Giant Mongol Cannon

A quick look at one of the rarer items in the Giant ouvre, but it is finadable and the odd one turns up on evilBay from time to time, often with a silly price-tag but some will pay, mine came from the James Chase collection's sale at SAS Auctions in Newbury (2006?) and its unit price was almost zero . . . phew!

Although I was lucky, a thief went over the lots during viewing and took a few pieces (EKO paratroopers and a very rude 'Stag' novelty of a Hula girl), despite being reported at the time; it was several years before SAS finally got rid of him! The Paratroopers turned-up a few weeks later - via his weasel 'fence' hawking the ill-gotten gains from a Tesco's bag - at the evening toy fair in Odiham, but I'm still looking for the Hula girl!

The parts; you get four small-diameter wheel/axle combinations, rather following the pattern of the earlier (1958) Airfix railway platform baggage/mail trucks, which clip into the gun-carriage, four shells (removed on mine) attached at the hook end (left, above) and an unmarked gun-barrel which also clips onto the marked carriage.

One author waxed lyrical about the jigget on his gun, but he had it upside-down, the dragons (etched/moulded down each side of the barrel) feet point toward the ground, and the jigget is a crude elevation stop.

It's actually toothed to suggest staged elevation, but doesn't actually connect with the side-edge of the box below the trunions, which it would need to for that to work! However - at a certain point in the arc of depression - it does stop the gun pointing at the carpet, by butting against the side-face of the box!

The barrel contains a spring and piston, finger-pull firing-rod, with which you fire the cannon-balls about until you lose them all! The previously mentioned stop mechanism of the jigget/'elevation/depression ratchet' leaves the barrel firing at, err . . . Giant Mongol or Knight figure-height . . . splat!

A paler-gold one on Worthpoint, illustrating the position of the cannon-balls on a mint one. I face my barrel the other way, so the longer 'deck' can take a couple of crew, standing on it.

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But is it Giant?

Yeah . . . it's marked, init!

Giant WWII and [the then] Modern Army - Empty Cards

Further to the previous post, I have a few empty cards in the ephemera stash, and it's worth a quick look at them if only to get them up here!

Hard to know what the contents were exactly as the card would seem to indicate vehicles only, but knowledge of these sets would suggest a few figures were almost certainly included, probably in the Jeep & Cannon blister, maybe six-eight figures?

Also, it has a damaged code number, but we know this generation of card tended to have the first two digits as a 'prefix' code indicating the price point, so it's probably (but not necessarily) 3923?

As if to highlight the question marks above, this set has been recorded by Arlin Tawser as 1431 - Pillbox Attack - WWII Pillbox, halftrack, cannon, 12 US Infantry foot. Which certainly equates to the items which came with it, but as you can see mine's coded 3925, not 1431, so Giant clearly didn't have hard and fast 'rules', or - if they did - they didn't follow them!

Giant also made novelty items aplenty, and this is one of them. I may have the badges somewhere, but can't remember, nor can I say with any certainty whether they were simple paper stickers, or self-adhesive fabric. If they turn up I'll put them on the home blog for a bit of nostalgic fun.

I love the way they've written "T" Shirts . . . Yeah, the new funky t-shirts, look, people are calling them that, I've seen it in the press hence the double quotation marks, they're a real thing now, cool and groovy!

This was on the dongle, I think I took it in around 2010 as the old Fuiji Finepix was failing, so it's not the best but they came in as one lot, so I shot them before I put them with the others, and it gets them out of the way!

An hour or two later . . . 

. . . here's another one from the dongles, i think it's from my old imageshack account? You can see with both these how the middle three wheels lift of and compare the various barrels again.

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But is it Giant?

Oooowhyes! Everything above was produced by the Giant Plastics Corporation of New York, New York!

Giant Landing Craft, Crew and WWII AFV's

Well, in the end there had to be a 'Yes!' to the "But is it Giant?" question, and this is the first of what will be many, as we are looking at 100% Giant output, which, as far as I know, has never been associated with non-Giant production or sets.

