M is for Musings on Multiple Mounts

This post is a narrative conversation with myself, and you, if you're reading, and comes out of a conversation I had with Chris Smith before Christmas, at which time, I think I said I'd publish this in January, or at least that sort of 'after Christmas' which might lead someone to think it was imminent, but with 120 posts in less than 90-days, I can hardly be accused of idleness!

 

And I say 'conversation', or, in the title "Musings" because there are few facts here, and those bits which are facts can be taken with a pinch of salt, the whole aimed at preventing TJF rushing-off to correct me out of someone else's great tome, everything here is open to question, even the absolute facts . . . except that the Japanese officers in some of the shots really are Blue Box!

 

First a reprise of mine, except that the ones we saw last time have gone off to storage and these are all new, I think? From the left in both shots we have the Blue Box Japanese officer on his mule-looking pony, then the Blue Box farm horse and finally a clone from one of the Hong Kong neighbours, who probably got it into a dozen generic bagged or carded sets!

 

Belly-marks suggest that the farm horse was around for a while before his owners cloned him for service in World Carpet War II, the generic - in this case - is unmarked, often they would have some sort of mark, even a poorer third version of the Blue Box's neat DIN-font.

Chris has one of his officers on a Blue Box farm horse, but the other came with another horse, of which he's found a second in white, and both have the rider peg, and he was wanting to know if it was a Blue Box design (an alternative Japanese mount), or something else?

 

Both are copies of a Britains horse, from the civilian-farm-show jumping-equestrian lines, and both are the straight-legged version, saddle-cloth might be original, but I suspect has been added, from a Wild West horse/set, and the reins may or may not be likewise original/added later?

 

Both have the sort of mark I just referred to, more of a 'typewriter' font, or uneven engineers-stamp, actually, one of the better ones, in that nothing seems upside down or mirror-reversed (which a lot are/have elements of), but they do read opposite ways, however not really the neatness of the Blue Box?

 

At which point we have to hark back to this morning's post, and any follow-up feebleBay search you did at my suggestion . . .

. . . where hopefully you found at least three sets? There were about five before Christmas, maybe seven with other search terms, but this afternoon I just briefly found three. One of which proves the theory I couldn't have proved back then, so maybe there are less question marks now, than there were going to be, but never mind, I think I've caveat'ed myself against blundering oafs trying to correct me!

 

You can see here, that the set has a pair of Britains production horses, one with the straight front legs (slightly different from the Hong Kong copy, where they are less splayed, but it's the same sculpt), the other with the bent leg, here though both riders are the woman with the dark riding jacket.

All four images in this sequence are from auction sites, but I've cropped-in to the bit we need. here we see again, Britains, again, two ladies, but this time it's both bent-leg horses, and the expanded polystyrene foam tray seems designed to take both types, with the bent-legs snugger than the straighter legged horse.

 

To be fair, both Britains horses are variations of the same sculpt, just with some leg/tail position changes, well brushed and groomed competition types (where you see those pointed tails) all look very similar!

 

Here another version of the game has the same pair of bent-leg Hong Kong production as mine (previous post), but with cream-plastic riders, he in pinks, she in her chic number! Indeed, the rule apparently established at this point is - always contrasting colours of horse, but not so bothered about the riders?

 

Confirmed by another Hong Kong set, now a vac-form 'styrene tray, and again both bent-leg versions, and we're back to two girls riding. The point being, these sets had either/or a pair of mixed, or only straight/bent legged horses, in contrasting colours, which for some time were sourced from Britains, and some equal time, Hong Kong. Riders shared the source with horses, but could be either opposite sexes, or the same sex.

 

Caveats - so far (and apart from today and Christmas, I have searched for these before, not least when I bought mine, from whatever was available that day, a few years ago), the white horse hasn't turned-up in a set, yet, and two male riders, together, haven't been seen in a set yet, either.

 

But the point I'm suggesting, is that to have the mounting spigot for a rider, the white horse must be from these sets, as Wild West wagons, say, for instance, even if given Britains standing horse piracies, wouldn't need the rod, and the other Hong Kong source of Britains show-jumping/hunter piracies use the gate-jumping horse.

 

This one, seen in singles, pairs and fours.

But this also turned-up during the shenanigans for the above, and it's another take on the Britains standing horse, but around 1:30th, and almost certainly from a horse-box or animal transporter of some kind, probably cheap and plastic in a colourful box, and now over a hundred-quid for a good one!

 

Here compared with the Japanese officer's one, as I don't have Chris's to hand, and my Salter examples are both bent-leg, and were shot years ago anyway, all three show-jumping posts were shot a while ago, which I why I had to go back to feeBay in December, and do it all as two posts!

