Golden Trojans - The Non-Giant Gold Plastic Greco-Roman Figures

Looking at the various rack-toy sets, in the small scale, rack-toy universe, manufactured in golden polymers and ostensibly of 'Romans' most of whom are actually copied from Britains Trojans, who were themselves sculpted as Classical Greeks, albeit with a cloned Marx Roman or two in the mix for good measure!

Sorting sets and scanning images to get some order to this post I actually found a third fort type which may-or-may-not be connected to the third figure type (later in the post), so there may be four generations of 'stuff' here?

We've looked at the Lucky Clover branded sets before, so a bit of a reprise, but we're comparing today. Packaging of the No 6646 / 9 Tower Fortress With Soldiers is best described as '1950's gift chocolates', with a pull-off lid and tray holding the contents, viewable though the large window.

Two pinches of figures making half a handful (heay, at some point in the past I'm sure these were official units of measure!), a two-horse, articulated, chariot and the standard Hong Kong fort in 17 pieces with the 'oriental' turret-roofs.

You can see this one is annotated in James Opie's hand as having been purchased in Layton (I suspect East London rather than Blackpool?), in August 1969, which means these other sets were coming out as Giant faded away, and were partly responsible for that fade; if you saturate a market, the early leader will lose out for being over-extended or over-invested in a diminishing return. And note the instructions for the Wild West Fort Cheyenne are included on a generic tray designed for all the Lucky Clover sets.

Four pinches making two half-handfuls! You can see there is little attempt at a fair sample or equal distribution of the figure poses, with one getting only four of the six available poses, the other scraping-in with five. They would have been jumbled up in a big skillage somewhere in the corner of the warehouse and fed to smaller stock, component or tote boxes on each packer's bench. Obviously aiming at six figures per pocket, one got seven.

The Lucky Clover chariots; mentioned before, there seem to be four types, two-horsed (Biga) or four (Quadriga) and more generally (more widely within all these type of rack-toys) can be found articulated or rigid, the articulated ones survive better, the rigid ones tending to brake where the drawbar/centre-pole meets the body of the chariot.

The horse is a very good example of what I call 'Mexican' and is as good as anything Giant carried, but these - and their attendant chariots - are unmarked.

Fish-scale flags plug-in to the 'oriental' turrets, I call them that to differentiate from the round-cone roof pieces of other forts in this family of similar rack-toy forts, the design can be found throughout Europe, so isn't really Oriental, but, well, that’s why that is . . . ! One set gets contrasting jade-green flags (pennants?), the other matching red.

The fort sections are marked (in contrast to the chariots/horses) with a heavy HONG KONG in a rough, capitalised, sans-serif font, twice; above the 'gate-house' and below the left-hand walk-way (arrowed).

Fully assembled and to the untrained eye identical to a Giant fort, the seventeen pieces assemble into a fort with roughly the same footprint as the concurrent Airfix (and other) forts, that is: eight-inches by eight-inches on the sides, but lacking the sophistication, or height of those domestic models.

The other relatively clear type to identify - No. 445 Roman Fortress - is quite common, and can be found as a generic (top) or over-printed to the Woolbro brand (bottom). Artwork (which shows the round turret-roofs on the front of the card) rather dates this to post-1960's-psychedelia, and more toward the simpler 'comic' graphics and block-colours of Glam-Rock, Habitat and Mary Quant, so early 1970's? Which makes them the second of these, but - as always with this stuff - it's not that simple!

Also - as both generics and under Woolbro - sister sets of Astronauts, Khaki Infantry (with the 1-ton Humber mini-trucks) and a 'Fort Cheyenne' (all stock-coded '445') were issued in a fuller 'line'. I have a Gordy International Wild West set (and a generic), so they (Gordy) may have issued this - Roman set - on the other side of The Pond?

Obviously aping the Lucky Clover set, or a later version from the same source (we will probably never know), they are the same black polyethylene with red fittings (including pennants), no markings though and you can see the mould is tired with damage 'dinks' to the flat surfaces, but it makes it easy to ID lose ones as there's no mistaking the eight or so 'pimples' on the back of the gatehouse, and the long diagonal scartch to the right - clearly they only had the one tool/cavity.

