Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Wavymane Type 3 - Candle Holders - Gay Jem

So this will be an image dump, with notes! Some of it is recent evilBay shots, some ancient ones, and others are from the samples I now have, one carded, two loose. The Type is obvious so the imagery can be uploaded in folder order, which might be date or title, I haven't checked!

 

The only other thing to mention here is the addition of a pretty ubiquitous 'Mexican'. I can't remember if the Mexican was marked or not, but it has a bloody-great hole in it's rump and isn't going to be mistaken for another sets' horse!

 

Silver Indians are new with this set/sample.

 

They're for cakes! That's a lemon-drizzle scone by the way!

 

Mexican joins the team, bloody-great hole in it's rump!

 

I originally suposed they must be for towing cracker-guns or wagons!

 

Bloody-great holes!

 

Type 1 Horse, but horses and figures are Type 2 glossier.

 

Gay Jem set.

 

Bit blurry, sorry!

 

The other point worth making, is that out of all of them only one is a third pose, all the rest are intermediate Type 2 riders, firing to the left, so they can go round a cake circular firing outwards, or across a square cake firing at each other!?

 

On the subject of the numbering - while numbered by me as Type 3, they clearly predate the Type 2 Late production, being somewhere between Type 1 and Type 2 Early in horse type/quality, so they could have been a Type 2b between 2a and 2c's, but given how distinct they are, while hard to place between Type's 1 and 2, it was easier to mark them as distinct, by giving them their own number.

Sorting Hong Kong Horses - III - Donation from Chris Smith

Here's one I sorted a few minutes ago, 5/6am, don't ask! It's the bits in Chris Smith's Spring Donation, which we looked at on the Home Blog here - the shot's near the end of the post;

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2026/05/d-is-for-donation-chris-wild-west.html

 

And it consisted of a larger separated bag, and a bunch of loose stuff through the box.

 

These were bagged as two loose samples, and kept together for convenience

 

Get 'em out!

 

And we'll quickly look at the smaller lot from the bottom of the donation-box.

 

Some of this has already been on one Blog or the other, and useful stuff includes both cracker/gum-ball types, one of each, a Blue Box wagon horse, a 'Toytown' horse in green, which is on the Blog now, some riders and foot figures sorted by type/base-marking, and a 'Mexican' horse. We'll put these to one side and do the big bag.

 

Initial sorting gives us five obvious piles with some question-marks over riders and various single/small samples of horses/loose figures.

 

One of the 'Rim Saddle's I think, a lot of human casualties in a landfill somewhere but a nice clean sample of the horses and clean in cleanliness as well as type - little damage, dirt, or dust. You'll be surprised (or not!) at the state of how some of these have come in over the years, sticky with sweet or lollipop residue, covered in half-crystallised cake remains, tangled-up with long strands of human hair, coloured with Biro or marker pen, glued-together with emulsion-paint . . . quite nasty sometimes!

 

I then remove the riders, to check them against each other and reduce the space they will take up. You can see there's a consistency with plastic colour, and the chunky rounded nature of the locating studs which are in the same general area (ankle), pretty happy with these, so they go together in their own bag.

 

Same exercise with these 'Jogging' horses and we can check the rider against the master collection because they went on the Home Blog, fourteen years ago!

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/j-is-for-jogging.html

 

And, although the colours aren't a good match, there are similarities in the figure style, especially the fine woodwork of the bow, and the large head on the tomahawk, so again; pretty satisfied with the sample's integrity, they go in a bag. 

 

Same thing with the recently seen here 'Wavymane's, in such a small sample, it's hard to make definitive choices, and as I explained in the caveats on those recent posts, the Type 2 (early and late) can't be as clean as the 1, 3 or subsequent type-samples and here I've moved the red figure down with six 2 Late's and moved two of the loose figures to the four 2 early's on the top row,, and they get two bags, as those two samples.

 

Four 'Pony's one of which one had a rider, we've had two of the types on this Blog, and their third type is in the Picasa queue, so we can check, these have a flat top to the body cavity, and no mark, which shows the horses are Pony 2 and the figure probably doesn't go with the horses, but I allowed caution to get the better of me, and left him in their bag - I suspect he's a very late Wavymane 2 rider?

