Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Longmane

Having seen them briefly in a previous post, let's look at one of the - probably - post 'Smoothie' horses, the one I call 'Longmane', simply because, as with all the others, the most obvious difference from other horses tends to be how they got their name, and no, you don't have to use the same names, call them what you want, this blog is about identifying them, and the differences between them, so we can stop calling the 99% which aren't Giant, "Giant"!

 

A nice sample of the horses and the colours they can be found in, I have a reasonable sized sample of these, from many sources, so this while not necessarily definitive, is a good primer. Colours are reasonably realistic horse colours, with a pinkish tinge to some, which might better be found on some deer!

 

Riders are non-Giant, with the exceptions of the rifle-shooting cowboy, and the fourth Indian down with tomahawk and shield, so when sorting you need to be careful, but their leg-studs are completely different to Giant's, and usually with a bigger bag of mixed stuff, the colours of the figures will help differentiate.

 

And, no, I don't know why the first few rows are the same poses, then the order breaks-down, lower down, but there would have been some reason when I originally did it? They are taken from Britains Soppets and so far all six cowboy sculpts and five of the Indians have turned-up, with the colour range growing slowly with the pink and semi-transparent dark jade-green examples.

 

This sample was very brittle and adding nothing to the knowledge, by way of poses or plastic colours, went in the recycling bin with the milk-bottles! Note, the red cowboy on the far right, a blobby, flashy one who could easily be mistaken for another maker's figure in a mixed lot, but this was a clean, if brittle batch! 

 

Also, while the horses are quite good, quality-control wise, the figure samples are all poorly moulded with lots of short-shots or miss moulds, most weapons tend to be missing or partial, especially with the Native Americans.

 

The horse, from my original handwritten notes of 25-years ago, when I started to cover these in One Inch Warrior magazine - similar to Giant's 'Smoothie', particularly the saddle and rump, but with a deep striated mane and very bushy tail, it has large hooves and is of high production quality, marked Hong Kong in quite large, slightly uneven letters.

 

That marking, the two words are quite close together, but there is a discernable breath or punctuation gap, unlike some Hong Kong marks where the two become a continuous word!

Having said the horse are of better quality than the figures, I do have some poor horses as well, and it's short-shotting which is the problem. But the horse has been re-cut by the maker, and tends to a good quality with sharp detail, while the figures are sub-piracies of earlier production from other sources, and it shows!

 

The pelt! I haven't yet found a full bag, or obvious set for these, beyond the four in the HG Toys wagon set, but the numbers they're found in, suggests they did have a rack-toy issue of the more common type - lots of mounted figures in a bag!?

 

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But is it Giant
 

Definitely not, but they have been associated with the HG Toys wagon sets, so could have been in a Lido set at some point?

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Mexican Large - Lucky Clover - Fort Cheyenne with Red Indians

I think we can assume there was a similar one printed 'With Cowboys', but more on that below. This is another easy one, clear distinctions between the similar 'bits' of this set and other sets, some of which we will look at here, others - in future comparison posts.

We've looked at the ancient and Royal Guards sets over on the main 'Home' Blog, and this has no real surprises, however while they had the same title (Tower Fortress with Soldiers) or shared the same packaging, this has a set-specific title block.

Four mounted figures replace the guns or chariots of the other sets and again we can assume that would be true for a cowboy version. A number of relatively unique (by size) foot figures accompany a pretty standard Hong Kong Wild West fort, although it has higher walls than the more common versions from Giant, Woolbro, Gordy, et al., and shallower step/walkway . . . too shallow to stand the figures on!

Logo, code number and a locating arrow, the purpose of which will be to ensure the packers get the tray-insert and the lid to line up, with the fort's own title-block reading in the English fashion (right-way-up, left-to-right) for neat, uniform, shop-displays.

The Stock-code number is the same for all sets, and as I've seen some of the sets as a probably later 1970's blister-carded assembly coded 6647H, it is fair to assume this too probably appeared in that guise, however, both from the numerically earlier stock number and the graphics, we can place this in the 1960's and indeed James Opie dates them to 1969.

The Indians; I have no way of knowing if these are all the poses, and the evidence would suggest probably not! There's a seventh damaged foot figure still to find, complete, for a start!

The figures are based on various sources, notably Timpo '1st version' Swoppets providing the mounted poses (spellchecker wants me to replace 'poses' with posse!), with a couple of Britains Swoppets and the Crescent 60mm sets providing the foot poses. They are also quite large, 26-28mm for the foot, so hard to mistake for other HK figure sets using any of these poses.

The foot figures have 'peanut' shaped cloud bases which are quite thick with an ogee edge and the locating studs on the mounted figures are surprisingly small, almost pointed pimples and all the Indian figures only appear in shades of purplish or oxide browns and red-browns, the darker figures are a bit translucent, and may well be from the later carded sets (if they existed), but the paler solid-colour ones are definitely from these window-box sets.

The horse is the one I call Mexican Large, and is about the best examples of the type you'll find after the Giant issued ones, unmarked and with a slightly textured surface to the interior to the body cavity and very thick body-walls.

Base mark is a blocked HONGKONG in a DIN type font and the fort will be looked at against the others in a comparison post at a later date.

Because I have only the three sets (Guards, Trojans and Indians) we will look at the cowboys as well here, in the hope that a cowboy set will turn-up one day . . . it will! I know the cowboys belong here as they have the following in common with the Indians . . .

• Size
• Base mark (foot figures)
• Peanut bases (foot figures)
• Ridden horse
• Locating stud (mounted figures)

. . . and because they came together in 'clean' loose-figure samples. Indeed; they were among the first sets to be sorted out of the main lump, such is the clarity of their signature features.

There are a couple of differences, namely that prior to obtaining this set, they had only turned up with a darker fort (although there were a few creamy-tan spare bits in the unknown box from mixed samples) and they don't take any poses from Timpo or Crescent.

It is my belief therefore; that the dark-brown (Indian figure colour) forts probably accompanied the so far missing cowboy sets, while the Indians got a fort which contrasted with their own plastic colour. Although the previous clean-sample loose sets I had taken-in often contained similar quantities of cowboys and natives, so there may have been 'belligerent' sets with both sets of figures and an oxide-brown fort.

The Cowboys; again I have no way of knowing if this is all the poses, but at eight foot and seven mounted two things are likely: A) there are probably less cowboys (if any) to find than the Indians, and B) there probably ARE one or two more Indian poses to find!

Always in the same four primary colours, but various shades and hues, the poses this time are from Britains Swoppets only, but from both the 1st and 2nd series. If anything their bases are even thicker than the Indians and with a sharper radius on the edge.

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But is it Giant?

No. 1969 puts it a year or two beyond the best of Giant, although some of their original stuff lasted on as sell-through (barbed wire, wagons) or comic book game-playing pieces, they were gone before this lot hit the toy, model and sports and bicycle-shops of the West!