The Giant landing craft, one of their bigger pieces and therefore - like the Viking longship or knight's catapults - quite rare as it only featured in a few of the larger carded sets.

The photographic equivalent of a multiple-view drawing! I think it's a loose rendition of a Higgin's Boat, although Giant's is made to take armour while a true Higgin's was a troop carrier with provision for a jeep and trailer.

The clip-in front ramp/door is joined by two slip-on pom-pom guns based loosely on a .50cal Browning heavy-machinegun. Three crew are provided; the same pose, in two iterations and they slip into the three 'pulpits' of the two gun stations and a wheelhouse.

The wheelhouse guy ('helmsman') gets a larger base and plug-in ships-wheel on a long steering-rod, and all three are just wedged into the pulpits resting against the inner/lower-ledges visible in the left hand shot.

The figures don't sit easily in their positions, and at some point Giant redesigned the two gunners, taking their 'penny' bases (left figure) away and reducing them to small buttons (right figure) which allowed them to drop in with ease. The smaller version seems to be commoner, but that maybe only in my collection and is not to be taken as empirical of anything.

The AFV's, there are four main bodies for the tank (a loose M46/47 hull), of which I don't yet have the quad-AA version (guns based on Roco-Minitanks Flak-38), but from the left we have a vague Sherman turret with 'ray-gun' (space-tank, yeay!), a shorter barreled turret which seems to be based on the M44/M53/55 family of SPG/Howitzer's superstructures and, finally, a crude copy of Airfix's M40/43 SPG with M12 cradle?

There is also a jeep, usually fitted with a trailer and a sub-scale half-track with twin-mg mount, usually fitted with a gun, which is a copy of Marx's standard play-set piece.

The hull and running gear are the same on all four vehicles and consist of five Christie-style full height road wheels and nothing resembling a drive sprocket. Plastic colour can vary from yellow-olive to a dark olive-drab. Warping of the hull (probably at the factory, rather than through age), in a banana-fashion, tends to leave the middle three wheels proud of the road!

The 'ray-gun' of the Sherman-alike is usually found bent, again this seems to be factory shrinkage, rather than any later deformation through age, and while it's never severe, it does tend to droop slightly, which lead to a redesign with a heaver barrel which is also slightly shorter, but stays straight! It (right hand of the close-up) retains some of the features of the ray-gun look! Unlike the small-based gunners, this variety seems less common, but again; from a sample of a dozen or so tracked AFV's, it's not to be seen as empirical of anything.

As I say, I don't have the quadruple Flak version, but it can been seen in Arlin's excellent article here at HäT's archive.

The generic US SPG I do have (above) seems to have a cradle similar to the ones we looked at here (not Giant) and both could be taken from the Esci M12, but I don't think it's old enough, so they may be harking back to an earlier kit from Monogram, Pyro or Renwall in a larger scale?

You can see it also traverses both from the gun and the fighting-compartment in a very un-SPG sort of way!

Although the jeep usually gets a trailer and the half-track a small field-gun, they can both tow each-other's preferred hitch. And the sublime sculpting of the jeep (by far the best item in the range and one of the better 'HO/OO' jeeps overall) is offset by the half-track being really quite comical, short, inaccurate, sub-scale and equipped with twin ray-guns and Marx's 'ladder-racks'!

But then they were only pocket-money rack-toys!

Another Japanese-held Pacific island falls back into US hands due to the timely intervention of the Giant Plastic Corp's 'Carlos Fandango' extra-wide Higgins Boat and ray-gun space-tank - those Jap-chaps never stood a chance!

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But is it Giant?

Yes, all of it!

Kammley - KS - Kositoys G2 Gunners

These are the second version of Kositoy gunners and going on the index card (also survived the flood - see G1 entry) I used to be less sure about these as they come with the latter sets that don't have the Kositoy marked (or the unmarked ones for that matter) card insert to the trucks (see Kositoy on the Home Blog), however I have now found them in Kositoy and Kositoy-Kamley carded and blistered sets so they are Kositoy.