 

There were two 'Pre Wavy's, nice  they're hard to find! And the figure with his parallel-rod balled locating studs, ticks the box on them so even better, in a bag they go!

 

Three 'Dogface' horses, these have been ID'd through several mint sets, as being the draft animals for generic Giant knock-off chariots, so can go in a bag, but I have a feeling, somewhere in the stash, or the TBS stuff or my evilBay image downloads they have now also been associated with Wild West subjects too? So we'll have to see, when we return to them at some point?

 

'Smoothie' or Smoothie-like (and a Mexican!) and not a Giant mark among them, the orange cowboy is good enough to be a late/immediate post-Giant figure, but could be the missing 'Pre Wavy' rider (I don't think so), so they get a bag with a note that they still need to be checked further.

 

Which leaves the "Mixed TBS" dregs! Here the two riders won't be removed, they could be a clue as to horse/rider combo's, and until they are properly sorted against all the known samples (some 50-odd) and/or the unknown but isolated samples, they should stay with their mounts, to be also compared with other unknown but "came together" samples in the hope they can, then, all (horses and riders) be unified from the unknown bags.

 

Which gives us this. I can then unite a few of the small bags contents with the Wavymane and Smoothie samples, leaving us with a few odds to the right. As I know the Timpo-pose riders go with the similar Britains Swoppet (poor sculpt) foot figures, they get put together (and will appear here on BiiG - as we can call it! - shortly), while the others are stand-alone, and easy to sort from these mixed lots . . . and a green Toytown!

 

Everything sorted and bagged there are no notes on the obvious bags, and I would normally use post-it notes, or paper scraps, but it was a photo-shoot rush job, and the marker pen will remove with alcohol or sprits of some kind if I'm minded to save the bags when they get emptied into the master samples during the next 'Big Sort'. Sometimes I'll use Biro, which ruins the bag,, and you need a good one/right one, or they won't write on the plastic!

 

And that's it, it's back in the old bag, until either a future Big Sort, or maybe an interim sort to get various clean samples to together - the more you unify, the less space is lost!

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Wavymane Type 2 (Late Production)

Differentiating the Type Two Earlies from the Type Two Lates is far easier than differentiating the Type Ones from the Type Two Earlies, with them its more about finding the second horse marks and recognising a slight shinier-ness, while with the Early/Late boundary, it's easy, the Late version is much shinier (no chalk or talc), quality has dropped off a cliff, and there are two new horse marking types.

 

The 'master sample'

 

The horses, there are probably well in excess of a thousand, maybe several thousands, in this large box, which originally held the sticks for McDonald’s flags - a long story! The layer is about five-inches deep, and this Hong Kong hollow-horse type, is the commonest of them all. It far outnumbers all other types, including true Giant (almost as rare as Giant-anything, except the silver/black knights, they are pretty common), post-Giant 'Smoothies', and/or the other forms of 'Wavymane'.

 

Native American Indians

 

Cowboys

 

You can see the colours, of both horses and riders, is pretty consistent with the Type 1 and Type 2 (early) Wavymanes, with black or charcoal, white or off-white (watery translucent and creamy-yellow), brown and marbled brown with black streaks/clouds for the horses and the same red, yellow, orange, pale and sea blues, light and dark greens and the pinks and purples, but shiny, bright virgin polyethylene with no additives to mute the colours or matt the surface of the polymer.

 

It's easier to show you the old index-card, from when they fitted in one 6x9" bag, than try to rewrite the explanation of the two new marks. And, like with the early version's 50/50 split, the four horse types are approximately the same in quantity, through any found sample,, so about 25% of each horse marking, per-lot/sample.

 

Obviously, there is no reason for the numbering beyond my 'A' being first type, the 'B' second-early, and these - second-late could just as well be 2C1 and 2C2 (or, if we are being very pedantic; 2C(i) and 2C(ii), that's how they roll in academia!), but I've renumbered Wavymane several times and, indeed, will renumber them again before I've finished Publishing these articles, losing Type 4C and reinstating 5, so 2C and 2D, for the new horses, is good enough, and saves at least two digits!

