Giant and Giant-like Astronaut Spacemen - Part IV - Copy Type 'C2' - Woolbro ++

So to the commonest version/variant of Giant clone, while now priced as (and usually described as-) Giant on evilBay, these used to be easy to find in under-table rummage boxes at shows and over the years I've picked up a reasonable number of them in the four main colours shown here, with silver outnumbering the other considerably - I've probably got more silver than all the others put together?

The same ten poses as the previous C1's, but smaller and less detailed, the 'bazooka' man can - again - suffer from distortion, but not always and not as consistently as the C1 fellow, this might point at the same factory for both, but is more likely down to the thickness of the sculpt at that point in both sets?

A comparison between the first-aider and the O/C, you can see they are separate poses, with the officer having a questing little-old-lady stance, while the medic is reaching more forcefully. His chest detailing is also better as he's been recut from new, rather than pantographed, same for his head/helmet.

C2's are probably copies of one of the other two sets (C1 or - less likely - C3) and show it, he doesn't though, he's altogether a fresher sculpt.

My favourites dukeing asteroid e asteroid, not the commonest, but I've found them two or three times over the years and seen them a few other times on feebleBay, so they were quite numerous sometime (probably in the Woolbro sets - see below)?

Gold turn-up in about the same quantities, while the red-chap is the only one I've got! Possibility he's a Gum-ball machine capsule prize/Christmas cracker type thing, but I suspect he's from the US 'comic offer' sets (see below), where half the contents were this colour, the other half the common silver?

I have someone to thank for the silver-troop shot - Theo van der Werden, I think? Cheers Theo - it all gets used eventually! And the gold patrol are advancing up a Cane trench!

Base mark is similar to the C1's, but much fainter and a bit smaller (still a DIN font; 'HONGKONG') than the C1's, with no dimples, holes or double-stampings, the sepia image is me trying to show you that a gloss-red figure inches from the camera-flash has the same marking! There is a gap between the two words, but it's so thin I've given them the one-word mark.

Their numerousness is down to the fact that they were carried by various people in various sets, mostly generics in independent corner stores and newsagents, but at least one branded supplier Woolbro (left), where they carried the same '445' code as the other sets in the line (Fort Cheyenne, Mobile Task Force and Roman Fortress). Age-wise they are probably newest on the left (Woolbro mid-1970's) and oldest on the right; a generic from the late 1960's.

The two later sets both come with a copy ofMattel's Major Matt Mason space walker (also nicked by Eldon's Billy Blastoff) and a rocket which I think is taken from MPC (? Someone like that!), but which has had a safety 'bulb' added to save eyes . . . it was carnage in the earlier 1960's blinded kids as far as the still-sighted could see!

On the subject of Blast Off (at least two board-games, a play-set and a book, the book titled in homage to all the other 'Blast Off's!), Five Star, Helen of Toy and others carried a set (in two sizes - 117 and 196 pieces) under the same Blast Off moniker, which I suspect probably contained these C2 figures (in the absence of other better candidates) which would have included my red figure - on one side - with yet more silver figures, but this is still conjecture? The two brands here are clearly the same outfit working from the same address.

Some sources claim Giant figures were in the sets, but without empirical evidence, and while the sets are very rare, so is my red example! As the Blast Off sets were red and silver, and given some will claim everything Hong Kong and small scale is "original Giant", I suspect the truth is that these common figures were the ones used. Many thanks to Peter Evan's for one of the comic pages.

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But is it Giant

No! The truth is that four sets of astronaut/spaceman tools were being used, probably all within months of Giant's product appearing, at around the same time (1961/2) through to about 1974 (for these C2's), although these may have been issued a little later than both the C1 and C3 clones. There is however no Giant stuff in this post.

'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.

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.

Kamley Industrial Co. Ltd. KS2 - 3001 Combat Troops - Airfix 2nd Type 8th Army Copies

Really another box-ticker as the bulk of the lose figures are in storage at the moment, but it's pretty self-explanatory, and indeed because I don't do the 'A is for...' trope on this Blog, the title has as good as covered it!

KS as a product code was the first incarnation of Kamley Industrial as they would be registered in the early 1980's and ran along-side the Kositoy brand of the same group, actually KS seems (as a generic) to have pre-dated Kositoy, but this set is a later addition to the range I feel, purely from the graphics and the fact that it contains copies of figures Airfix only released in 1974?

Only three of the figures are taken exclusively from the 2nd version Airfix 8th Army set; the mine clearer, the MG spotter and the chap running with a Sten-gun, the rest having been available as scale-downs from the Airfix 1:32nd scale set for some years and some of Kamley's competitors had been doing just that, however the bases suggest all were copied from the newer smaller set from Haldane Place.

I have a whole bunch of loose ones (in storage!) and I may have other colours, but I can't remember which (or if) so we'll leave it with these few who have come-in recently in green, and the bagged sandy ones!

 

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

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But is it Giant?

No.

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.