'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.

Giant WWII and [the then] Modern Army - Empty Cards

Further to the previous post, I have a few empty cards in the ephemera stash, and it's worth a quick look at them if only to get them up here!

Hard to know what the contents were exactly as the card would seem to indicate vehicles only, but knowledge of these sets would suggest a few figures were almost certainly included, probably in the Jeep & Cannon blister, maybe six-eight figures?

Also, it has a damaged code number, but we know this generation of card tended to have the first two digits as a 'prefix' code indicating the price point, so it's probably (but not necessarily) 3923?

As if to highlight the question marks above, this set has been recorded by Arlin Tawser as 1431 - Pillbox Attack - WWII Pillbox, halftrack, cannon, 12 US Infantry foot. Which certainly equates to the items which came with it, but as you can see mine's coded 3925, not 1431, so Giant clearly didn't have hard and fast 'rules', or - if they did - they didn't follow them!

Giant also made novelty items aplenty, and this is one of them. I may have the badges somewhere, but can't remember, nor can I say with any certainty whether they were simple paper stickers, or self-adhesive fabric. If they turn up I'll put them on the home blog for a bit of nostalgic fun.

I love the way they've written "T" Shirts . . . Yeah, the new funky t-shirts, look, people are calling them that, I've seen it in the press hence the double quotation marks, they're a real thing now, cool and groovy!

This was on the dongle, I think I took it in around 2010 as the old Fuiji Finepix was failing, so it's not the best but they came in as one lot, so I shot them before I put them with the others, and it gets them out of the way!

An hour or two later . . . 

. . . here's another one from the dongles, i think it's from my old imageshack account? You can see with both these how the middle three wheels lift of and compare the various barrels again.

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But is it Giant?

Oooowhyes! Everything above was produced by the Giant Plastics Corporation of New York, New York!

Giant Landing Craft, Crew and WWII AFV's

Well, in the end there had to be a 'Yes!' to the "But is it Giant?" question, and this is the first of what will be many, as we are looking at 100% Giant output, which, as far as I know, has never been associated with non-Giant production or sets.

The Giant landing craft, one of their bigger pieces and therefore - like the Viking longship or knight's catapults - quite rare as it only featured in a few of the larger carded sets.

The photographic equivalent of a multiple-view drawing! I think it's a loose rendition of a Higgin's Boat, although Giant's is made to take armour while a true Higgin's was a troop carrier with provision for a jeep and trailer.

The clip-in front ramp/door is joined by two slip-on pom-pom guns based loosely on a .50cal Browning heavy-machinegun. Three crew are provided; the same pose, in two iterations and they slip into the three 'pulpits' of the two gun stations and a wheelhouse.

The wheelhouse guy ('helmsman') gets a larger base and plug-in ships-wheel on a long steering-rod, and all three are just wedged into the pulpits resting against the inner/lower-ledges visible in the left hand shot.

The figures don't sit easily in their positions, and at some point Giant redesigned the two gunners, taking their 'penny' bases (left figure) away and reducing them to small buttons (right figure) which allowed them to drop in with ease. The smaller version seems to be commoner, but that maybe only in my collection and is not to be taken as empirical of anything.

The AFV's, there are four main bodies for the tank (a loose M46/47 hull), of which I don't yet have the quad-AA version (guns based on Roco-Minitanks Flak-38), but from the left we have a vague Sherman turret with 'ray-gun' (space-tank, yeay!), a shorter barreled turret which seems to be based on the M44/M53/55 family of SPG/Howitzer's superstructures and, finally, a crude copy of Airfix's M40/43 SPG with M12 cradle?

There is also a jeep, usually fitted with a trailer and a sub-scale half-track with twin-mg mount, usually fitted with a gun, which is a copy of Marx's standard play-set piece.

The hull and running gear are the same on all four vehicles and consist of five Christie-style full height road wheels and nothing resembling a drive sprocket. Plastic colour can vary from yellow-olive to a dark olive-drab. Warping of the hull (probably at the factory, rather than through age), in a banana-fashion, tends to leave the middle three wheels proud of the road!

The 'ray-gun' of the Sherman-alike is usually found bent, again this seems to be factory shrinkage, rather than any later deformation through age, and while it's never severe, it does tend to droop slightly, which lead to a redesign with a heaver barrel which is also slightly shorter, but stays straight! It (right hand of the close-up) retains some of the features of the ray-gun look! Unlike the small-based gunners, this variety seems less common, but again; from a sample of a dozen or so tracked AFV's, it's not to be seen as empirical of anything.

As I say, I don't have the quadruple Flak version, but it can been seen in Arlin's excellent article here at HäT's archive.

The generic US SPG I do have (above) seems to have a cradle similar to the ones we looked at here (not Giant) and both could be taken from the Esci M12, but I don't think it's old enough, so they may be harking back to an earlier kit from Monogram, Pyro or Renwall in a larger scale?

You can see it also traverses both from the gun and the fighting-compartment in a very un-SPG sort of way!

