the back - however if I recall correctly, the Patton and Hovercraft didn't, I bought them a year or two earlier and from a  different Poundland, so obviously the sticker came in with tighter legislation following the big lead-in-paint scandal of . . . err . . . 2010/2011 . . . later?

Although both trucks were a pound of your Earth-money the earlier blister-packed trio all had pull-back motors fitted while the later window-box truck is a free-wheeler, this is reflected in different wheel-hubs and tyres.

I guess, if there is to be a point to the post it is that while a dozen (or more - I haven’t looked that hard) or so brands can be associated with these vehicles, which seem to be from three main sub-sets, the fact is: that they all come from the same place (or three places?). There are fourteen lines/brands/issues above (ignoring the Zee Toys/Zyl half-track).

Whether you are a chain-store, an importer (jobber), an Alibaba-platform wholesaler, a shipper/marketer from Hong Kong or Shanghai or a middle-man running around the big toy-fairs in a shiny suit with a shiny brochure, you can 'pick & mix' your line/range/set/'offer', mix or match your packaging to previous efforts or rival's orders and the often faceless, usually nameless contract-manufacturers will do what they can to help you.

You can choose markings, colours, wheels, whether or not to have window-boxes or blister cards, white or clear trays. you can buy in a few accessories for the 'value added' factor, they can be cheap and nasty (Funtastic boxes) or more realistic (Sunny Kids), you can take the decoration from an off-the-shelf menu or stipulate something better (HTI's matt camouflage) and when the profit margin's been hit you will dump the remainder as clearance and move on to something else!

Or, you may wait a few months and come at them again from a different angle, Funtastic have tried three packagings/assortments in less than ten years now, The Works; two boxings, in five years.

Ghosts in the machine...

[tags have been heavily curtailed by the imposed limits on this post - so if this is 'your thing' bookmark it before it disappears down the page!]

D is for Dispatches

Just as I suggested the other day it wouldn't be Rack Toy Month without some paratroopers, so I think it's fair to claim it's not a full RTM without some motorcycles!

Brain Berke coming to the rescue again; although he actually sent this some time ago as confirmation of the third colour when I blogged his previous contribution back near the start of the year.

He then sent this the other week and I'd love to have a go, who remembers the Corgi Pink Panther car which had the same mechanism? Indeed - some diminutive Kinder toys also have a pull-through powered kinetic-motor, while the Evel Knievel toys were more popular than either of the aforementioned!

Also branded to FunTastic, it now looks as though both the US FunTastic and the UK Funtastic are the same company, but it doesn't explain the logo differences, the Poundland exclusivity or where that will go now Poundland have been bought, but as we will see with the die-casts in a day or two, it's all as clear as mud and of little or no significance!

Rack Toy Month has room for smaller novelties and these Christmas Cracker/Gum Ball types are another recent purchase from the Swagman's Daughter and while the charms to the right (hard polystyrene) will be of limited interest to most, the figures on the left (soft polyethylene) should be of interest to any war-gamers exploring WWII.

Especially anyone using the plethora of Italian figure-set issues in the last ten or twelve years and the parallel AFV releases to build Italian armies; as they are almost perfect for North African dispatch riders - sculpted as if wearing shorts and with a leather side-flapped helmet and at a pretty good 1:76; you'd be daft not to get a set while they are still available.

A comparison with some of my existing sample, the blue ethylene one is the same as the Swagman's one, but the two styrene ones are variations of the recent acquisition - the brown one having a larger charm loop, the green one slightly better (??!!) sculpting and [apparent] factory paint on a loop-less helmet.

G is for German Rack Toys

We looked at bigger than HO/OO railway figures from Leyla right back at the start of the Blog; just shy of nine-years ago, now we're going to look at smaller than HO/OO from the same maker! I can only presume they are aimed at TT-gauge layouts, which were always more popular on the continent than here in the UK, and particularly so on the other side of the wire.

