Giant and Giant-like Astronaut Spacemen - Part III - Copy Type 'C1'

I'm not 100% convinced these were the first copies, but they might be, however they are the closes to the Giant figures so they get the nominal preeminent title in the copy-numbering, while the C2 (next post, almost certainly came from these) but I stress - as always - this is my numbering system, and means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

They are closest to Giant's in sculpting/detail as well as size, although there is a drop-off in etched surface-detail and the main difference is the addition of a tenth figure, who is not a conversion of the officer/pistol chap, but is clearly based on him, having a straighter back though and different arms/legs, he's the unit Medic with a first-aid kit - early exploits by Giant's own Space Men troops clearly threw-up a high rate of light casualties! We will look more closely at him in the next post.

The marking is a large HONG KONG, with two of the figures further possessing a distinct mould release-pin mark/dimple near the center of the base. The 'bazooka' guy is usually seriously deformed like this example, too-rapid removal from the tool is the likely cause?

This is a full-colour image! I posed them with a selection of monochromatic accessories/background sheet-materials! I have yet to identify these as having any sets/packaging, but they must have (unless they were in small unmarked bags included in Christmas crackers, crane-machines, capsules etc...?), so they should turn-up one day . . . I hope!

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But is it Giant?

No, nothing here is Giant production, nor was it issued by or branded to Giant, or produced for Giant.

Giant and Giant-like Astronaut Spacemen - Part I - Introduction

So, a five part overview of Giant's spacemen and the more numerous clones to be found out there, and more by accident than design I ended-up with an image which was so useful, I've used it - with masking - on every subsequent post, but we can see it here in its entirety!

First though, this is an idea of the size of the sample I've been working from, these were actually the ones in storage, and others were here, while a few more have come in recently, but you can see that the main 'types' we will be looking at (Giant, C1, C2 and C3) are all represented in largish quantities except the Giant originals (bottom-right, nearly empty pack) which were mostly here already! Silver predominates, but as the 'C2' we also get gold, scarlet and metallic blue & maroon figures, while . . . hold on! This is all for the next image;

Right . . . Silver plastic predominates, but the C2's were also done as gold, scarlet (not shown here, but peeking in the first image - above)) and metallic blue & maroon figures, while as C3 we sometimes find painted figures, a finish which may be of factory origin.

The C1 may not be the first copy, but is the best so earned it's moniker by dint of being closest to Giant's issues, while the C2 was by far and away the commonest, and the C3 is a separate issue, possibly (and only possibly) copied from the C2's as a third-generation piracy, on their post I will look at this further.

The Enemy; as far as I know there were no instances, either as Giant or otherwise, of the two being issued together, or established/flagged as protagonists, the one line being 'stand alone' spacemen, the other 'stand alone' aliens, but they would likely - in Giant's case, and probably as The Toy House - have been hanging next to each other on the rack, so the link (as belligerents/foils to each other) is there.

I don't have a Giant set yet, so this toy house one will have to do, but we looked at them all recently here;

Giant Originals
Toy House Issue
Dodgy Copies

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But is it Giant?

The figures in the bottom right-hand bag of the first image and the figure (3 angles) in the left-hand column of the second image are Giant product, everything else (99%) is not. The third image is dealt with on the relevant post (second link above).

'Face' Bunkers and Barbed Wire - Giant and Others

This is not a perfect post, both the Dragons' Teeth and the third sub-piracy are absent, but by the end you will at least be able to pair-up most of your Giant and sub-Giant bunkers and barbed-wire, if you currently have them all in one tub/box/place!

But we start with the granddaddy which is Marx, specifically the Miniature Masterpieces accessory which was, itself, probably pantographed-down from the larger item found in the 54 and 60mm play sets.

And odd design; more knights helm than pill-box, but having something in common with some of the cheap iron or concrete 'sniper' posts used by various armies/nations since the end of the 19^th Century, except they are usually small one- or two-man things.

