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.

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - P1 Pony (Type 1)

My old notes and the index-card text which accompanies the loose versions of these reads -

P1 - Pony. Very well-detailed copy - but smaller - of 'Smoothie' with more detailed mane, more realistic tail than 'P2', "HONG KONG" in small letters at rear of body cavity, which is arched. Identified by mutually exclusive association, two sources.

More clean samples have come-in since the card was written about 25-years ago, and that's what we're looking at here.

This is the horse in question and I hope he conforms to the above description, He's quite a solid chap compared to some HK horses, but smaller than most, so a 'new' sculpt, copied from the older donors.

P1 is marked neatly with 'Hong' over 'Kong' in a little block reading head-to-tail toward the rear of the body cavity which makes all these 'hollow-horses' hollow.

It's called P1 because there is a P2 (which will be posted above this post) and here they are, next to each other, the P2 has elements of what I call remoulding in that while the horse is equally small, its mane and tail are cruder and it looks like the changes have been carved straight into the tool. It's also a thinner-walled sculpt and unmarked.

P2 is also glossier than the matted, slightly (or subtly) textured surface of P1

My pelt drawing/diagram which also shows the strange arch under the saddle which may help ID them if you are following these none-to frequent posts (they will become more frequent - I just need to get a rocket up my arse!) with the aim of sorting them out of bigger mixed lots - which is the main purpose!

Horse colours are all realistic, as far as HK horses go, no bright colours or dark green ones!

The cowboys, as with the Indians they are the three old Giant poses, quite a reasonable take on the older figures, faces have gone and the locating-spigots on the legs are much heavier, with the single-six-shooter pose's having slight blobs on the tips.

The colour-palette is best described as subdued primaries and I'm not 100% happy with the pale-green double-six-gunner, his hat is slightly different and his feet likewise, but with two apparent cavities for the pose (fatter and thinner torsos) and no other set he fits with, he's here for now - see below.

The Native American Indians, again three poses, again ex-Giant and you can see another reason why both the pale green cowboy and the poorly-moulded ones remain in the sample, there are similar Indians, and they are better matches, so there were poor mouldings (too quick out of the tool leads to shrinkage which at this scale smoothes-off detail at the same time) and a few leerier colours; note the pinks!

P1 on the left, a Giant Smoothie on the right, you can see that the Pony is a much smaller version of the Giant mount - which has a smaller version itself.

As yet I have been unable to tie these into a set, brand or manufacturer, nor have any accessories yet been associated with P1 sets/lots.

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But is it Giant?

No, despite using the same Giant figures as many other HK Horse sets/groups and using the smaller version of a Giant horse, this family (see P2) is a later entity altogether dating from the mid-late 1970's or even (in the case of P2) the early '80's.

Kositoys (Kamley Industrial) Cowboys 'n' Indians

The umpty-somethingth box-ticker today I'm afraid, but I want to get everything I have on this group up at once. There is actually a Cowboy and Indian set from Kositoy available for sale on-line as I write/publish this, but it's a large-scale set of pretty crude Airfix piracies, from the China-marked later period of Kamley Industrial with nothing to offer this post.

Which is; a header card for a small scale set, contents unknown.

It did come with a few figures, but they were clearly A) mixed from several sources and B) too small - as a sample - to have been all the contents; had they been matching; so just some card-art to look at!

The artwork is very similar to the Einco branded sets, this is not to say there's any link (beyond that they are both early/mid-1970's), but that if I've found three Einco sets (and seen more), which I have; there is every chance that a better sample will turn-up eventually and I can either update this post or post them again separately.

 

Now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

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But is it Giant?

No, but it is likely to be found to contain 2nd or 3rd generation copies of Giant's mounted poses, there are as this Blog will show over time, only the two main sets of poses; the Giant 3 Cowboys and 3 Indians and the 6x6 poses set of the other main players, with lots of minor exceptions and one-off's like Solpa's figures, so there's at least a...oooh...60% chance (?) of these having the Giant poses when they are ascribed.

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!

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Big Ears (Type 1 and 2?)

The first post on the new Blog and the first 'Hong Kong Hollow-horse' post has been chosen as both an example of what is to come - vis-à-vis the exploration of a specific 'type' of figure/set/accessory - and as also an example of how with these small scale HK subjects it is often the exceptions that prove the rule, in that this is a 'set' with no carded or bagged examples to confirm it, yet is easy to sort from the mass of similar products . . . despite a number of remaining queries or question-marks.

My sample, after 30/40 years of serious collecting is still very small, and with the sub-division into two 'types', each example is that much smaller! The fact that the sample is so small points to these being from gum balls or Christmas cracker inserts or similar sources of cheap 'novelty' items.

Because my study of these Hong Kong smallies is empirical (as the bulk of the posts on this blog will be), the lack of evidence for these 'going together' would normally be a real problem, leaving them labeled - by me - as "provisional" or "80% sure", however, they are the exception that proves the rule; in being so different to all other hollow-horsed Cowboys & Indians, we can say with some confidence that they do go together.

You will come to know (if you visit the Blog regularly!) that my naming of these horses is a simplistic affair, basically consisting of my identifying a physical trait of the horse, its pose or its sculpting and using that as a title! This horse (these horses . . . read on!) is called 'Big Ears', as it has really big ears!

The horse is probably quite late on the HK timeline, dating from the early 1970's, or very late '60's at the earliest and while being copied from earlier examples (probably Giant 'Smoothies') has had large lugs added by the sculptor or mould-tool engraver. The above are my entire 'Type 1' sample.

My 'Type 2' horses shot gives the game away: unlike all the other horses in this section of the HK small-scale universe, the figures plug into the top of the horse through the saddle, not through the sides.

