Giant Set No.982 Chariot Race 59¢ 1963

So to the third of my contiguously numbered 1962/3 Giant Roman sets, purchased from Mr. Opie about 16-years ago, with this one we ditch the 'Legion' for some extreme sports - vegan crown to the winner, hoofy-death with tyre-marks to the loser!

Dotted-line guy had the day off! Otherwise it's clearly part of the same line. As the Marx 'influencer' was the Ben Hur sets, it's fitting that we have a teeny-tiny clone/take on it here, with three standard Giant chariots (four horse, non-articulated chassis) and the three figures needed.

"S'mine-now, s'all mine!"

Two red's and a yellow chariot body, with contrasting coloured overlay frets with the fancy, decorative stuff. We know they are/were based on the Marx set because of that fret (which varies between clones and is the best way to ID different sources) and the weird spiky stuff on the front of the cross-bar - which is more of a stabby-spear/de-heading blade arrangement on the originals.

Horses are all the same brown batch, and marking are almost impossible to work out, but they will be genuine Giant 'Smoothies' of one sub-type or another. And we get the Marx knock-off spearman and two of Britains finest (Ulysses) as crew. Both the ex-Marx figure and the chariot wheels are the same brown as the horses - when trying to sort all these HK small-scales, exact shade is as important as markings sometimes for tying things in together!

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But is it Giant?

Sure as the other two, but I think it might be Boysie-Boy's now!

Giant Set No.981 Roman Legion Assault Group 59¢ 1963

The Romans weren't strong on cavalry, they did use them for scouting and patrolling the boarders of empire, sending signals and such like, and the books tell they were recruited from or tended to be the Aristocracy, but in fact they would have used horse-riding peoples from around the Empire for serious mounted work.

But clearly a few 'Toffs were allowed to ponce about on the edge of the battlefield, picking off stragglers or retreating enemy while staying relatively safe? Anyway - this set 'Assault group' is half and half cavalry and Infantry, and both disappoint to one degree or another!

Packaging follows the rules laid-down by set 980 (previous/older post), with the two-colour, screen-printed card folded-under and stapled to trap the rim of the blister in a sandwich of card, and the dotted line (which most developed humans in the 1960's knew to mean 'cut-here') indicating where to dig!

Blisters are the same size, which means more Infantry (about 40) that cavalry (10) as those hollow, 'Hong Kong' horses are room-occupiers with all those arms and legs and tails and stuff!

But . . . the mounted element consists of nine standard-bearers (meant to be Agamemnon in the Britains Herald universe) and one bloke with a shield so big it would shelter a family!

So to the disappointment with the foot-arms; it is that at least six are not ancient Romans (or Greco-Trojans!) but Giant medievals, and while it may be a case of making-up the numbers, that they are mixed together quite well, would suggest a deliberate act, probably applied to the/a whole batch, which, by modern terms would be a fraud, not that they worry about such things in rack-toys, then or now, but still a bit of a swizz!

We'll look at the Medievals in detail another day, but it's interesting to get them together like this as we can see two marking's running side-by-side, quite early in the short history of Giant's output, later Medievals (the smaller black & silver versions) would get the full 'P' nonsense, but here they have a cleaner GIANT over HONG KONG in a DIN font. The true Romans get a more scrappy mark , which I've previously looked at a possible history-of, on the Home Blog, here.

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But is it Giant?

Yeap! As sure as shit's found in a midden!

Giant Set No.980 Roman Legion Chariot Attack 59¢ 1963

As I've mentioned before elsewhere, this set (and two others) was (were) purchased by the inimitable James Opie exactly one month short of one-year (to the day) before I was born, which - today of all days - makes them at least 59-years old!

I've explained elsewhere why I believe these sets put Giant at forming around 1961/62 and not the '59 or earlier, of some sources, and the two-colour screen-print card is evocative of that age, whatever the date! Folding back on itself to fully enclose the rim of the blister between a card 'sandwich'.