Hard polystyrene plastic and marked clearly with the full stamp, this one 'Hong Kong' but there may be 'Taiwan' versions out there?

Giant got a copy of the Marx unit out for their WWII sets, it's soft polyethylene plastic, a little smaller, a little less sharply finished, and there was barbed-wire (illustrated) and dragons' teeth (see below) to build a formidable defence-line from multiple sets.

A reminder that the that the P-in-a-circle mark; ⓟ, is internationally recognised as the symbol for phonographic recordings, not 'patent', 'protected', 'perfect' or even 'plastic'!

These would seem to be sub-piracies, and I have titled them C1 for 'copy, type one' (for the purpose of this post, you can title them whatever you like!) although it may be that the next lot ('C2') came first, but these are closer to the Giant version, just a poorer copy, less well-finished.

The arrows are pointing to large pin-release marks, which are more-like channels, filled with resin which has then been cut away with tin-snips or side-cutters, leaving still quite-pronounced protrusions.

These (C2) are poorer again, but differences in the overall design suggest parallel copying rather than liner, so they may predate the C1, but it will only be by a few months as the sets carrying them both are pretty contemporary - approximately 1966-68.

Also - or again; soft polyethylene plastic like the C1's and Giant's original copy.

The barbed-wire which accompanies the Marx-copy/Giant-clones; they are both copies of the giant version - which we looked at here - and a much finer piece than all the clones. It should be noted that while I am 100% on the tie-in between the C1's, with the C2 I have such a small sample of wire it cannot - yet - be taken as empirical, although checking with the Beach Head sets will sort them all out, more accurately, another day.

The four together, you can see that with the C2, there is a different profile to the soil the pill-box is set into, and while the surface is smoother (suggesting another pantographing) it is also a cleaner bunker sculpt than the lumpy C1, so one suspects that the C2 is a separate copy, independent of a evolution-line of cloning of the Marx/Giant donors.

There is another bunker design, which could be C3, or, a C2 if the brown ones are a stand-alone line/design, as it seems to be copied from the Marx-Giant-C1 evolutionary line, but the 'mouth' has been dropped and a 'side-door' arrangement added to the [defenders] left side (right side as we're looking at them here), they can be seen in the above links, but I can't find them, despite last shooting it in 2015, so they must be here somewhere!

Comparing the barbed-wire entanglements/fences, in the link to the Beach Head and other sets above, I noted that one of them ('D-Day Invasion') had Giant-marked barbed-wire, I'd better check to see if it has Giant bunkers as well, I suspect it did have?

While the additional strand (at the bottom of this shot) may go with the missing 'doorway' (C3) bunker, something else I'll have to check against those sealed sets! Note: double barbs on C1 and smaller barbs on C2 with the question-mark being closer to the Marx original but with four spans against the three of everyone else's.

A close-up of that forth type.

When I check the other question marks remaining above, I will return with a fuller article, and get these properly sorted. I have a shed-load somewhere as I was literally the only bloke in the UK hoovering them up at shows for years, where they were always in the junk trays, although kind people like Trevor Rudkin and John Begg saved lots for me over the years as well, so the above is just a taste, of what I had to hand, and is no guide to anything!

Basically they all follow the Airfix pattern of a 'hand' of five, linked to make a double row 2-3 ( ,',', ) and I think the Giant are the taller, with the clones getting smaller ones, which - like the barbed-wire - will probably be found to run to four obvious variants? However, all the clones are without the pyramid on the cap, which the Airfix ones wear.

In addition to the links above, this post covered the other examples in my 'master collection', and both posts linked-to owe a debt to James Opie, from who's collection several of them came.

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But is it Giant?

I set a rod for my own back with this footer-feature didn't I!

Yes, if it says so in the text, no if it doesn't and almost certainly no if it's product added to a generic set with a bunch of non-Giant product also present! Another way . . . everything in the second image is Giant, except when it's been supplied to someone else; everything else isn't Giant except where the Giant stuff is being compared with it - in images 6 and 7! There might be some Giant in the last image!

