'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.

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 - P2 Pony (Type 2)

The P2 'Pony' is clearly a copy or further development/re-tool of the P1 Pony, but is a far more interesting premise, with several sets and accessories associated with it/identified so there's much more to get our teeth into.

The horse; as shown with the P1 post, the P2 has cruder carving to the mane and tail, thinner walls to its flanks and is unmarked. Other differences (between the two P's) include the holes for the rider's locating-spigots being set higher in the saddle-moulding on the P2 and a slightly lower head position with a 'softer' neck

It also has a clearly defined flat top to the body cavity, tends to a glossier plastic and has one of the smallest ranges of plastic-colours of all Hong Kong hollow-horses, apart from a few slight shade differences in the brown, there is a black, white and grey and that's it.

Lots of them too, these were made in the modern era, when machines could run for hours with huge hoppers of colour-stable granules, their pigments chemically matched to tolerances of 100th's of grams-per-ton, so like modern army-men you don't find the slight variations in colour between batches, you will find with older sets/lines.

The reason browns often retain the variation is down to their being - in plastics terms - technically a purple; a mixture of red, yellow and blue, and therefore harder to match and more likely to result in variance.

A comparison between the Pony (P2) and the old Giant 'Smoothie', the genetics are there but they are very different beasts; the Pony being altogether more smooth, boxy and toy-like next to the Smoothie, who was christened that, by me, as he is himself smoother than the sculpted [Crescent] 'Wavymane'!

As we led with the cowboys on P1, we'll lead with the Natives this time . . . and what a shower! These are very poor sculpts, almost deserving of the term semi-flat, no details at all, few extremities, all weapon tips missing - and I'm sure it's the mould; not short-shots.

They are recognisable as the old Giant poses, but only just and like the horses, the colour range of the plastic is limited, and colour-fast between batches, which - with their other [non] features make them easier to sort out of mixed lots. Locating-studs are short and fat.

The same points extend to the cowboys; colour-fast, ex-Giant, semi-flat, crappy mouldings. Interestingly, despite at least three sources (in a minute!) and many years of collecting, the evidence suggests the mounted Indians outnumber the cowboys by a slight but constant 5:4 or maybe 4:3

So, we have quite a few sets for these, which is the best way to confirm earlier sorting, and while I can't be sure of the dates, I'm pretty sure these were first. The Einco 'Indian Village', which I remember hanging in Webb's newsagent in Hartley Wintney in around 1974.

This is one of the best non-Giant sets of the type (despite the awful sculpts) having various additional contents to actually make a 'mini-playset'. You may recognise the trees as being common from Ri-Toys sets later in the 1970's through to the early '90's and that gives us a clue to Einco being a made-up brand (or 'phantom' in today's lingo) and confirms with the sets lower down the post.

The obvious addition is two poses of foot figure, both crude, both semi-flat'ish, both [barely] recognisable as ex-Giant sculpts but apparently carved from a block of soap with a sharpened spoon! Colours are even tighter than for the mounted figures, as they were - to my knowledge - only ever used with the one set, so; a relatively small production-contract.

Both figures have small protrusions on their bases, which may be deliberate, or may be accidental damage to the mould-tool, or some long-forgotten part of the production process of this set?

There are similar marks on a Noah from Pagget Brothers, and one wonders if there was a concerted attempt to make figures stand up better on the deep-pile carpets of 1970's suburban houses, but it's conjecture and a long-shot!

There are a few versions of this Tee-Pee (Tipi) out of Hong Kong, and this is a copy of earlier better ones, copying even the weird tie-down hooks at either side - possibly used to attach the original donors to base-cards with thread in window-box sets.

Fences in two sizes, bog standard HK-fayre, being copies of Merit line-side fencing and Britains farm stock. The trees are a simplified Britains palm-quartet and a poplar tree of dubious  origin . . .  and we have an additional horse; not part of the 'hollow-horse' oeuvre!

The reason for the inclusion of the solid horse is for the operating of a rather European looking muck-cart, the Indians obviously swapped for a pile of coon-skins! While some of the additional components were Rado Industries own, I suspect this pair may have been bought-in, they are quite different to the crudities of the rest of the set and used to turn-up in Christmas-crackers and the like.

The yellow wagon is from another source and is placed in the collage for comparison; it has locating-studs for a horse (Probably hollow) I have yet to ID/ascribe.

I'm pretty sure these come later, all the accessories have gone, the unmistakeable Ri-Toys tree-logo is present and the only thing to note is the tight 'colour way' of each set, there's about 25, 30-maybe per pack.

Generic sets also exist without the Ri-Toys tree logo, and artwork re-drawn in brighter, flatter colours, these are even smaller with an eight-figure contents count, per bag.

And please don't imagine I think these came second or the P1's first, they have been labelled arbitrarily and numbered arbitrarily by me, and give the numbers of these compared to the P1, it could well be the P1 is an off-shoot or piracy of P2, but they (the P1 people!) made more effort - with the figures and the horse - so it gets first billing 

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But is it Giant?

No, this set and the similar P1's date from long after Giant has been replaced as a branding by Arco with their larger, poorer quality, rack-toys, and while Arco may have issued some small-scale hollow-horsed sets; A) they would have bought-them in and B) Ri-Toys are one of the few 'known-players' among the thousands (of plastics manufacturers) operating out of Hong Kong. Whether Einco were a Western importer or a made-up name is the only question-mark outstanding here, really.