Sharing poses with the larger set we looked at back when, the newspaper-seller is also harking back to Leyla's 45mm pre-war O-gauge composition range

 

Heavily copied (I have three or four types of these as piracies in storage) by Hong Kong and - possibly - somewhere like Spain; there are good quality copies with neater bases, here we see some HK copies along with a set of three full flats (the Leyla are semi-flat) heading toward N-gauge, which look like margarine premiums but are I expect from a set of railway accessories or even a kit, given the plain white styrene?

The railway staffer/postal worker with trolley also looks like the sort of thing you find in some margarine, laundry-powder or coffee-premium sets, but again seems not to be; having a factory-looking paint-job, but him and the three white ones are still in the unknown 'pile'.

 

With the older (to the collection and judging by the packaging) set in storage I had to do this by eye/memory, so it's an approximation only, but it's about right! An Airfix platform figure would come between the two, but that only gives me a reason to return to them for better comparisons one day, we will return to them!

T is for Two Toy Tanks

As a follow-up to this morning's which while not as lame as yesterday morning's post was nonetheless a tad 'lean'!

No detailed text needed, it's a comparison between the Imperial Toys Patton and the Shamber's Patton we looked at a couple of few years ago, both based on the Tim-Mee version and similar to the Fairylight/Jimson we looked at here, ages ago; if I get the latter out of storage and obtain a Tim-Mee original we can have a four-way comparison another day!

Shamber's

Fairylight/Jimson

T is for Two - Hong Kong Rack Toy Jeeps

Bought these from Adrian at the Plastic Warrior show in May expressly for Rack Toy Month and nearly forgot to post them!

Haven't attributed them to any sets or maker yet, although I think the gun is similar to a bunch I have in storage which came with armoured cars, but I liked the pinky-red one! The hole in the seats look like they might take the Kamley astronaut but that's not why I posted them and I suspect they may have taken the Monogram/Revell 1:48th scale crew copies; with the officer in peaked-cap leaning his elbow on the seat back?

F is for French Rack Toys

Just a quickie as I know this morning's was a bit lame!

Féral's copies of Hugonnet's Indians, although as Hugonnet appears - jointly - on a fair whack of Féral packaging; it's not as clear as it looks. I'm told they represent Iroquois Indians and I rather like them, the Indian with feathered lance looks to be missing a spear-tip but all the examples I've seen are the same, so? Thanks toSamwise for most of these, a couple may have come from somewhere else and I have a painted Hugonnet somewhere but couldn't find him to post.

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.

ABC is for Agricultural Blister Cards!

Nothing exciting and not even much of a box-ticker as two of the sets are generics and the third an import piece, but there's a couple of points of interest in them and any event; in Rack Toy Month you're gonna get the odd dud!

I picked these up on eBay a while ago (so some of you may have those photos in your files!) mainly because they were going for a realistic sum; otherwise I only download the photos!

A mix of ex-Britains and other makes farm stuff in generic packaging and it looks a bit like Blue Box but it's not; it's of poorer quality to start with, although it wants you to think it is - with the blue/white/yellow thing going on.

But first point of interest is that there is a mix of items decorated with hand-paint, spray-paint or unpainted in unrealistic-coloured plastic.

An ex-Corgi calve also copied by the aforementioned Blue Box in this set, same artwork but the pictures changed to match the blisters, each shaped for specific contents. Again a mix of contents; the unpainted poultry in primary colours were also issued with some of the small scale sub-piracies figures we looked at here a year ago.

The second point of interest, this card shares 'thumbnail' background pictures with the other two, and carries the same artwork, but is over-printed with a Linda branded header. Linda did carry some Blue Box but they also carried lesser stuff so that's no surprise, but it's nice to get the Branded version of a generic.

Indeed the main reason for purchasing them is that while downloading the images of sets like these is useful, it's only when you can inspect them up close and personal that you can use them to ID lose stuff in the HK animals box/tub, especially when you get different markings in the same set, or the painted/unpainted joint-thing!