 

This one, nominally 2C, has two stamps in the rear of the rump/back of the body cavity, one reading 'HONG' and the other 'KONG', and these stamps obviously came from one of the heavier engineering or machine-tool companies in the region, as they appear on many rack toys, sometimes quite well lined-up (as here), sometimes casually higgledy-piggledy, in-line (as here), or on top of each other. 

 

While this one - 2D - is the poorest version of Wavymane horse, being poorly sculpted, usually lacking most of the wave, which gave these their name, prone to shrinkage, possibly as a result of the sharply arched design, and unmarked; if they weren't so common, and always found with the other three; you'd be tempted to think they were among the mid-late 1980's junk, where we find the late types/production of 'Remould', 'Rim Saddle', 'Smoothie' and 'Toytown'.

 

On the subject of naming, numbering or other annotating; everything here is how I did mine, to have it make sense to me, I wouldn't expect anyone else to adopt all or part of my nomenclature, especially if they can't get their head round it, or have already got a 'system' of their own, but it's a guide as to how to do it, and things like arbitrary 'generations', "might be Giant" or 'Giant' & 'Giant Like', don't cut it, they're meaningless.

 

Apropos the previous post on a limited colour-way, clean sample of Remould, here is a group of Wavymane Type 2 Late, which cam in as a clean sample with a couple of red figures, and the majority in blue, green and yellow. You can see clearly the shininess of both horses and riders, and the poorer quality of the whole type/sample.

 

We'll look at the known sets by approximate age, and there are a few to look at. With all versions of Wavymane taking the lifetime from the sixties to the eighties, maybe even the late 1950's, and by late it could be '56 or '57 while the eighties may be a bit optimistic, with the late ninteen-seventies as their nadir, there was time for many people in the West to contract or just purchase the various sets,, assortments or configurations the middle men down at the harbour came up with.

 

I think this dates from the mid-late nineteen-sixties, and is obviously MPC then Multiple Products Corp, (of New York) although often using Multiple Toymakers on packaging, it has had several official titles/corporate structures over the years, including Loral Corp., Miner Industries, and Fundimentions, but always retained the 'M' logo, easily confused with MPC the model kit manufacturer; Model Products Corporation (of Michigan - General Mills, ERTL, Round 2 LLC.). Indeed so easily confused (both became sizeable and popular companies in the late 20th Century), I've yet to differentiate them on the Home Blog, it's too 'heavy' a job!

 

Contents include the ubiquitous Fort Cheyenne, and foot figures which we will look at in separate posts on the other stuff associated with Wavymane hollow-horses.

 

I think this may be a few years later, possibly early nineteen-seventies, and we have, on the left, a generic card (for the UK/European market, and, presumably, the local Hong Kong stores) while on the right a card overprinted for Larami (LIC) of Philadelphia, one of the more prolific and 'household name' jobbers/importers in the 'States. The Larami contents count has lost the '100 Pieces', and may have a reduced actual total?

 

This set, annotated by the famous collector James Opie to a Zodiac Toys store in Aylesbury, North of London, on the old A40, is dated to January 1973, and we have the miniature version of the Fort Cheyenne, brand-marked to Pocket Money Toys, and the same foot figures as the MPC set, along with a wagon family we're about to look at.

 

I believe these wagons were bought-in from a third party they appear quite often, but with various horses, and in sets from various eras from the seventies and well into the eighties. For most of their life they were red-green or green-red, but some, as with the coach insert, above, can be all red or all green, they can have other colours, like brown or white (and I mean blinding, snow white) canvas tilts, and they are in the later shiny plastics. With the last issues, still in stores in the 1990's, in that late tinny plastic, they had a long life, from 'Empire Made' to 'China'.

 

Based on the old Giant wagon, the most obvious differences are the method of attaching the draw-bar/central pole, and the fact that the stakes/staves don't extend up, beyond the edge of the box-body. And we will revisit these shortly.

 

PS - I ran out of Tags, so we'll have to look at the sets again, another day, to get them in the Tag list! 

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But is it Giant
 

No, nothing above is related to Giant in any way other than tangentially, and any mention of Giant in the text is purely instructional or conversational!