Battle of Berlin Mini Military Playpak - DFC - Multi Toys Corp.

I'll load this last so it appears above the other two of three, as it's ended up with the most images and the other two are pretty-much much-of-a-muchness! The three were - in point of fact - sold together in a cling-film outer with a card tray.

Box scan promises little but a light tank could reasonably be expected to star in the contents! The "Over 35 Pieces" on all three boxes is a funny one, there are in every set 31 figures, one or two vehicles and a polyethylene play-mat made of carrier-bag material. In the case of one set (the Battle of Berlin in this post) this gives an item-count of only 33, count the wheels and turret seperately and you get 36! The other two sets are a little better, giving 34 items/40 parts!

The contents complete and set-up on the rather simplistic play-mat; clearly a meeting of two cart-tracks down in the Grünwald rather than the more iconic urban setting of so much of the photography of the final, brutal campaign by the 'Red Army' to behead the Nazi-daemon!

Which makes the sight of two sets of Matchbox US Infantry piracies dukein' it out in the woods all the more incongruous! Especially as one side gets to call on a vaguely British armoured-car for fire-support . . . lend-lease to the Soviet Union!

The figures, no mortar or team but most of the set is copied (leaning-back Tommy-gunner, bazooka-man, AFV-overalls and stabbing down are also absent, along with the MG No.2) and you get them in two colours, a mid-green (close to the Russian summer uniform) and an olive-drab which sort of passes for field-gray!

The figures are so-so, they're not the worst copies of Matchbox in these small sizes, nor are they the best. Unmarked and in a glossy plastic; they is; what they is, what they is!

The armoured-car is a very basic version of the big Daimler as modelled in small scale as a kit by Hasegawa for a long time now. There are lots of versions of this from Hong Kong (and 'China'), most probably coming down from the Dinky die-cast toy original; this is the poorest version I know and is an umpty-somethingth-generation copy!

However, finish-quality is good; it's a nice clean, well-defined moulding, just not very accurate to the donor! Marked "Made in Hong Kong" in the body-cavity.

A scan of the play-mat should anyone need to print-out a paper replacement, neatly dating the set's issue to 1983 and suggesting that DFC/Dimensions for Children might remain with us through the still-busy MTC whose rack-toy products have featured heavily on the Home-Blog over the last 20-odd months.

Below this post you will find briefer looks at the other two sets in the series/pack-liner; Battle for Stalingrad and Battle for the Black Forest.

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But is it Giant?

 

No - date is way off, source-material for the piracies is way-off, plastic play-matt is not Giant's style, although some of the comic-stuff with Giant figures did have similar play-mats; they were paper.

Battle of Stalingrad Mini Military Playpak - DFC - Multi Toys Corp.

So, to the second of the three sets issued jointly by the Dimensions for Children and MTC brands in 1983; small sets sold together in a trio and containing a handful of Hong Kong-sourced piracies, the contents similar between the three sets.

Scanned box, the artwork is even more exciting than on the (above/newer post) Battle of Berlin set, if only we actually found a Schwimmwagen with MG fitted upon opening the box, or plastic renditions of the walls of the Kremlin - wrong city DFC! Sadly - no such luck!

The figures are copies of Matchbox's US infantry and as we looked at the poses above, we are here looking at the colour variations of the two main armies, one being in a rich yellow-olive or khaki and the other set being in  a darker olive-drab or jade-green, however there is quite a variation between figures and each set has 31 figures, random by pose and number of each pose but always (or certainly - in the case of my three sets) 15 in one colour-way, 16 in the other.

In place of the Daimler armoured-car in the Berlin set we get two jeeps in this set, both scaled larger than the figures, one fitted with a spigot for an absent driver and looking vaguely like a US WWII-era Jeep, following a common HK design, the other having a hole forward of the driver's seat which may be for an equally absent driver, or a steering-wheel, as it's not present either - we'll never know!

This second 'jeep' however is not a Jeep, but resembles almost the Soviet version utility-car with a different bonnet (hood) and squat'er appearance, see also next/older post (Battle of the Black Forest) for a couple more views; it also lacks the star on the bonnet usually seen on Hong Kong Jeeps.

The different markings, plastic solour and wheels suggest both were bought-in from separate manufacturers, with the smaller one being supplied by the same producer who provided the armoured-car seen in the Battle of Berlin set, the larger one originating with the same company that made the figures.

As with the other two sets this is a 1:1 scan of the play-mat in case anyone needs to print a paper replacement for the PE original, and, in keeping with the Battle of Berlin set, seems to have eschewed the iconic scenes of urban combat around the tractor-factory, rail terminus, river-side wharves or main square, depicting - instead - the rural idyll to the South of the city as described by Guy Sajer in his seminal autobiography The Forgotten Soldier!

So we've had Berlin and Stalingrad, what great battle next; Iwo Jima, Leningrad or Moscow, Tobruk maybe, Kohima . . . Mote Casino, Dunkirk even . . . ? No, we're off to the Black Forest!

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But is it Giant?

 

No - date is way off, source-material for the piracies is way-off, plastic play-matt is not Giant's style, although some of the comic-stuff with Giant figures did have similar play-mats; they were paper.