There are dotted lines on the reverse indicating where you should go digging with knife or scissors to obtain the contents . . . now of course, I would just cut carefully round the base of the blister with a scalpel, but then I'm a vaguely intelligent adult! However, back then the 'blister pack' was a newish concept, especially in this sealed form, even Giant used staples only, through the blister, on some of their simpler/unfolded sets, while heat sealing the blister to the card was still a year or two away - requiring the added expense of blister-contoured hot-iron stamps.

Seven mounted Romans and two four-horsed, non-articulated chariots make up those contents, with two 'foot figures' as chariot crews; these plug to the floor of the chariot.

The chariots; the plug (chariot floor) and hole (figure base) attachment is clearly visible on the archer (ex-Britains pose), and the other vehicle has an ex-Marx sentry pose as it's 'rider/driver'. The chariot is based on the Marx Ben Hur Playset design, but reduced in size and greatly simplified.

Note that each chariot has matching horses, which are standard Giant 'Smoothies' (as I call them) and 99-times out of a hundred get a contrasting coloured wrap-around detailing fret, you do occasionally see them with same colour frets, but they don't look 'right'! When you find the on feebleBay they are usually hideously overpriced for what are quite common, both as Giant and as any one of several clones, to which (the clones) you can add two-horse-team sets, and articulated versions which pivot at the back of the drawbar/centre pole.

The cavalry; A very disappointing figure/pose mix here with five of the diminutive blobs which pass for a spearman, and one each of the other two figures, however the horse selection is quite good with a fair mix of black, white and two shades of brown, so swings and roundabouts I feel! Again they are pretty standard Smoothies, but which sub-variant remains unclear . . . but then I haven't listen them all yet! Looking at the brown one on the middle, they are the ['GIANT' to the left of a smaller 'HONG' over 'KONG' with no idiot 'R'-mark] type! Crew and Chariot marks can't be determined.

But they may have additional marks along the sides of the cavity? So I can't be 100% - things in blisters are harder to investigate than loose examples, but we will look at the Smoothie properly one day, with a view to boring you to death!

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But is it Giant?

Yes! Yes-yes-yes, without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely, assuredly, positively and only Giant! But - bought in the UK, in 1963, not in the US - God forgive the carbon-footprint* on these cheap, ephemeral rack-toys!

*1961? Coal or oil-fired tramp-steamer from Hong Kong to the West Coast, diesel locomotive (or Kenworth/Peterbuilt!) across the breadth of the US to New York, then another steamer to the UK, with more vehicle movements from Ipswich, Tilbury, Bristol or Liverpool? It's staggering really!

Golden Trojans - The Non-Giant Gold Plastic Greco-Roman Figures

Looking at the various rack-toy sets, in the small scale, rack-toy universe, manufactured in golden polymers and ostensibly of 'Romans' most of whom are actually copied from Britains Trojans, who were themselves sculpted as Classical Greeks, albeit with a cloned Marx Roman or two in the mix for good measure!

Sorting sets and scanning images to get some order to this post I actually found a third fort type which may-or-may-not be connected to the third figure type (later in the post), so there may be four generations of 'stuff' here?

We've looked at the Lucky Clover branded sets before, so a bit of a reprise, but we're comparing today. Packaging of the No 6646 / 9 Tower Fortress With Soldiers is best described as '1950's gift chocolates', with a pull-off lid and tray holding the contents, viewable though the large window.

Two pinches of figures making half a handful (heay, at some point in the past I'm sure these were official units of measure!), a two-horse, articulated, chariot and the standard Hong Kong fort in 17 pieces with the 'oriental' turret-roofs.

You can see this one is annotated in James Opie's hand as having been purchased in Layton (I suspect East London rather than Blackpool?), in August 1969, which means these other sets were coming out as Giant faded away, and were partly responsible for that fade; if you saturate a market, the early leader will lose out for being over-extended or over-invested in a diminishing return. And note the instructions for the Wild West Fort Cheyenne are included on a generic tray designed for all the Lucky Clover sets.

