Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Saw-toothed Mane - Gordy International & Generic

Another of the easy ones! It's not through cowardice that I'm picking off the easy ones, slowly  . . very slowly! It's because further work is needed on some, while others can only be blurbed-up with the stuff in front of me, like the four types (so far!) of Christmas Cracker farm-cart, where I have all the shots and most of the collages, but they mean nothing after a few years in Picasa, if I'm not tuning them in my hands and comparing them to each other!

 

A generic version, we will look at the forts another day, but - corner lookout posts excepted - this one is easier to ID as the walls are longer/wider and higher than the standard 'Giant' fort.

 

The Gordy International one, an inveterate jobber, or importer of the very finest knock-off polymer crud from the Crown Colony of Hong Kong! This is their stab at small scale, hollow-horsed Wild West.

Another generic exists, sometimes over-printed to Woolbro (above, top left set), but this has a different horse, and the smaller ex-Giant fort design, however, because it was one of the first sets I obtained, possibly in the big purchase from the famed James Opie, all the loose foot figures are with it, as while the horse and fort don't match, it does have the same foot figures as the other generic/Gordy sets, so some relationship there, if only on some of the contents of these sets?

 

But this is a horse post, and we're looking at the one I call Saw-toothed Mane, because, with the lack of imagination running through the naming of Hong Kong hollow-horses, in the Small Scale World stash, it has a mane with saw-teeth!

 

You can see how the mane has been re-done, on a late-generation post Giant 'Smoothie', by attackking the tool with a mini-drill cutting wheel, the sort of thing you find on a Dremel, or a Handee portable power-tool! This has left little parallel spikes, which could probably be used to saw through a piece of paper!

The under-mark is a quite large, neat and clear HONG KONG in a slightly condensed sans-serif font, but not as condensed as the one I've just used! You will also notice that while some are quite smooth, some have a fine sandblasted finish,, the left hand brown one and the blac in the close up.

 

We haven't looked at the riders, as my sample of loose items isn't big enough to have 'made the call' yet, or shoot them, and I'm not opening two mint sets just to do so!

 

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But is it Giant
 

Nope! Aping the old Giant fort, and copying some of the elements, hollow horses,, miunted figures, but all not Giant.

Crusaders

Another actual Giant set, and probably among the last; a bottle-bag with card header, rather than a carded blister, the late version black and silver medievals, and a high set number, all point to the back end of the Rosenberg's Giant phase!

 

Seemingly the same contents as one of the Multiple Toymaker sets by MPC, this is one of the better sets from Giant, despite the poor quality of the sub-HO figures. Coming with a standard fort, two catapults, a siege-engine/assault tower and the hard to find 'extra' building, a keep/barracks building, in two parts.
 

Clearly marked wall sections, 'MADE IN HONG KONG     GIANT ⓟ' the corner towers/turrets having no mark, and I will look at all the forts in greater detail in future posts. All three sections also carry the figure '2', which is probably coincidence, there being multiple cavities, dropped into a larger holder for picking, and it just happened that the picker chose three 2's?

 

 The same mark is found on the gate section, which has a green ramp/door.

The green carries over to the turret pennants, while the roofs are orange.

 

 The 'Keep', comes in yellow and a reddish-brown, with the same marks.

 

Unusually for Giant, there has been colour-bleed from the darker plastic to the lighter polymer, and while it might be both way traffic, it's never going to be as obvious the other way! You often find this bleeding with really 'cheap and nasty' rack toy stuff, but I don't expect it from Giant?

The front and back catwalk/galleries of the lower story will take two or three figures, but the ends are a bit too narrow to take figures, while the upper story will take a 'last stand' of about six figures, at a push, with overlapping bases!

 

Copies of the Marx catapult,, and given dates, probably taken from the Miniature Masterpiece versions. The two in this set have become brittle, and most of the 'rocks' have broken off, over the years of handling, the set's been subjected to.

 

And for that reason, I wouldn't try to replace the perished elastic-bands, to fire it, the strains would cause the whole thing to break-up! Marked 'GIANT ⓟ MADE IN HONG KONG' along the top of a frame edge.

 

The two-tier assault tower, seems to be based on the MPC one, which in 50mm-odd, is one of the ugliest things you ever saw, but reduced to small-scale, doesn't look quite so bad, or unbelievable! As MPC carried some of the Giant stuff, there may have been a relationship between them beyond middle-man/buyer, but I suspect not, and this, like everything else copied, was done so as pure piracy.

 

A simpler 'GIANT ⓟ HONG KONG' on the underside is the marking here, with room for a few figures on the rear and top platforms, the middle one, it seems is just for show!

 

Another reason for saying the set is a late one, is that earlier sets were always careful to match horses to riders, and/or divide 'sides' equally, yet here we have a spare horse, and a dearth of silver knights or too many black ones? However, because of similar imbalance with the foot figures, it rather dictates Black are the attackers, outside the fort, Silver inside, defending!

 

This made sense when I was doing it, but looked very odd when I came back to it (shots taken in 2021), but it seems I was trying to do one of each pose on the left, black, then silver, with spares on the right, and silver poses for which there isn't a black one, in the centre, which I phuqed-up, by not noticing the first one (top centre), should be down the bottom left

 

But anyhow, you get the picture, the foot figures are pretty random, with neither side having all the poses, and Silver outnumbering black, almost two to one, so they should be the attacking force, but without the cavalry, it's easier to leave them in a position of strength, within the fort!

 

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But is it Giant
 

Absofreakinglutely! Literally a mint set, which I carefully removed the staples from, with a fine blade to open them, and which were then carefully replaced again, lining up the eight holes for each staple, after the photo-shoot.

Not Hong Kong! Montaplex

What I've called Euro-Horse 1, suggesting I have a Euro-Horse II or subsequent somewhere, but not on the Laptop, in the lever-arch files, maybe, which are currently buried in a shipping container!

 

 

Although not specifically a Hong Kong horse - the Montaplex tooling was all on the Internet a few years ago (when one holder passed away, and a blogger was allowed to watch and photograph the transfer), and bags of this stuff, enough to fill a box-bodied truck, were also found - there is nevertheless a clear relationship between this horse and both the Hong Kong horse I've called 'Flicktail' and the 'Jogging', although they both have reversed leg positions, from the Montaplex horse.

 

However, it looks as if it was Montaplex who were the leg-switching copier, as the accompanying figures are taken from Hong Kong, being the six, and it's only six, mounted poses associated with Giant, but also used by other people, and you can tell from the little barbell locating studs on the calves, they were taken from Giant or early generation Giant-copy riders, badly.

 

And, I've remembered, Euro II is a horse with a single slot, on one flank, rather than a hole for locating studs on both flanks, and seems to go with a Manurba style wagon I haven't tracked down yet, but it might have been a cake decoration wagon?

 

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But is it Giant
 

Nope! A few poses poorly pirated, that's it!