Another of the shots sent in by Brian Berke helps put them in context and as I've explained elsewhere, the third gunner attached via the towing-eye may not be an official feature, but I have found several over the years so either it's a common trope for owners to put one there, or at least one of the factory/outworkers did so, with or without permission!

Just as I haven't found green G1's, I have yet to find any G2's in yellow or the pinky-oranges.

A standard US-style, cold war G.I. with the old M1 piss-pot and a fatigue-jacket; still only a torso though, it's nice to see the armed forces of Toyland providing such important work for double-amputees!

The sample size is greater because they were more recent, so more turn-up! The weird thing about them is that although individually they seem to be a dense ethylene, when you shake a handful they sound like dice or gambling chips, as if they were a harder styrene polymer, I suspect a propylene?

Also if you compare the index card with the G1 sample, you'll see that this one is definite about jeep-drivers, but has a question mark (added at some point) over Kositoy, the G1's were the opposite, except it was 'pilot'!

The cards were mostly written in the 1990's as I was hoovering-up this stuff at shows and car-boot sales and will reflect my knowledge at the time, with recent developments it's now clear both types are KS-Kositoy-Kamley Industrial Co. Ltd., with the G1 the earlier and the G2 the later. And . . . yes; that reads Hong Konk!

 

Now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

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But is it Giant

No; the earliest KS-coded generics probably didn't appear until ten years after Giant had ceased to be as a going concern, possibly as long as 14 or 15-years after and there are no Giant-recognised items or pieces in any of Kositoy's sets.

G1 Gunners - Probably Kamley/Kositoy

These are one of two sets of gunners, the second of which (called un-imaginatively by me) G2 are definitely, 100% Kamley Industrial Co. Ltd. Trading as Kositoy or KS-coded generic rack-toys.

However there is a small question-mark over these for the time being as back when I was a Philistine (or even more Philistinical than I am now!) I used to chuck the crappy guns in the recycling or send them off to charity without the gunners, as I saw myself as 'only' collecting small scale figures.

I am pretty sure I removed both G1 and G2 gunners from Kositoy guns, and am equally sure that these are earlier than the others (due to A) having a smaller sample and B) not finding them on Google when the later (?) G2's are easy to find), however I always kept one of each 'intactum', so there will be a pair of confirmation samples in storage to return to at some point.

I did mock-up a brace for this post and while the G2's will fit the early gun without forcing, the G1's are loose in the later gun's seats, suggesting A) I've got them the right way round and B) that they are the two generations of Kamley/Kositoy.

As you can see he looks like a high-altitude pilot or astronaut/spaceman (but only a torso) with a full Gemini type or early Cosmonaut rig of straps across the front of his pressure-suit.

It wouldn't surprise me if he turned up in a rack-toy aeroplane, space-ship or racing-car at some point, and I have a feeling I may have removed some (of both G1's and G2's) from jeeps, but neither of the jeeps being listed today in other posts take drivers and I'm not listing such until I get the rest out of storage or find some on the internet to confirm.

Colours so far found. These are a softer ethylene than the G2's and when shook - as a handful - sound like Airfix HO/OO figures, unlike the G2's who sound like dice!

While I shall leave the question marks in the first part of this post I noticed that the index card is clear that these are Kositoy, which means they must have come with a Kositoy lot, this card predates 2006 having survived the 2008 storage-unit flood!

September 2022 - If Kamley; now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

 

October 2022 - Might be M-Toys balloon-powered hydroplane crewmen (hard to tell from the image - evilBay), which would make them another, but very similar group of companies - Marty / May Moon Industrial Co. / Maysun / M-Toys - Added to tags

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But is it Giant

No; the earliest KS-coded generics probably didn't appear until ten years after Giant had ceased to be as a going concern, possibly as long as 14 or 15-years after, and there are no Ginat recognised items or pieces in any of Kositoy's sets.