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.

Kammley - KS - Kositoys G2 Gunners

These are the second version of Kositoy gunners and going on the index card (also survived the flood - see G1 entry) I used to be less sure about these as they come with the latter sets that don't have the Kositoy marked (or the unmarked ones for that matter) card insert to the trucks (see Kositoy on the Home Blog), however I have now found them in Kositoy and Kositoy-Kamley carded and blistered sets so they are Kositoy.

Another of the shots sent in by Brian Berke helps put them in context and as I've explained elsewhere, the third gunner attached via the towing-eye may not be an official feature, but I have found several over the years so either it's a common trope for owners to put one there, or at least one of the factory/outworkers did so, with or without permission!

Just as I haven't found green G1's, I have yet to find any G2's in yellow or the pinky-oranges.

A standard US-style, cold war G.I. with the old M1 piss-pot and a fatigue-jacket; still only a torso though, it's nice to see the armed forces of Toyland providing such important work for double-amputees!

The sample size is greater because they were more recent, so more turn-up! The weird thing about them is that although individually they seem to be a dense ethylene, when you shake a handful they sound like dice or gambling chips, as if they were a harder styrene polymer, I suspect a propylene?

Also if you compare the index card with the G1 sample, you'll see that this one is definite about jeep-drivers, but has a question mark (added at some point) over Kositoy, the G1's were the opposite, except it was 'pilot'!

The cards were mostly written in the 1990's as I was hoovering-up this stuff at shows and car-boot sales and will reflect my knowledge at the time, with recent developments it's now clear both types are KS-Kositoy-Kamley Industrial Co. Ltd., with the G1 the earlier and the G2 the later. And . . . yes; that reads Hong Konk!

 

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

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But is it Giant

No; the earliest KS-coded generics probably didn't appear until ten years after Giant had ceased to be as a going concern, possibly as long as 14 or 15-years after and there are no Giant-recognised items or pieces in any of Kositoy's sets.

G1 Gunners - Probably Kamley/Kositoy

These are one of two sets of gunners, the second of which (called un-imaginatively by me) G2 are definitely, 100% Kamley Industrial Co. Ltd. Trading as Kositoy or KS-coded generic rack-toys.

However there is a small question-mark over these for the time being as back when I was a Philistine (or even more Philistinical than I am now!) I used to chuck the crappy guns in the recycling or send them off to charity without the gunners, as I saw myself as 'only' collecting small scale figures.

I am pretty sure I removed both G1 and G2 gunners from Kositoy guns, and am equally sure that these are earlier than the others (due to A) having a smaller sample and B) not finding them on Google when the later (?) G2's are easy to find), however I always kept one of each 'intactum', so there will be a pair of confirmation samples in storage to return to at some point.

I did mock-up a brace for this post and while the G2's will fit the early gun without forcing, the G1's are loose in the later gun's seats, suggesting A) I've got them the right way round and B) that they are the two generations of Kamley/Kositoy.

As you can see he looks like a high-altitude pilot or astronaut/spaceman (but only a torso) with a full Gemini type or early Cosmonaut rig of straps across the front of his pressure-suit.

It wouldn't surprise me if he turned up in a rack-toy aeroplane, space-ship or racing-car at some point, and I have a feeling I may have removed some (of both G1's and G2's) from jeeps, but neither of the jeeps being listed today in other posts take drivers and I'm not listing such until I get the rest out of storage or find some on the internet to confirm.

Colours so far found. These are a softer ethylene than the G2's and when shook - as a handful - sound like Airfix HO/OO figures, unlike the G2's who sound like dice!

While I shall leave the question marks in the first part of this post I noticed that the index card is clear that these are Kositoy, which means they must have come with a Kositoy lot, this card predates 2006 having survived the 2008 storage-unit flood!

September 2022 - If Kamley; now known to be brand/brand-mark/s of Kwong Shing - added to tags.

 

October 2022 - Might be M-Toys balloon-powered hydroplane crewmen (hard to tell from the image - evilBay), which would make them another, but very similar group of companies - Marty / May Moon Industrial Co. / Maysun / M-Toys - Added to tags

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But is it Giant

No; the earliest KS-coded generics probably didn't appear until ten years after Giant had ceased to be as a going concern, possibly as long as 14 or 15-years after, and there are no Ginat recognised items or pieces in any of Kositoy's sets.