But I have parts of an interim/different one; yellow fittings (but no firm idea as to turret tops or pennants), high-quality moulding with very smooth walls, none of Lucky's markings, none of Woolbro's dinks.

However, the three walls are roughest of the lot and marked - similar to Lucky Clover's front-piece - but with a full MADE IN HONG KONG in a slightly smaller font.

A few recent bits (the fort from Tony among them) were added after this shot was taken, and while I've numbered them, and seem to have photographed them the wrong way round, there is no real significance to the numbering and '2' could be the oldest or the newest, also - as we'll see with the figures in a minute - may be the third or a forth 'type'? What I am sure about is that the Lucky Clover sets pre-date the Woolbro/generic Roman Fortress sets.

And I don't want to be seen to be 'showing off' here, I'm showing you the vague size of the sample so you can gauge the veracity or fallacy of the blurb for yourself , I'd hate to be thought to be the type to make it up as I go along, like some peep's around here!

So, to the figures; as the forts are all black, so the figures are all gold, but differences - when you look - are marked and plenty, all are poorer than Giant originals, who we will look at another time.

The top row are Lucky Clover, all six of the Giant poses, below them are a row of Woolbro/generics, they are almost smooth, detail wise, and only seem to have used five of the original six poses.

Below that are some OBE's from an unknown artist of yesteryear and a single survivor of my Greco-Romano-Trojan-Macedonian-Carthaginian army! I gave them gun-metal cuirasses . . . can you imagine going to war in a wrought-iron bell-cuirass!

The bottom row are the 'turd on the snooker-table' of this otherwise quite clean ID'ing exercise, as they are a third type, closer to the Giant originals and coming independently from the 'interim' fort, so not necessarily going with it at all? And a six-pose count.

As well as the gold plastic rule and the black forts rule, the other rule which unites this branch of the tree is that none of these have been associated with mounted figures, indeed the inclusion of the unknown set is because they came without mounted figures in a clean sample, they haven't been linked to a black fort per se.

Bases; The interlopers (middle) have a Giant-like MADE IN HONG KONG in a neat DIN-font, which extends over the edge/boundary of the product in some cases leading to floating or missing letters. They all have the hole for locating the spigot-mountings on the floors of some chariots, and they are also a more golden gold than the others.

Top are the Lucky Clover, they have the remnants of a chariot-mounting hole (their chariot has no spigot)filled in and are marked with a very uneven, or arcing HONG KONG in a more generic engineers letter-stamp format, gold is a darker, bronze-gold, if that isn't an oxymoron!

While at the bottom are the Woolbro/generic figures, easiest to sort as they have smooth, unmarked bases, and smooth un-detailed bodies! I've shot a darkish gold set here, but they can be found in a verity of shades . . .

. . . as can be seen in the lower shot here, where we have the archer in artists gold (left) a washy, semi-translucent gold, a 9ct gold and the darker shade. The upper shot is my 'old soldier' and the OBE squaring-off - "To the death Achilles!"

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But is it Giant?

No! Nothing in this post is by Giant or was sold as Giant, although the interim figures (and possibly the yellow-door fort) may be from old, tired, ex-Giant tools? One could ponder all sorts, raise the questions of Bi-A-Toy or World Toy House, but I haven't seen these 'Romans' in the former packaging yet, while the later carried marked Giant originals.

If I was being tortured for an answer I would try to stick the unknown figure set and fort together, and possibly place them contiguous to the Lucky Clover set, or even slightly earlier as the first post-Giant copy/variety, but there is no evidence for any of it . . . yet!

More on these here; my notes on the unknown goldies shown there, vis-à-vis the Lucky Clover figures now looks a bit dodgy, but the etched detail on the Lucky is better, while the unknown's are 'closer' overall (size/pose) to the better Giant originals. One should also note the figures on PSR's Giant page, with the possible exception of the unpainted silver rider, are not Giant, but later copies.

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!