Although the jeep usually gets a trailer and the half-track a small field-gun, they can both tow each-other's preferred hitch. And the sublime sculpting of the jeep (by far the best item in the range and one of the better 'HO/OO' jeeps overall) is offset by the half-track being really quite comical, short, inaccurate, sub-scale and equipped with twin ray-guns and Marx's 'ladder-racks'!

But then they were only pocket-money rack-toys!

Another Japanese-held Pacific island falls back into US hands due to the timely intervention of the Giant Plastic Corp's 'Carlos Fandango' extra-wide Higgins Boat and ray-gun space-tank - those Jap-chaps never stood a chance!

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But is it Giant?

Yes, all of it!

Birds of a Feather are Manufactured Together - in the Far East

Apropos a spat elsewhere in the Small Scale World family of Blogs, Amscan were raised recently, we don't want that crap here, but as I haven't posted here for a while this is a timely post illustrating why we will never know the whole truth on Hong Gong production between 1946/7 and at least the Mid-1990's, although much that appears to be factual today is only made-up brands for Alibaba wholesale or evilBay/Amazon retail sell-through.

On the left are two Amscan sets with slightly different contents bought on a steamy-hot day in the summer of 1994, from one of the many discount stores within walking distance of Clapham Junction station's main entrance.

Were they made by Amscan? Of course not! Next to them are three other sets with identical/near identical contents of the same 'Airfix type three' figures (we will look at all this in greater detail another day, this post is about packaging and contract manufacture!), for the Canadian and Italian markets, and; as can be seen from the duel-language graphics of the Amscan sets, they too were intended for Canada (or France?) as well as the UK.

Note also: the dimension-data panel on the 'HK' set is remarkably similar to panels used by or seen on Jaru and Gordy packaging (off the top of my head - there are others), one day this may prove to be a Hong Kong factory tie-in clue?

In France and Germany you were more likely to encounter them in Hans Postler's 'HP' packaging which varied. We see here three versions, the early ones without the CE mark can be dated to pre-1992 (at a guess!), then a CE'ed version and finally a larger carded blister more in line with the set in the previous image.

All the CE marks in both images don't conform to the CE mark rules, which means that they are almost certainly forgeries; to whit - the manufacturer in Hong Kong added them without the relevant permission (or full knowledge of the CE graphic's rules) and the importers turned a blind eye to the fact without being in possession of the relevant certification; a situation which has improved greatly, over the intervening 25-odd years.

The Hans Postler 'earlies' carry artwork from these generics, dated to the early 1980's (a couple of the non-CE cards above carry clues dating then to '84'ish), and here again I don't have a large enough sample to know whether this is six-of-six, six-of-more or one or two from three series?

For instance, one of the Han Postler bags hints at a missing US set, while my US set is in a card trying very hard to pretend it is the card seen below. Matching graphics/same font on the first two of each row seems to point to two series, while the German set doesn't match either pair convincingly.

I suspect they are five-of-six with a missing US Infantry one carrying a fuller version of the HP card's artwork and the one bottom right above is an interim set? The Para's card seems to have employed Action Man (GI Joe) as an artist's model! While shades of Airfix artwork are in the other four, the last one however - as I said - is (with the addition of a dodgy NATO symbol) trying to be this one . . .

. . . which dates from the 1970's and contains ex-Giant factory-clearance, but no mention of Giant, Arco or Sarco or even Mattel or the Rosenberg's  anywhere, in point of fact; a totally blank, generic, rack toy.

Listing

2MacDue SRL (Italy)

Amscan Inc. (Canada, Mexico, UK and USA + others?)

Generics (early - Giant-clearance knock-off artwork and contents)

Generics (later - 3/4 packaging-artwork variations)

Hans Postler GmbH / HP (2/3 packaging variations, Germany and France)

Hong Kong Toy Exporters / HK (for 2MacDue, Hong Kong, China etc...)

'N' (Italy)

Toys and Wheels (Canada)

This list is NOT exhaustive, just what I've found so far. My 'Airfix type three' is the second size of solid, flat based Airfix copies with sharp edges for those of you who have sorted these, they were all explained in the One Inch Warrior magazine article on the Japanese, and I will do something fuller here - soon; now we’ve started to cover them!

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But is it Giant

The last one has Giant contents, but it isn't 'Giant', the rest aren't even Amscan (the subject of the spat elsewhere), they aren't any of the brandings they wear, they probably aren't even Hong Kong Exporters (but they might all be - with the exception of the last one), they are however; all contract-manufactured ex-Airfix sculpts pirated and made in Hong Kong and flogged as pocket-money toys from wire-peg racks and revolving dollar-trees.

Actually the Amscan were being flogged from their shipping-outers on the floor! I went through about 80 sets in two cartons to make sure there was only the two variations in contents!

There is the possibility of a mould move to China 'proper' by the time of the issuing of the fake CE versions, but the figures may have been sitting (in the '90's) bagged, in large, stacked, metal-stillages in an HK warehouse waiting (from the '80's production run) for sales-contracts to be found/fulfilled.