It'll be clearer when we return to them to clear-up the remaining question-marks.

Novelty Headquarters Inc., and Others - Space Alien Clones

We've already seen these as I only have the three examples and they have all been used in comparison-shots on the previous two posts! However, to get the boxes ticked, we'll have another look at them with a bit more info' and some theorising.

So these are they; it has taken all of my 40+ years collecting to get the three, which equates to one every fourteen-odd years! I fact they've all come in, in the last 30 years, so about once a decade, although, technically they aren't [or 'weren't'] rare once, as we'll see in a minute.

But the slow drip of them here in Albion points to them having been either the very cheap gum-ball machine capsule prizes (1p or 2p machines back in the day) or the budget Christmas cracker's - 1 per cracker, 1 cracker to every few boxes?

Mark is, as you can see, a small, crude 'HONG KONG', in semi-readable condition.

And they are copies, probably from crude re-moulding, hand-finished, rather than with a pantograph, simplification of the blue-guy's rifle, and the missing butt of the pink guy's, coupled with a marked reduction on size over the originals and loss of fine detail, suggest a crude method of copying? Especialy as they've then been given the same size bases as the Giant donors, something which would have been equally reduced by an off-set pantograph.

This has been on the PC since I got the one before the one before this, and I think it came from a defunct Blog or website, it may be off eBay (some early images were very poor) but it illustrates the point that in the 'States you could get a bag of 100+! For what, .25/35¢? And say 5-20 bags per outlet, 500 or 5,000 outlets . . . somewhere; a mountain of these has disappeared into thin air! As have the Giant originals!

Except we know they are in landfill! Ephemeral rack-toys, from the budget-end of a budget-genre, they were discarded, hoovered/vacuumed, lost in the garden or playground, down drains (there'll be a bunch of 'em in the Sargasso garbage patch!) and whatever was left, eventually went in the bin.

Another old crap image with some LB (Lik Be) robots rounding up the Novelty Headquarters Inc's invasion force!

Now, these are the same colours as those in the bag, not the same as mine, which may point to mine being a 2nd generation piracy, 3rd generation if you count the Giant ones. The US ones also seem to have retained a bit more of their stature, although the red one on the left has a poor weapon, so it's probably down to the base-mark, which I don't know, however I suspect two runs of the same tool.

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But is it Giant?

Neoooow! Not in a million-billion-squillion-gazillion-years Pal! Yer 'avin' a larf, in't 'cha!

Giant Outer-Space Alien Bug-Eyed Martian Moon-Men From Mercury!

Flagged-up as forthcoming on the 'Home Blog' the other day, except this isn't the referred-to post on the Toy House blister set, but rather the lose Giant originals, the post on the Toy House set will be the next of two following this post.

Giant's space aliens; six poses, manufactured in a nicely tight palette of chocolate browns, jade-greens (here toward the darker hues) and a pink toward purple or is it purple toward pink (?) range. Note - the forth figure from the left (second green) is a left-hander, nice to know other worlds have the same variable DNA!

How they came here; despite what you might read - here, or elsewhere - they arrived in small, blow-moulded staring wheels (yeah, there's an attempt at a joke in there somewhere!). Seen in yellow and red (as here), I'd like to think there may be green or blue ones out there, but everyone else seems to only have, or found, red or yellow, so far?

They are soft polyethylene ('polythene') with a clear-plastic dome manufactured in harder polystyrene, which clips into three slots, found at the upper-roots of the ship's arms. The compartment will take two or three at a squeeze, but is probably designed for one figure.

Top - A comparison between the two similar 'advancing' poses, the figure on the left is almost stationary 'at the ready', while the figure on the right has a more horizontal weapon-hold and a bent right leg, he's clearly getting a shift-on!

Middle - Camera-flash rendered this a less than successful shot, but is supposed to be showing the range of the pinky-purple, with a darker purple on the left and a paler pinky on the right. Brighter and darker exist; see below.