Four pinches making two half-handfuls! You can see there is little attempt at a fair sample or equal distribution of the figure poses, with one getting only four of the six available poses, the other scraping-in with five. They would have been jumbled up in a big skillage somewhere in the corner of the warehouse and fed to smaller stock, component or tote boxes on each packer's bench. Obviously aiming at six figures per pocket, one got seven.

The Lucky Clover chariots; mentioned before, there seem to be four types, two-horsed (Biga) or four (Quadriga) and more generally (more widely within all these type of rack-toys) can be found articulated or rigid, the articulated ones survive better, the rigid ones tending to brake where the drawbar/centre-pole meets the body of the chariot.

The horse is a very good example of what I call 'Mexican' and is as good as anything Giant carried, but these - and their attendant chariots - are unmarked.

Fish-scale flags plug-in to the 'oriental' turrets, I call them that to differentiate from the round-cone roof pieces of other forts in this family of similar rack-toy forts, the design can be found throughout Europe, so isn't really Oriental, but, well, that’s why that is . . . ! One set gets contrasting jade-green flags (pennants?), the other matching red.

The fort sections are marked (in contrast to the chariots/horses) with a heavy HONG KONG in a rough, capitalised, sans-serif font, twice; above the 'gate-house' and below the left-hand walk-way (arrowed).

Fully assembled and to the untrained eye identical to a Giant fort, the seventeen pieces assemble into a fort with roughly the same footprint as the concurrent Airfix (and other) forts, that is: eight-inches by eight-inches on the sides, but lacking the sophistication, or height of those domestic models.

The other relatively clear type to identify - No. 445 Roman Fortress - is quite common, and can be found as a generic (top) or over-printed to the Woolbro brand (bottom). Artwork (which shows the round turret-roofs on the front of the card) rather dates this to post-1960's-psychedelia, and more toward the simpler 'comic' graphics and block-colours of Glam-Rock, Habitat and Mary Quant, so early 1970's? Which makes them the second of these, but - as always with this stuff - it's not that simple!

Also - as both generics and under Woolbro - sister sets of Astronauts, Khaki Infantry (with the 1-ton Humber mini-trucks) and a 'Fort Cheyenne' (all stock-coded '445') were issued in a fuller 'line'. I have a Gordy International Wild West set (and a generic), so they (Gordy) may have issued this - Roman set - on the other side of The Pond?

Obviously aping the Lucky Clover set, or a later version from the same source (we will probably never know), they are the same black polyethylene with red fittings (including pennants), no markings though and you can see the mould is tired with damage 'dinks' to the flat surfaces, but it makes it easy to ID lose ones as there's no mistaking the eight or so 'pimples' on the back of the gatehouse, and the long diagonal scartch to the right - clearly they only had the one tool/cavity.

But I have parts of an interim/different one; yellow fittings (but no firm idea as to turret tops or pennants), high-quality moulding with very smooth walls, none of Lucky's markings, none of Woolbro's dinks.

However, the three walls are roughest of the lot and marked - similar to Lucky Clover's front-piece - but with a full MADE IN HONG KONG in a slightly smaller font.

A few recent bits (the fort from Tony among them) were added after this shot was taken, and while I've numbered them, and seem to have photographed them the wrong way round, there is no real significance to the numbering and '2' could be the oldest or the newest, also - as we'll see with the figures in a minute - may be the third or a forth 'type'? What I am sure about is that the Lucky Clover sets pre-date the Woolbro/generic Roman Fortress sets.

And I don't want to be seen to be 'showing off' here, I'm showing you the vague size of the sample so you can gauge the veracity or fallacy of the blurb for yourself , I'd hate to be thought to be the type to make it up as I go along, like some peep's around here!