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - P2 Pony (Type 2)

The P2 'Pony' is clearly a copy or further development/re-tool of the P1 Pony, but is a far more interesting premise, with several sets and accessories associated with it/identified so there's much more to get our teeth into.

The horse; as shown with the P1 post, the P2 has cruder carving to the mane and tail, thinner walls to its flanks and is unmarked. Other differences (between the two P's) include the holes for the rider's locating-spigots being set higher in the saddle-moulding on the P2 and a slightly lower head position with a 'softer' neck

It also has a clearly defined flat top to the body cavity, tends to a glossier plastic and has one of the smallest ranges of plastic-colours of all Hong Kong hollow-horses, apart from a few slight shade differences in the brown, there is a black, white and grey and that's it.

Lots of them too, these were made in the modern era, when machines could run for hours with huge hoppers of colour-stable granules, their pigments chemically matched to tolerances of 100th's of grams-per-ton, so like modern army-men you don't find the slight variations in colour between batches, you will find with older sets/lines.

The reason browns often retain the variation is down to their being - in plastics terms - technically a purple; a mixture of red, yellow and blue, and therefore harder to match and more likely to result in variance.

A comparison between the Pony (P2) and the old Giant 'Smoothie', the genetics are there but they are very different beasts; the Pony being altogether more smooth, boxy and toy-like next to the Smoothie, who was christened that, by me, as he is himself smoother than the sculpted [Crescent] 'Wavymane'!

As we led with the cowboys on P1, we'll lead with the Natives this time . . . and what a shower! These are very poor sculpts, almost deserving of the term semi-flat, no details at all, few extremities, all weapon tips missing - and I'm sure it's the mould; not short-shots.

They are recognisable as the old Giant poses, but only just and like the horses, the colour range of the plastic is limited, and colour-fast between batches, which - with their other [non] features make them easier to sort out of mixed lots. Locating-studs are short and fat.

The same points extend to the cowboys; colour-fast, ex-Giant, semi-flat, crappy mouldings. Interestingly, despite at least three sources (in a minute!) and many years of collecting, the evidence suggests the mounted Indians outnumber the cowboys by a slight but constant 5:4 or maybe 4:3

So, we have quite a few sets for these, which is the best way to confirm earlier sorting, and while I can't be sure of the dates, I'm pretty sure these were first. The Einco 'Indian Village', which I remember hanging in Webb's newsagent in Hartley Wintney in around 1974.

This is one of the best non-Giant sets of the type (despite the awful sculpts) having various additional contents to actually make a 'mini-playset'. You may recognise the trees as being common from Ri-Toys sets later in the 1970's through to the early '90's and that gives us a clue to Einco being a made-up brand (or 'phantom' in today's lingo) and confirms with the sets lower down the post.

The obvious addition is two poses of foot figure, both crude, both semi-flat'ish, both [barely] recognisable as ex-Giant sculpts but apparently carved from a block of soap with a sharpened spoon! Colours are even tighter than for the mounted figures, as they were - to my knowledge - only ever used with the one set, so; a relatively small production-contract.

Both figures have small protrusions on their bases, which may be deliberate, or may be accidental damage to the mould-tool, or some long-forgotten part of the production process of this set?

There are similar marks on a Noah from Pagget Brothers, and one wonders if there was a concerted attempt to make figures stand up better on the deep-pile carpets of 1970's suburban houses, but it's conjecture and a long-shot!

There are a few versions of this Tee-Pee (Tipi) out of Hong Kong, and this is a copy of earlier better ones, copying even the weird tie-down hooks at either side - possibly used to attach the original donors to base-cards with thread in window-box sets.

Fences in two sizes, bog standard HK-fayre, being copies of Merit line-side fencing and Britains farm stock. The trees are a simplified Britains palm-quartet and a poplar tree of dubious  origin . . .  and we have an additional horse; not part of the 'hollow-horse' oeuvre!

The reason for the inclusion of the solid horse is for the operating of a rather European looking muck-cart, the Indians obviously swapped for a pile of coon-skins! While some of the additional components were Rado Industries own, I suspect this pair may have been bought-in, they are quite different to the crudities of the rest of the set and used to turn-up in Christmas-crackers and the like.