Although there ARE holes in the sides as well, and they actually provoke the difference between type 1 and type 2; so it's all a bit fuzzy - but that's HK manufacture for you! However the hole in the saddle and the protrusions on the figures tie them together in a way the other Hong Kong hollow hoses often can't be.

The figures with their clearly, err, ahem . . . 'suggestive' locating-studs . . . "Studs" being a particularly apt moniker in this case! I am sure these are all one horse type, but using the self-imposed rules on empirical evidence, I have to keep them separated as the figures that have come with the type 1's are different poses from the figures that have come with the type 2's, and until a/some cross-over figure/horse combination/s comes-in (as a 'clean' sample), they will remain nominally or provisionally two types.

But it's clear from the above that poses are [likely to prove to be] the six ex-Giant mounted poses (Spell-check offered me 'mounted posse'!), with one missing; the single six-shooter cowboy pose. I think I have a few of these elsewhere in the unknown box, the answer may lie there, but they are in storage!

It's equally clear that the figures are almost certainly from one set (or 'type'), with most having the twin 'jiggets' or barbs down the shaft and rough sculpting of the locating-stud, with smoothed-off/blobby face and body detailing along with a similar colour pallet - the metallic-blue is relatively unique for these Wild West mounted types, while unrealistically coloured horses are not that common either, for both types to have the same yellow horse is another clue.

Two of my three type 1's, you can see the large ears on the heads, however, following my naming system this horse could have just as easily ended-up being called 'Pinched Nose' as a feature of both types (which is another clue to them being really one type) is a heat-shrink type blemish which 'squeezes' the nose.

The ears on the pink one are bigger than the ears on the yellow one; different mould cavities, but they are all bigger or more obvious than the ears on all other HK horses of this pose, and laid-back more horizontal than other obvious ears - on the 'Jogging' and 'Mexican' horses and some 'Smoothies' they can be as large but more vertical to the forehead.

This also introduces one of the constants of these posts - the 'both sides of the horse' photograph, which will always be cropped to a constant 930x355 (pixels?) in Microsoft's Picasa, which will distort size-comparison (where there is a marked difference) slightly, but will show detail well as enlarged images and allow them (the images) to be stacked, blocked or collaged in any comparative file or folder Blog-followers/visitors care to store them in.

The type 2's, again one of each ear size, and the reason for the two types: These have had the redundant holes in the flanks moved back and the original hole filled in. Now the first question is why? Why - in the first place - have redundant holes at all and why then move them?

Well, go back two pictures and take another look at the figures . . . you will see there are vestigial locating-stud marks down by the ankles (lower than the shin-level studs of a lot - but not all - of these figures; as we will see in the future), however you will also notice from the two paired figure poses that the removal point is identical on each figure, they were either removed by a guillotine while still on the runner (in a jig or frame of some kind) or removed from the mould-tool; it would require a microscope to decide which is the right call but my feeling is changes to the tool rather than cutting.

The fact that some holes are so far back that the figures would be tipped-forwards at an alarmingly unrealistic angle, were they to be fitted into the holes by the missing locating-studs when added to the fact that the new crotch-based locating-studs are very crude (in finish as well as posture!) points to the answer . . .

. . . clearly something went very wrong at the final design/mould-tooling stage, and a quick solution to a complete redesign was to drill a new hole in the saddle of the horse (which could be done by the engineers who drill the release-pins in the final stages of preparing the mould tools, only using a fixed-pin) and the addition of the new locating studs on the figures - which could probably be done by the same guys, who may have been responsible for the miss-drilled flank-holes anyway?

The other constant of these Hong Kong Hollow-horse posts will be the 'Pelt' graphic. This should be familiar to readers of One Inch Warrior magazine, but has been refined over the years, although it's still not quite as right as I'd like it to be!

It represents a horse from the underside/inside but cut and flattened, with the head to the left and the tail to the right, and older versions will sometimes be scanned-in - this one was a blank scan, detailed in Picasa with keyboard strokes. A blank will be posted on a separate 'Pelt' page above for those who wish to use it to help sort their HK hollow-horsed stuff.

As a lot of the indentifying features of all these horses are the mould-tool marks or actual Hong Kong, Singapore, HK (&etc...) marks only visible on the insides of the legs, or within the hollow body, these graphics will help identify the horses in your 'unknown' pile and the annotation will always be what you would see (through an eye-glass in my case!) as you look at the original . . . if sometimes simplified.

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But is it Giant?

No. Not even slightly, almost certainly from the novelty-end of the toy market, it's likely to prove to be from either (or both) gum ball machines and/or Christmas crackers, as yet I haven't seen it on a vintage vending-machine window card, but it may turn-up on one eventually!

As Christmas cracker prizes it would have been in a heat-welded or folded/stapled polythene bag of 3-5 or 6 figures, sometimes pre-attached to their horses and - in such a format - is equally likely to have been marketed to lesser/independent cereal brands (for which - with this set - there is no evidence at present), sweet or 'lucky' bags and as crane-machine prizes in sea-side amusement arcades.

The same small bag might be found in larger (higher priced) gum balls, but as single assemblies (one figure/horse combination) would have been found in the smaller gum balls in the bottom price range, which by the early 1970's was 5¢ or 2p, but earlier had been 1 or 2¢ (½ or 1d), Giant type 'H.K.'-marked astronauts were sold singly in 1¢ machines.

Of course - the contents of a 1968 1¢ machine became those of a 5¢ machine in the 1970's, a 10¢ machine in the late 1980's and are now to be found in 25-cent machines!

As I've hinted at above, I'm pretty confident these two types will prove to be simply 'Big Ears' one day.