'Wavymane' - The Original, Hong Kong Made, Hollow Horse?

So, I covered a couple of the easier horses at the start of this Blog, now it's time for one of the hardest, not as many variations as the Giant horses ('Smoothie' and 'Mexican'), but enough variants, and probably the original of all the hollow-horses, certainly the most numerous, by country-miles.

This is it, the horse I dubbed Wavymane, because I'm a simple chap and it has a wave in its mane, a curl - if you like - or, with the lighting on this shot, a bit of a loop, clearly visible on the right-hand horse's mane, about half way down the neck.

I was going to highlight it with an arrow, but some of you may decide to use these close-ups to build a ready-reckoner guide, so I thought I'd keep them clean!

My total sample, as of April 2016, there has been some growth, with a fair few in the TBS box, but I don't buy the quantities I used to when I was first trying to sort and annotate the 20+ main [named] types and 100+ variations, which is mostly now complete as an exercise.

We'll be visiting each sub-type in its own post here and we'll look at their marks when we do so. This is just a guide to what I have been working with/from, but there are a few points to note;

Type 1's are best quality, with a chalky (but not brittle) look, good musculature to the horses and subdued, but rich colours to the riders, with no accessories yet tied to them, they are definitely the oldest, may be the first HK horse of this HO/OO-compatible model, and - due to that age - are less numerous.

Type 2's introduce both new marks and a glossier plastic for both horses and riders, the carded set seen is 'theirs' as are some generic pocket-money bags. They are commoner than the 1's, but as clean 'Early' samples not much more numerous.

As Type 2 Late however, they are the commonest Hong Kong hollow-horse out there, there are thousands of horses in the box and the riders fill two large bags, with sets from A Pocket Money Toy (H - 502, a phantom brand?) and Larami (who also carried other Hong Kong hollow-horses, at other times, in the same packaging - so almost certainly bought-in, probably from third-party.

The Type 3 is the cake-decoration candle-holder version, and the numbering is purely arbitary, but was placed before the 4's, as it would have been an early application of the moulding, contiguous with the 2's if not originally the 1's, it depends on who had the idea first (decoration buyers, or horse seller) and how soon they arranged contracts, new tooling and deliveries of first orders!

While Type 4 covers all the late production which includes exceptions to rules, bought-in accessories, different riders or foot figures &etc. Some of these may still be in stores somewhere, but probably not.

Large sets from the Type 2 ('Empire Made' left) and Type 4 (YF, right) eras; The 2 has both ex-Giant foot figures and an ex-Giant fort without the bunk-house, but the riders are all Wavymane, while the 4 has new riders (ex-Timpo poses) and new foot figures.

US readers should note that while I don't have an MPC set yet, I've seen enough on evilBay to know they are within the Type 4 oeuvre, and specifically are packaging-graphic variations of the Blue-Box lookie-likey YF blister-card seen here. The foot figures also being issued with truncated versions of the fort as seen in the previous image - all will be looked at properly in the Type 4 post/s.

Also it should be seen/noted that YF produced ex-Giant second version Knight sets (tool passing through to Archie McFee/Accoutrements and ultimately BuM), yet there is no ex-Giant content in this set - although everything above is described as Giant by unknowing or unethical sellers on that there interma'web thingy!

Wavymane is basically a straight copy of the Crescent 54mm horse, down-scaled to a 1:76th/72nd or HO/OO-compatible size. The horse is technically galloping, although at full gallop the horse only ever has one hoof firmly on the ground at any given moment. However it's important to note that the sculptors at Crescent went with three hoofs grounded; one (front right) coming in, one (front left) lifting and one momentarily firm - rear right.

You can see I have highlighted the wave with arrows here, it is carried over from Crescent donor to Hong Kong piracy, along with all other details of mane, tail, saddlery and halter/harness, the location hole being raised to receive studs higher-up the scaled down legs of the small-scale riders.

Britain's had gone with a two hoof down pose for less stability, but greater realism, the front going down, the rear lifting. To the right of the Britains is a recent (and still findable) larger scale version of the old small-scale Hong Kong hollow horse, with the tail from one ('Flicktail') and ex-Giant 'Smoothie' body, but fitted for a base.

Timpo followed Britains with the two-hoofs-down gait, and when I sat 'followed' check out the sculpting of the tail or the ulna (shoulder) and carpus (knee) of the front left leg!

So, to the contentious bit; the Giant horse is a copy of the Wavymane! It's smaller because whether pantograph or hand cut, it then got reduced as the fine musculature of the Crescent horse was smoothed-out! Hence 'Smoothie' but they retained enough of the saddlery details - specifically the funny little flaps of 'Front Skirt' and/or 'Fender' (yeah - I had to look all this stuff up!), for us to know the Wavymane came first, the Giant is second generation, but re-cut to quality . . . to begin with.

This is important for two reasons, one; it will annoy the Giant purists and if you are annoying a specific group of fan-people you are usually getting something right, and two; because all the subsequent horses can be either 2/3/4th generation from Wavymane, or 3/4/5th generation copies of Smoothie - which is why studying them is so hard. Add stand-alone's and other 1st generation copies and it's all very complicated, but it has to be got right . . . or ignored.

A couple more large-scale offerings from Hong Kong, one which is clearly the Crescent horse, but now seemingly the donor for the small-scale horses I call Spiky-mane and Flicktail as it's had more work done on both features, to hide the Crescent origins? The other a Britains/Timpo hybrid with Britains take-off base.

Three of the previous images scaled-together in Picasa for a full comparison. The Timpo looks bigger, but that's because A) it has a rider and B) I've lifted the image to fit it in the corner to match the bottom-left corner, for graphical purity!

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But is it Giant?

Obviously the two used in the comparisons are, but the Wavymane specifically and all the large scale ones in general; no. However, you will find Wavymane's with Giant product as bought-in 'mix-and-match' sets, they are post- or ex-Giant.

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!