 

You can see why I consider it a mule, it's got a face only its mother would love! But the bigger one is actually quite a nice version, and in a heavy, dense plastic which might be polypropylene?

 

While this pair, similar sculpt, seen here back in 2019, are Redbox, the Redbox of Blue Box's younger brother, another sibling of Tai Sang Toys. And you can clearly see the Hong Kong mark is the same as the farm horse, with the Redbox addition, and also probably from a horse-box/transporter toy. Which makes it all far more interesting that it looked when Chris and I were messaging three or four months ago!

 

This having the same splayed legs which takes it slightly away from the Britains donor, and clearly (as a much better model) itself copied by the unknown jobbing contract-manufacturer who supplied Salter. And possibly also the donor for the Blue Box farm horse, however I'm not so sure about that, while poorer, I suspect the Blue Box one is earlier and was a seperate pirating exercise, with the turned head, odd face etc . . . ?

And the bigger one, well, it's had the tail (long, pointed and linking all the others, Britains, Blue Box, Redbox and unknown-for-Salter's) attached to the rear leg and is marked Made in Macau, but in a very 'Tai Sang' font!

 

And we know from the research done in the height of the 'port Tai Sang' (don't look for it on a map) battle with TJF and his fuckmonkey, that there were several facilities in Macau, one of the Blue Box Vinyl (PVC) factories (and PVC copies of the above rack-toy fence-jumper turn-up as well!), Blue Box Die-Cast, and eventually (I think?) the facilities of Zee/Zylmex (turned-over to Redbox), some of which were there? Not sure about that, though.

 

However, there is every possibility this is another Tai Sang piece, issued by Blue Box, or Redbox, or one of the other in-house Tai Sang brands we found back then . . . or a contracting client?

So there we are, left with as many questions as we started with, or more, depending upon how deep you want to dig, but slowly the pieces do fall into place, and keeping an eye on the Salter sets from time to time will hopefully yield the white horse? It could, just as easily, turn-out to be a bagged horse and rider, but I've only ever seen the two riders copied, not the farmer, not the soldier and not the two gymkhana kids? Equally, searching for 'Horse Boxes' might help with a brand or branding's for several of the above!

Anyway, it's mostly conjecture or theorising, thanks to Chris for the images, and add your thoughts, if you have any, it's that kind of post!

M is for Motormax, from Redbox

Sort of running out of time tonight, despite finishing early, I've been deep in the contents of a parcel from Peter Evans (next post, brilliant bendy band babes!), so I'm throwing this up before midnight!

Various treatments of camouflage/paint on-, and plastic colours of- the 20mm copies of Matchbox US Infantry, as inherited by Redbox from Zylmex/Zee Toys a decade or so ago, and sold with the larger boxes of military Motormax sets.

BB is for Blue Box

Except that prior to BBI nobody used BB except Mr. Sell, who abbreviates everything! An uninspiring heading, but a simplified one I don't think we've actually had before, and it's a rather uninspired article I'm afraid, unless you're very new to the hobby, in which case you won't even get the Sell reference, but might get a lot, or something, from these images!

 

I shot the mounted Japanese officer as I was putting them into storage, but the shots didn't add much to what had gone before, so the folder just lay there, I got some more unpainted ones as 'bi-catch' with a lot of British Infantry (the only 1960/70's Blue Box figure I still need from the four sets now, is a decent British mine-clearer, they are always either broken or short-shots!) so shot them again, and at some points I spent a few minutes shooting the mounted figures again - twice!

 

So there were all these images in a folder, none of which add much to previous posts on the subject, therefore it's not a follow-up, it's not a box-ticker, I guess it's just a Picasa-clearer! I'll throw them up here, move a couple around and with minor captions, let the images tell their own story, remembering to thank Nazar Marchenko who filled the original gaps in my fledgling sample, eight years ago.

Painted officer, mounted

 

Comparison between painted and unpainted officers

Horses are different colours

 

More! More officers, more horses, another horse colour

Unpainted set of foot figures from both sides

Random shots and a base-mark with the '3' cavity numeral

Top image is plastic-colour variants isn't it!

Mostly unpainted against a few painted

Must have been a late-in trio?

All the unpainted's from both sides and the officer

An evilBay lot, which appears to suggest, as I'd mused . . . mooted (?) in the past, that they all had an issue, at some point, with the plug-in 'farm/zoo workers' base, as that's Aussies, Japs and Germans now found either with the green oblong base, or, in this case, needing them!

 

With three horses and only two riders, a long term goal is to find a third rider and paint him up, with a set of the infantry.