The yellow wagon is from another source and is placed in the collage for comparison; it has locating-studs for a horse (Probably hollow) I have yet to ID/ascribe.

I'm pretty sure these come later, all the accessories have gone, the unmistakeable Ri-Toys tree-logo is present and the only thing to note is the tight 'colour way' of each set, there's about 25, 30-maybe per pack.

Generic sets also exist without the Ri-Toys tree logo, and artwork re-drawn in brighter, flatter colours, these are even smaller with an eight-figure contents count, per bag.

And please don't imagine I think these came second or the P1's first, they have been labelled arbitrarily and numbered arbitrarily by me, and give the numbers of these compared to the P1, it could well be the P1 is an off-shoot or piracy of P2, but they (the P1 people!) made more effort - with the figures and the horse - so it gets first billing 

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But is it Giant?

No, this set and the similar P1's date from long after Giant has been replaced as a branding by Arco with their larger, poorer quality, rack-toys, and while Arco may have issued some small-scale hollow-horsed sets; A) they would have bought-them in and B) Ri-Toys are one of the few 'known-players' among the thousands (of plastics manufacturers) operating out of Hong Kong. Whether Einco were a Western importer or a made-up name is the only question-mark outstanding here, really.

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - P1 Pony (Type 1)

My old notes and the index-card text which accompanies the loose versions of these reads -

P1 - Pony. Very well-detailed copy - but smaller - of 'Smoothie' with more detailed mane, more realistic tail than 'P2', "HONG KONG" in small letters at rear of body cavity, which is arched. Identified by mutually exclusive association, two sources.

More clean samples have come-in since the card was written about 25-years ago, and that's what we're looking at here.

This is the horse in question and I hope he conforms to the above description, He's quite a solid chap compared to some HK horses, but smaller than most, so a 'new' sculpt, copied from the older donors.

P1 is marked neatly with 'Hong' over 'Kong' in a little block reading head-to-tail toward the rear of the body cavity which makes all these 'hollow-horses' hollow.

It's called P1 because there is a P2 (which will be posted above this post) and here they are, next to each other, the P2 has elements of what I call remoulding in that while the horse is equally small, its mane and tail are cruder and it looks like the changes have been carved straight into the tool. It's also a thinner-walled sculpt and unmarked.

P2 is also glossier than the matted, slightly (or subtly) textured surface of P1

My pelt drawing/diagram which also shows the strange arch under the saddle which may help ID them if you are following these none-to frequent posts (they will become more frequent - I just need to get a rocket up my arse!) with the aim of sorting them out of bigger mixed lots - which is the main purpose!

Horse colours are all realistic, as far as HK horses go, no bright colours or dark green ones!

The cowboys, as with the Indians they are the three old Giant poses, quite a reasonable take on the older figures, faces have gone and the locating-spigots on the legs are much heavier, with the single-six-shooter pose's having slight blobs on the tips.

The colour-palette is best described as subdued primaries and I'm not 100% happy with the pale-green double-six-gunner, his hat is slightly different and his feet likewise, but with two apparent cavities for the pose (fatter and thinner torsos) and no other set he fits with, he's here for now - see below.

The Native American Indians, again three poses, again ex-Giant and you can see another reason why both the pale green cowboy and the poorly-moulded ones remain in the sample, there are similar Indians, and they are better matches, so there were poor mouldings (too quick out of the tool leads to shrinkage which at this scale smoothes-off detail at the same time) and a few leerier colours; note the pinks!

P1 on the left, a Giant Smoothie on the right, you can see that the Pony is a much smaller version of the Giant mount - which has a smaller version itself.

As yet I have been unable to tie these into a set, brand or manufacturer, nor have any accessories yet been associated with P1 sets/lots.

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But is it Giant?

No, despite using the same Giant figures as many other HK Horse sets/groups and using the smaller version of a Giant horse, this family (see P2) is a later entity altogether dating from the mid-late 1970's or even (in the case of P2) the early '80's.