These represent perfectley and in every way, everything about current 'rack-toy' production: they are bloody awful!
The mounted figures don't fit their horses, everything is in a too large size to match any previous sets, there are not enough horses, the moulding is poor and the sculpting (despite the size) is worse, real 'Chinasaur' crap!
I bought this 'Toob' or bucket in 2010 from a rural 'gift warehouse' in the middle of nowhere somewhere between Oxford and Wantage, one of those building/gardening/farm-shop/timber-merchant/upcycling/paint-stipping/scrap-metal type co-ops you find in the sticks! I say this as I suspect - despite the date of purchase, that it may date from earlier, Certainly mid-2000's, but late 1990's even?
Padgett Brothers (A-Z) are an old importer, like
Herbert Kees or Holland's now defunct
Hagemayer, they have been around for the longest time, importing all sorts of goods from all over the world, and toys make up a very small percentage of their inventory. They were responsible for some of those 'Dummy Men' (as my Brother and I christened them) 12" dolls with blow-moulded limbs we were given by relatives who mistook them for Action Man back in the day!
One of everything in the tub except the wagon body which I left out of the shot by accident - in my attempts to arrange them all in a photographable rectangle! I expect there is a sixth Indian, they seem to have copied the same
Airfix figures as the smaller set from
'W' in the 1980's, we've looked at (post below/'previous'), adding
Airfix mounted figures from the same sets. Figure moulding is poor with most weapon extremities missing. The figures have a clear CHINA on the base
The poplar trees is an ex-
Rado Industries (
Ri-Toys) sculpt, the ex-
Britains stand of palms being copied by lots of makers, but both here re-done in a heavier style and with the rest of the contents in a stiff ethylene plastic.
The horse, he seems to have elements of the old 'Jogging' and 'Flicktail', but is a wholly new sculpt, and so much bigger that all the others he shouldn't prove a problem to ID, so I've called him 'Modern II' just to give him a place in the tag-list. As a sculpt it's not that bad, and is about the only small-scale Hong Kong horse with proper sticky-up ears.
The interface between horse and rider leaves a lot to be desired, with one of the cowboys settling back into his saddle without actually connecting with his saddle! All of them stand proud of the horse due to the miss-registering the of locating holes in the horses with the studs on the riders, even though the riders studs are quite small, the plastic is too rigid to force the rider down further.
The wagon is a bit of a curates-egg, on the one hand it could prove very useful for 28mm war-gamers and role-play enthusiasts, but you'd need to source a better team, and a much better pole/draw-bar arrangement that the one supplied. The other problem with it is that you only get four horses in a tub, with two wagons. You also have four riders...the maths is there! Very silly.
The entire contents of a tub, glossy, large, poorly executed, but for younger kids: colourful and with some play value.
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But is it Giant?
I don't have to answer that, on this one, do I?
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