Follow-up to Giant and Giant-Like Bunkers; Another Giant?

Very much following-up from the bunker post further down, this is the other bunker I mentioned on that occasion, although when it turned-up during the move it proved a surprise to me, as it's marked Giant, albeit faintly!

 

This is the beast as described last time, I'd forgotten they replaced the 'mouth' with a nose! Given that the whole back was open to the world, the addition of a small doorway in full view of the enemy was an odd move, but it may have been after a call from the lawyers at Marx? Somehow, I doubt it!

The marking itself is not clear, so I've enhanced it below with a bit of contrast and shadow manipulation, but basically it's very different to the clear GIANT ⓟ marks of other Giant output, and similar feint Giant marks appear in the rear of the rumps of some 'Smoothie' horses, usually connected to clearly non-Giant sets/output, so it could be a true piece of 2nd generation piracy?

ll

It would be clearer, if it was clearer, if you know what I mean! It's a largish mark in a distinctive font, but just barely kissing the mould-tool, or even rubbed-off with a driver-mounted wire-brush?

 

While the HONGKONG isn't typical for Giant, and is to be found on the inside flanks of a lot of non-Giant 'Mexican Small' horses, particularly the ones pulling late version wagons?

===============================================================

But is it Giant

Well . . . (sucks through teeth) . . . maybe, it says it is, but the weakness of the mark, and it's association with the apparent Giant marks on non-Giant output leaves a question mark over it, until I can positively ID one in a sealed set?

 

And if it turns out to be Giant, we'll have to have G1 and G2, if not; this will have to be the C3 copy?

===============================================================

I got a weird demand to accept Google-doc cookies just now, which I've never got before, and I tried importing them through the home blog and got the same message there, consequently I copied and pasted them into the window, instead of importing them in the normal way and now don't know where they are hosted, on Blogger or on my desktop? They may disappear? And I'll have to have a rethink and sign-up to some other online crap I don't want to?

Grandmother Stover's C3 Spacemen / Astronauts

Another brand to link to the lesser of the three copies of the Giant Spacemen here, with small packets from Grandmother Stover's one of the smaller (but like SSCO relatively common) cake decoration, pocket-money novelty and craft/doll's house accessory suppliers.

A small'ish set contents-wise helps explain why they are the harder to find, a lot would have been lost piecemeal over time, but these will turn-up from time to time, I haven't opened it as I have a reasonable number of loose ones, including the odd metallic-maroon painted ones!

You can see the distinctive circular marking for the C3, which is my numbering system, no need for anyone else to use it, but it helps get them in 'an' or 'some' order! There's about 12 figures, but they seem to be a good mix of poses, whether you actually got all ten with some extras, or a totally random pick is a moot point I may try to work out if I find a couple more samples!

===============================================================

But is it Giant

As I said last time: these like the C1 and C2's are copies, clones, piracies . . . there's nothing Giant here, but we have the additional Grandmother Stover's for the archive!

Giant and Giant-like Vikings - Loose Examples

I realised we'd got through a Rack Toy Month over on the home Blog without posting anything here, and I usually manage to get something up here in RTM, so a bit late, here's a quick overview of the loose Vikings from the Giant Plastics Corp., of Hong Kong and New York.

We looked at the carded stuff years ago on the home Blog here, and will look at them again here when I've taken some new images of the cards which are currently in storage.

The ship, sans oars and anchor, just to give an idea of what it looks like, a simplified scale-down of the Aurora model-kit (reissued in the 1990's by Smer), which has been scaled at 1:64th (by hobbyists I think, the actual kit doesn't give a scale/size?), and which is here a nominal HO-gauge compatible or somewhere between 1:76th and 1:87th.

A recent one on evilBay with a blue sail and a couple of crew in situe, they are provided with small locating studs or spigots to keep them upright as the boat is rolled-about on the carpet or abused in the bath or fish-pond! Ulike the Giant Romans where all figures have the hole for the chariot spigot, here only the crew have a hole.

Each ship comes with a bag of accessories consisting of the crew - typically; one commander, one helmsman and four spearmen/sentries (but it can vary), an anchor, a steering oar (steer-board / starboard / stab'd), 16 shields and 14 rowing oars. The reason they are missing in the above shot is that I'm won't to open a mint pack!

The sample I'm working from is not great, they are among the harder to find of Giant's output, but not as rare as the backwoodsmen or early knights! Giant originals on the left, unmarked copies on the right, crew above, fighting 'troops' below. You can see from this unscientific sample that about 2/3rds of all the Vikings out there are actually knock-offs, not Giant!

The copies don't follow the Giant donors exactly, with the axe-man (red) being a composite of Giant's spearman (yellow)'s legs with new torso, sword and shield. While the copier didn't carry-over the spearman or Giant's axe-man, when they did their pirating.

An interesting and accidental yet serendipitous variation is found with the copy-set, where the ships commander can have a mild form of short-shot (incomplete moulding), resulting in his wind-blown cloak being reduced to a rod of plastic which resembles a sword scabbard on the right hip! Both the figures marked with asterisks.

It should also be noted that while the ship's crew are ex-Aurora, the fighting figures are original sculpts, although that's original with heavy influence from Crescent/Kellogg's knights and Hausser/Elastolin Anglo-Saxons!