So, to the figures; as the forts are all black, so the figures are all gold, but differences - when you look - are marked and plenty, all are poorer than Giant originals, who we will look at another time.

The top row are Lucky Clover, all six of the Giant poses, below them are a row of Woolbro/generics, they are almost smooth, detail wise, and only seem to have used five of the original six poses.

Below that are some OBE's from an unknown artist of yesteryear and a single survivor of my Greco-Romano-Trojan-Macedonian-Carthaginian army! I gave them gun-metal cuirasses . . . can you imagine going to war in a wrought-iron bell-cuirass!

The bottom row are the 'turd on the snooker-table' of this otherwise quite clean ID'ing exercise, as they are a third type, closer to the Giant originals and coming independently from the 'interim' fort, so not necessarily going with it at all? And a six-pose count.

As well as the gold plastic rule and the black forts rule, the other rule which unites this branch of the tree is that none of these have been associated with mounted figures, indeed the inclusion of the unknown set is because they came without mounted figures in a clean sample, they haven't been linked to a black fort per se.

Bases; The interlopers (middle) have a Giant-like MADE IN HONG KONG in a neat DIN-font, which extends over the edge/boundary of the product in some cases leading to floating or missing letters. They all have the hole for locating the spigot-mountings on the floors of some chariots, and they are also a more golden gold than the others.

Top are the Lucky Clover, they have the remnants of a chariot-mounting hole (their chariot has no spigot)filled in and are marked with a very uneven, or arcing HONG KONG in a more generic engineers letter-stamp format, gold is a darker, bronze-gold, if that isn't an oxymoron!

While at the bottom are the Woolbro/generic figures, easiest to sort as they have smooth, unmarked bases, and smooth un-detailed bodies! I've shot a darkish gold set here, but they can be found in a verity of shades . . .

. . . as can be seen in the lower shot here, where we have the archer in artists gold (left) a washy, semi-translucent gold, a 9ct gold and the darker shade. The upper shot is my 'old soldier' and the OBE squaring-off - "To the death Achilles!"

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But is it Giant?

No! Nothing in this post is by Giant or was sold as Giant, although the interim figures (and possibly the yellow-door fort) may be from old, tired, ex-Giant tools? One could ponder all sorts, raise the questions of Bi-A-Toy or World Toy House, but I haven't seen these 'Romans' in the former packaging yet, while the later carried marked Giant originals.

If I was being tortured for an answer I would try to stick the unknown figure set and fort together, and possibly place them contiguous to the Lucky Clover set, or even slightly earlier as the first post-Giant copy/variety, but there is no evidence for any of it . . . yet!

More on these here; my notes on the unknown goldies shown there, vis-à-vis the Lucky Clover figures now looks a bit dodgy, but the etched detail on the Lucky is better, while the unknown's are 'closer' overall (size/pose) to the better Giant originals. One should also note the figures on PSR's Giant page, with the possible exception of the unpainted silver rider, are not Giant, but later copies.

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Modern (Type I) - W - Western Warrior

I do know (or have known in the past to be more accurate as I clearly don't know now!) what the W stood for, it's not Wing Lung (who are responsible for larger - 30mm - Airfix piracies), I don't think it's Welly (but I'll check!), it's not the Woolworth's mega-brand 'Big-W', nor is it Wentoys (although from that same late 1980's-early 1990's era of rack-toys), if anyone does know, let the rest of us off the hook, otherwise you'll have to wait until I remember/find the reference, and update the post...which will be...er...when I update it!

I'm pretty sure also that these late production figures have enjoyed more than one issuing 'Brand', so if you have them in another packaging, consider a guest-post to elucidate the rest of us! A couple of shots of the header card, and any variations in [wagon or tee-pee] colour are all that's needed.

Arlin Tawser (who believes the logo might be a double 'WW') reports on Plastic Soldier Review (PSR) that these were also sold as a set called "Cowboys, Indians, Horses and Wagons” in the 1990's, and further reports that his version of the set shown here has the foot figures marked 'CHINA', mine however have the normal smooth/unmarked bases.