P is for Petrel's Plastic Parade

Looking at one of the wannabe Blue Box sets this time, and the first photograph is almost as poor as the double-decker 77xxx series Blue Box set from yesterday, however I did take shaded-shots of each window, so this will provide a little more in the way of visual information!

 

Badged to Petrel Toys, who we've seen before, sun faded on the face, and sold in 1968 (thanks to James Opie), I suspect from some of their other toys they might have been an importer/jobber or the phantom brand of a Hong Kong based shipper/agent/exporter, but more on that in a minute.

 

The set is clearly pretending to be a Blue Box -"C¦O¦M¦B¦AT"- set (that's my attempt at the explosion logo!), which were three and four-decked, but not split-window, which might (and it's a big 'might') have some significance as it's harder to sue if there is a difference in the 'appearance' of an otherwise common or industry wide packaging type?

The tank is a nasty little thing, there are several generations or iterations of it, it seems to be a copy of an equally simplified die-cast, itself several rungs below Zee/Zylmex on the quality ladder, and is best discarded loose, unless you need them for something like this Blog! While the figures are poor copies of late Blue Box GI's.

This is quite useful, and was re-issued a few years ago (I say that glibly, forgetting how fast time is going these days . . . it was reissued back in the 1990's!), lacking the silly blind/remote-controlled, bomber's turret of Marx, Blue Box, early Airfix and other toy landing craft of the time, it makes for a more realistic infantry/troop landing craft, with a coat of paint! The re-issues were a shiny-grey polypropylene.

I've cut the helicopter from this window so we can look at it below.

These seem to be poor copies of the bi-coloured vessels from Emson / 'Empire' (E), with the larger vessel behind being a copy of an old Pyro or Aurora 'box-scale' kit maybe? While the one in front is the old Tri-Ang Minic's being ripped-off again!

More of the figures and a couple of cheap Jeeps, they're not that bad for small-scale, but their lines are more Mahindra than Willy's if you know what I mean, a bit boxy at the front! And the wheel/axle sets look familiar from one of the many generations of the 1-Ton Hunber truck rack-toys.

Two helicopters which I'll return to in a mo', but suffice to say the silver one on the left looks mightily like the one in the Blue Box garage set!

This on the other hand is rather lovely and pretty unique! A proper submarine! It comes with two 1d/1¢ capsule-dispenser/Christmas cracker type, relief-flat crustaceans and, you can just see behind, his head poking-out, one of the Manurba Mini-Sub piracies!

The two similar helicopters (a more Soviet than NATO/US design) has two different plug-ins, one wearing skids, the other floats, but while that's interesting, the important bit . . . 

 

 . . . is that the Sikorsky H-34/Westland Wessex seems to be the actual Blue Box one, both in the Petrel set, and in these two unbranded generics (note the different plastic colour of each helicopter moulding), both of which have better-quality figures. Indeed, were it not for the paint, you'd mistake these for late Blue Box polyethylene versions, which they may be?

 

It's why I think Petrel are a phantom-brand or importer of some kind, their set's contents seem to be bought-in from more than one source, while the other two sets might be actual Tai Sang generics, manufactured for a contract (maybe with Cecil Colman, Codeg or someone like that; Cornelius?) or aiming at a price-point below the similar Blue Box sets.

And the fact that a 'Blue Box' helicopter ended-up in a rival product, aping their own, will be down to the fact they might not have known where the helicopters were going when they fulfilled the order for one of the middle-men, down at the docks, where Tong Wai-ki would have taken his suitcases of samples each morning, between trips to New York.

D is for Double-Deckers! 1 - Blue Box

Not the best images I'm afraid, so I'll chuck them up here with a few nots and post something else later tonight or close-after midnight, so this can begin its slide down the page, with slight embarrassment at its paucity!

Yeah! Bright sunlight! Great!

 

Useful information for some!

 

Welp! It's better than the shot I took! This is a 'large scale' set, as far as the figures go, and there's still no room for 'that' artillery piece!

F is for First Line Troop Set

Back to Blue Box, and one of the earliest sets they did, this may actually date from the late 1950's, but I suspect the early 1960's, also it's not that rare, I've seen several over the years and got a second one last year, contents shot, but better box than mine!

 

 

It came with a play-mat and is obviously competing directly with the Marx Miniature Masterpiece sets, and you may recall my comments on that previously, with specific regard to the two company's German Infantry, it's as if they came from the same factory, or the same figure sculptor?

 

 You get two identical 'armies', one in green (Allies, good!) and one in grey (Axis, bad!), two tents and the play-mat, so obviously the grey stuff is the excitement, as while the green-stuff was reconfigured in dozens of sets through the 1960's, 1970's and even, maybe, the early 1980's, the gray seems only to have been in one or two sets back at the start, while the Bedford trucks - not in this set - were continued in grey with the German infantry, in the later single vehicle sets and the odd multi-decker window-box.