Base marks; there is a marked difference between the fighters (above 'GIANT ⓟ MADE IN HONG KONG' in a typewriter/engineer's stamp font) and the crew (below 'GIANT ⓟ HONG KONG' in a DIN/sans-serif font) suggesting different tools, if nothing else, but as both were early and contemporaneous it only questions comments made elsewhere about using base marks to date these, all my carded sets are early, but these are 'late' marks! The copies are unmarked.

There were cavalry too, not something the annuls of Viking history are strong on, they must have had a few for farm work etc . . . or to sell to the Rus for cash! . . . but they weren't noted horsemen, being a maritime nation.

Certainly evidence - beyond the odd leader on a 'prestige' horse (which might be lashed to the mast or a deck shackle and fed from a bale or two), or similar 'grave-goods' horses buried with their owners, as  symbols of wealth or status - is almost non-existent.

Four of the foot figures provide the bodies for the Giant mounted figures, the copy-maker didn't bother with mounted figures.

This came with one of my larger lots, and is 'technically' the Mongol fort, but with the migrations/invasions from the East and the Slavic neighbours, it would make sense to include the 'Asian' gate-house version with Viking sets, however it has been given the 'medieval' or 'European' turret roofs on the corner towers.

The door is quite oriental too! We will have a whole post on all the forts, Giant and non-Giant through to the Accoutrements-Archie McFee / BuM Slot reissues, eventually, with all the combinations known.

Three identical wall sections are marked slightly differently from the gate, but I don't suppose there's anything particularly significant about that, the numeral ('1') is the same on all three sections and is probably just a mould-tool cavity number, or pattern-maker's mark.

Some sets also seem to have received ballista style catapults, more commonly found in the knights/Mongol sets, and pirated from Marx Miniature Masterpiece sets, where they were also issued to Vikings; attacking late medieval (from the suits of armour) forts!

The elastic band is a replacement, but is matched to the dried remains of the original, i.e. size (about a one-inch radius), type (thin, square-section) and rubber colour (neutral tan), for which jobs I have a large bag of rubber bands of every type! The Lone*Star Trebble-o-Trains car-carriers - for instance - take dentists brace-bands to hold the vehicles on!

===============================================================

But is it Giant?

Half and half on the figures, everything else is Giant, I forgot to annotate the type of horse marking on these, so another post another day!

Giant Mongol Cannon

A quick look at one of the rarer items in the Giant ouvre, but it is finadable and the odd one turns up on evilBay from time to time, often with a silly price-tag but some will pay, mine came from the James Chase collection's sale at SAS Auctions in Newbury (2006?) and its unit price was almost zero . . . phew!

Although I was lucky, a thief went over the lots during viewing and took a few pieces (EKO paratroopers and a very rude 'Stag' novelty of a Hula girl), despite being reported at the time; it was several years before SAS finally got rid of him! The Paratroopers turned-up a few weeks later - via his weasel 'fence' hawking the ill-gotten gains from a Tesco's bag - at the evening toy fair in Odiham, but I'm still looking for the Hula girl!

The parts; you get four small-diameter wheel/axle combinations, rather following the pattern of the earlier (1958) Airfix railway platform baggage/mail trucks, which clip into the gun-carriage, four shells (removed on mine) attached at the hook end (left, above) and an unmarked gun-barrel which also clips onto the marked carriage.

One author waxed lyrical about the jigget on his gun, but he had it upside-down, the dragons (etched/moulded down each side of the barrel) feet point toward the ground, and the jigget is a crude elevation stop.

It's actually toothed to suggest staged elevation, but doesn't actually connect with the side-edge of the box below the trunions, which it would need to for that to work! However - at a certain point in the arc of depression - it does stop the gun pointing at the carpet, by butting against the side-face of the box!

The barrel contains a spring and piston, finger-pull firing-rod, with which you fire the cannon-balls about until you lose them all! The previously mentioned stop mechanism of the jigget/'elevation/depression ratchet' leaves the barrel firing at, err . . . Giant Mongol or Knight figure-height . . . splat!

A paler-gold one on Worthpoint, illustrating the position of the cannon-balls on a mint one. I face my barrel the other way, so the longer 'deck' can take a couple of crew, standing on it.

===============================================================

But is it Giant?

Yeah . . . it's marked, init!

Giant Set No.982 Chariot Race 59¢ 1963

So to the third of my contiguously numbered 1962/3 Giant Roman sets, purchased from Mr. Opie about 16-years ago, with this one we ditch the 'Legion' for some extreme sports - vegan crown to the winner, hoofy-death with tyre-marks to the loser!

Dotted-line guy had the day off! Otherwise it's clearly part of the same line. As the Marx 'influencer' was the Ben Hur sets, it's fitting that we have a teeny-tiny clone/take on it here, with three standard Giant chariots (four horse, non-articulated chassis) and the three figures needed.

"S'mine-now, s'all mine!"

Two red's and a yellow chariot body, with contrasting coloured overlay frets with the fancy, decorative stuff. We know they are/were based on the Marx set because of that fret (which varies between clones and is the best way to ID different sources) and the weird spiky stuff on the front of the cross-bar - which is more of a stabby-spear/de-heading blade arrangement on the originals.

Horses are all the same brown batch, and marking are almost impossible to work out, but they will be genuine Giant 'Smoothies' of one sub-type or another. And we get the Marx knock-off spearman and two of Britains finest (Ulysses) as crew. Both the ex-Marx figure and the chariot wheels are the same brown as the horses - when trying to sort all these HK small-scales, exact shade is as important as markings sometimes for tying things in together!

===============================================================

But is it Giant?

Sure as the other two, but I think it might be Boysie-Boy's now!