Quite familiar to collectors, both because they are the more recent, and because they have a useful set of Airfix piracies as foot figures, instead of the tired-old ex-Giant/Britains Swoppet mouldings or Crescent 54mm's that everyone had been using for the previous 30-years.

You also get a wagon which is easy to sort from similar examples, a cloned (and miniaturised) Britains Herald Totem-pole and the same donor's tee-pee/tipi, so - lots of play value.

The horse hasn't got a specific title in my 'system' being a Smoothie who's also a Remould, and made (like the rest of the contents) from a tinny, rigid ethylene, that's quite distinctive enough to sort-out of mixed lots, the whole set oozes 'new production' when compared with the bulk of HK hollow-horsed Cowboys & Indians from the 1960/70's.

Basically I call him 'Modern' as I do several other, dissimilar, mounts also known as moderns, so for tagging: I've called him 'Modern I'. Crudely marked with a quite large 'HONG KONG' in the top of the body cavity reading head-to-tail in squared letters, it's also got quite think sides. Note also the reinforcing on the inside-legs of the black one, about 10% of all the horses have this, presumably one of the cavities was so treated, probably to prevent curving of the legs after release from the mould-tool?

The all important shot in this post . . . at last! Someone designed some new figures! OK, they took them from Airfix's 54mm/1:32nd scale cowboy and Indian sets, but as Airfix hadn't seen fit to update their own small scale atrocities with better figures, even with their own large-scale, pantographed down, we were just happy someone had!

Six-each of both foot cowboy and foot Indian poses were nicked, and they were issued in four basic primary colours, although (as always with these cheap figures) much variation in shade or hue between batches.

The mounted figures can be mistaken for other set's figures, a couple of them (Indian archer and full war-bonnet) are old, tired, rehashed poses, and the colour variation is wider than for the foot figures - they may well have been bought-in from a third party - but there are a few signature features that make them reasonably easy to sort-out of larger mixed lots.

The Mohican haircut of the brave with flapping jerkin sets him apart from similar versions from other sources, while two of the cowboys are all new; Britains Herald lassoer and Swoppet twin-six-gunner (I think the other guy may be the Crescent firing-back pose?). Then there's the aforementioned dense, tinny plastic for one, large, reasonably long and directly-opposite locating-studs for another, the flash on some of the figures &etc. Once you have ID'd a few you will get a feel for them and it's easy to find the rest in a big lot!

The wagon is very easy to separate from other HK wagons by dint of having a standard towing eye at one end, and - for no explicable reason I can come-up with - a crude copy of the Giant chariot drawbar-front, combined with another towing eye at the other end! As that original Giant feature was itself a ruination of the - even more original - Marx chariot's ornate tooling, it is a complete mystery why someone in the 1980's decided to sculpt it onto the other end of an otherwise OK covered-wagon!

The wagon is also much shallower than most HK Wild West wagons, having only one plank, more of a tray than a box-body! In other respects it is the same basic ex-Giant design, based on the old Tudor Rose vehicle, with the tilt-tabs punching through four locating slots in the corners of the bed.

The other accessories so far associated with these figures/this set are the very crude copies of the Britains tee-pee and Totem-pole. The pole is - I think - unique to this set (in the small scale that is, I think it was also issued with 45'ish-mm figure sets?), while the rigid plastic separates this version of the tee-pee from earlier softer ethylene ones issued by Einco and others.

Now Known to be from the Wing Wah (WW) Plastics Factory, of Smithfield Road, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong (Hoo Sai Industrial Building).

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But is it Giant?

No! Don't be silly! This is a tail-ender of its type from the ay'tees! All 'big hair' and shoulder-pads, T'pau, Frankie Goes to 'ollywood, Top Gun and Max Max III with that Tina Turner; "Why, you're just a little raggedy set of Cowboys and Indians"!