BMC is for the Wing Wah Plastic Factory!

This was - as far as I was concerned, I'm sure some of you know more than I did, certainly Ed Berg helped - a mystery, then it wasn't a mystery, then it sort of was a mystery again, maybe, now I don't think it is, but it does point to the firm who might have been supplying early or pre-BMC mouldings.

 

Firstly, let's get clear that these are not rare figures, they are in fact, all over the place, in various configurations and colours, of which this azure blue is perhaps marginally less common than the current darker blue, but the dark chocolate may be more common than the paler shades, a situation made harder by different sculpts. And then there's a paler sky-blue and a mid-brown!

This larger 'rack toy' set, badged to Wing Wah (formerly, and for some 30-odd years, of Kennedy Town, Hong Kong Island, before moving to the New Territories, where they seem to have folded in 2021, or thereabouts), who's over-imposed WW-mark is quite common in rack-toy circles.

 

And it was bought from Greece, where the air-miles of an HK import would be considerably less than from the States, especially if they were so imported, before BMC ever put their moniker to them?

A limited pose-count (which may not be original, the blister was loose), has a nice firing line of the shako'ed Mexicans and a handful of armed Texan terrorist-insurgents.

The guy on the left had escaped the packaging, but I didn't find him until after I'd taken the card-shot, I have more of these in storage, from years ago, and hope I have a couple more of the poses, but I only previously had the Texans I think, if I have the Mexicans, they will be the newer ones with rimmed bases, and the poses with the wide-brimmed 'Poblano' sombrero, rather than these shako wearers, although I think I have the CTS ones somewhere!

 

Anyway, I wasn't sure of their heritage, as the ones on the Internet seemed to have BMC on the base underside, and sometimes the extra rim, so I asked Ed, when he was Blogging his 'Frankenset' a while back, if they were BMC and said he thought so.

 

But me being a Doubting Thomas, without empirical evidence, still didn't post them for a year or two more, until I was clear they were all the same Wing Wah / early BMC stock, which I'm now convinced they are! The three to the left are BMC, rimless, but the newer colour, I bought last year, at PW's show, specially for this post, which has been in edit-hell since 2020!

I seem to be missing a pile of boxes, to which the two small ones were positioned either-side, in the blister, and I keep seeing various gun ramps, but I think they're all CTS, Marx re-issues or TSSD!

 

I'm not one to comment on the exactness of the authenticity, but they don't look that accurate to me, especially the Texans, and they are definitely not Action Figures in the normal use of the term among both collectors and the wider toy trade, but when did the Hong Kong toy-men pay more that lip-service to accuracy?

 

1965-1990-something (?) on the left, terminal logo (1998-2021?) on the right.

Wing Wah - formed in 1965 and - apparently - the original supplier/manufacturer of BMC's Alamo figures/accessories, joining the Wing's Luen, Lung and Mau in the Tag-list. There is a current Wing Wah (Wing Wah Precision Mould & Plastics), in Dongguan City, Guangdong, mainland China which probably has no connection.

 

And, of course, this is a red-letter day for your diary's, as it's the date after which Deadleaf Hairband, Master Baiter Sell and Pericles over at the HK toy soldier site, will all start using the Wing Wah attribution, like they knew all along!

Above we see an early BMC set with the same rimless figures as the Wing Wah set, with the current Amazon image of the side-rimmed versions. I have also seen the Texans in the paler blue of my Mexicans.

 

I don't know if BMC licensed the 'generic' Wing Wah set for Greece, or other territories it wasn't then interested in, or if it was before BMC's involvement, most likely, while a third option is that WW were just being naughty behind BMC's back, or didn't have an exclusive with BMC for the sculpts/production.

News, Views etc...Museums...

Two in a row? Well, there's a certain symmetry to these...

In less than a week, the ACW Soldiers National Museum in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania will close its doors for good, due to falling interest, a victim of both tighter belts and more museums...

...while a Mr. Phil Collins, a crooner with a beat combo of some repute - I believe, has given a boost to another; The Alamo, which should secure its future for another generation. See...symmetry!

A is for Alamo, Fort Alamo

And how nice to find a model fort from the 1960's/70's that's not called Apache or Cheyenne, pity it looks nothing like THE Alamo! Made by Muri, and bought in Naples, Italy in the Summer of '69 this is a simple clip-together hard styrene fort with soft plastic/ethylene flats of the sort the Spanish were putting in their 'sobres' at around the same time.

Various views of the fort, because this is a border-line 'lazy post' (late at night, nearest thing to hand I haven't already covered - but more images than a standard lazy post!), I had trouble with the photo's so had to do a collage, as all the whole-fort views were orange again.

It's these new 'green' bulbs, the light is very odd and hard to photograph under, it also creates colour variants among my Airfix figures which disappear in the morning! Try it? Get a bunch of the old 54mm Marines, from more than one source, and watch some of them go bright green under these new bulbs?!

The various soft plastic components and the card, this was a header-bagged rack-toy, the flag is a simple doubled up piece of insulation tape with that sticky white goo one remembers from printed Christmas parcel tape of the period! The number could be twentieth in a series, or the first of a range that only ran to one? anyone know if other Muri stuff exists?

Continuing tonight's themes - Flats, Wild West and untypical production for the nation concerned comes this little bag from Hong Kong, the Plastic Set No. 101 contains hard plastic flats (uncommon for HK) with splashes of gold and silver paint (more like it!), and hasn't been decanted in case I don't find another.

I used to decant/un-sprue/remove packaging, but now I only do so if I have a second one to keep mint, or if it's post the year 2000 in which case it's never going to be 'rare' in the old sense of the word.

There are some purely coincidental similarity's between the Indian poses in the two sets, another reason I did them together and made a lazy-post into a proper post! [Just reviewing my past articles on flats and realised that not only is there a passing resemblance between the HK Indian poses and several of the Gibbs Indians, but at least one is a direct copy!]