Bottom - A Giant original on the left against a poorer clone on the right, the copies come in a wider range of often wackier colours (again; more below) but can be quite distorted or misshapen, and are all-over more 'blobby'.

There is little-to-no evidence that these large blow-moulds were ever branded to Giant, despite them being often so-described by some online (there's an hideously overpriced 2-pack on evilBay as I publish this, describing them as Giant), nor any evidence they were ever carried by Giant, PMC or the later Arcotoys? Every example I've seen/encountered (we looked at them here, a while ago) is an unmarked 'generic' rack toy.

Equally, there's nothing definitive to say whether they came first or second. My own feelings are that they are later copies, for a number of reasons, not least is that they only copied three of the six poses, a forth, less common pose (waving space-rifle) being not taken from Giant.

Additionally Giant's early bi-colour graphic blister-carded sets date from the early sixties while the larger bagged blow-moulds with full-colour header-cards are more late 1960's/1970's, so these days I suspect the blow-mould'er copied Giant's diminutive figures.

Comparison between Giant and non-Giant bases, the clones having a simple and often half-readable 'HONG KONG', the Giant's having the full 'GIANT ⓟ HONG KONG' mark.

Now, I have been quite derogatory toward the Giant ⓟ-mark . . . in the original series of articles in One Inch Warrior magazine (back issues may still be available of the later numbers), earlier on the home blog and most recently - I think - on the Roman page of the same Blog.

However someone then thought to add a rather long winded addition to his site - which hadn't worried about the ⓟ-mark until I did that Roman page - muttering about patents. There are several internationally recognised abbreviations pertaining to patents, all of which have been on the home Blog for a decade;

• Pat. - Patented
• Pat. App. - Patent Applied-for
• Pat. No. - Patent Number; followed by a numeral

In 1961 it was agreed internationally that the P in a circle mark; ⓟ, would represent phonograms (phonographic recordings), referred to as "...the sound recording, phonorecords, phonogram or phonographic copyright symbol" by the Rome Convention on such matters.

So, while some date Giant from 1959 (without empirical evidence), Tawser gives "common belief", which is pretty safe, Garratt gives 1962-, which is a bit later but would have come from one [or more] of his US correspondents (Pestano?) back in the day, nearer to when it all happened, I myself prefer a wider 1961/2, which gives a couple of years for production contracts to be settled and for New York to organise licences with the Hong Kong office and/or shippers, UK importers et al., to enable James Opie to be buying the early bicolour blister-card sets, in the UK, in 1964.

Even if Giant dates earlier (and the correct date for their move into the colony may be in the HK book), the ⓟ-mark is lacking from some of the earlier stuff, and fully-associated with the later-issued black/silver knights, as blister-cards gave-way to header-carded bags.

Ergo, Giant were pulling a fast-one with their ⓟ-mark, hoping people might THINK it meant patented or protected or some other equal nonsense, and as such I will continue to take the piss out of their ⓟ - yes; another attempt at a joke of some sort!

The aforementioned archive shots, I believe the trio in the bottom-left hand shot are now in my sample! The upper shot seems to have been worked-on in a picture-editor; the brown and green darkened as the pink has been enhanced to a probably false shade? While a more turquoise green is to be seen bottom right, in a more colour-true image.

The only remaining question is, are they aliens, aliens in space-suits or riveted android/robot types?

Elite interdiction-squad the 'Puce Panteras' of the 4th Astrovasion Wing (LRRP) receive the day's orders from their spore-parent, prior to launching their invasion of Earth, little did they know that their reconnaissance drones, lacking scale on the camera's, had sent back terribly inaccurate data, the Terran's were over a thousand height-units, and the gravity so heavy, the moon-men couldn't move, few survived, and decades later it was a rare thing to see them alive or dead, usually on the evilBay . . . for many credits; fate is a cruel mistress.
 

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But is it Giant?

Yes! except the obvious copies and the blow-mould comparison, this is all Giant product, unless it's Toy House, but I'm getting ahead of myself . . . see next post/'Newer Post'!

 

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.