 

My grey trailer is broken, and propped-up in the previous shot! Indeed, a grey trailer is the only Blue Box military vehicle I still need a good example of, but it's not a priority. I would however be interested to know if the trailer has a donor-sculpt, and if so who it was, as it's quite distinctive, but predates the Hasegawa one buy a decade or so, could it be Fujimi or Tamiya? Someone earlier, Monogram or Revell?

 

These are fun! Filler to keep the play-mat flat in the bottom of the box, themselves weighed down by the vehicles above them, they are following the old pattern of hollow-cast lead 'Big Box' sets, with cotton, glued to a card base, and raised by a wire prop. Set-up on the left, packed flat on the right.

 

Flags are just paper price-label stickers, folded round the top of the wire, serving to prevent the wire falling-back through the hole in the cotton fabric.!

In the upper shot you can see how the sides of the marquee are glued to the underside of the card, which is then covered with a sheet of paper, while in the lower shot you can see how the wire works.

These are from that lock-down photo-shoot I did in bright sunlight, which I thought would be a good idea, but in fact, it was not a success, with the light too bright really, anyway; gets it out of Picasa and into the public domain!

E is for Emergency . . . Empire or Emson?

A closer look at a couple of the sets in the packaging-post from the other day now, with a look at the Blue Box emergency set, and what I've suggested is the Lucky 'version', however in preparing the images, it became obvious that it's probably not Lucky, but E (for Empire? Or Emson, see past article on Thames Trader trucks!), the people who made some of those Tri-Ang Minic ship knock-off's.

The two sets side-by-side, ignoring the illustrative card coming off the front side of the Blue Box carton, you can see the two boxes are roughly the same height and depth, but the unbranded one (sold as Lucky but probably Emson) is wider for double the contents.

 

The Blue Box turntable ladder truck is a bit of fun with a fully traversing, elevating and extending, sectional ladder (a very delicate structure in polystyrene, I don't suppose many have survived outside the packaging!), but purely fictional on a Bedford RL chassis I think?

 

The ambulance, on the same chassis, has been (along with the figures) quite badly discoloured by sunlight (ultraviolet), and you can see that while the far side isn't so affected, the cab/chassis moulding is untouched.

This confirms my own theory much expanded-on in an interesting thread on plastic diseases, on the old HäT forum, long since deleted, when H adopted the 12-month cut-off! Basically, I believe all problems with old plastic are related to errors on the day they were formed, with incorrect temperatures, pressures or additive quantities resulting in hidden flaws with will come out later, I'm guessing the body and figures were probably overcooked in the tools, while the cab-chassis went through their birth without problems?

The other set is aping the 77xxx series from Blue Box, with a window in front of each element, and similar packaging dimensions, and confirms the link between the round-based mechanics and the oblong-based firefighters, previously made here at Small Scale World.

I thought the artwork was rather atmospheric!

 

I don't know my cars well enough to call either of these, are they US vehicles, with that soft spongy suspension which makes kids car-sick, or are we looking at a Ford Zephyr or Zodiac for one of them? Corgi did an Oldsmobile staff-car, could one of these be a clone of that?

 

We've seen the figures before, they are copies of the Blue Box copies of the Dinky figures, but the sticker on the blue Police-car's door is clearly the branding of the 'E for Empire' toys, probably, actually Emson, seen on other toys of this type, which is not to say Lucky aren't in there somewhere, there was a lot of cross pollination between all those cheapo-platic makers, and having discovered that Blue Box (and Redbox) are only brands of Tai Sang, there's no reason to discard previous theories without empirical evidence, so I'll tag all three (Lucky Toys, Empire Made, Emson) until we know more!

 

The Thames Trader water tank (? Or tool-lorry?) is similar in lines to the real-life T55, but that was more streamlined, while the Dennis looks like a bit of a hybrid between a 1971 D600 (Mk 2) and the earlier F101. As different brigades would have replaced different numbers/types of appliances at different times, there would have been a gradual evolution in outline and fittings, as well as different decorations (some have more chrome), so it's a fair representation of a generic Dennis!

It was machines like this which attended our house, and saved it, back in the 1970's, when the heath caught fire (thoughts for the people of Maui, Greece, Portugal, Canada et al.) and the tar on the flat roof started steaming! The firemen gave my brother and I regular top-ups for our watering cans, so we could help 'damp-down'! We found tons of cooked Adder's eggs - sadface, and ended-up looking like a couple of Victorian chimney sweeps!

 

Being a local manufacturer, my childhood memories are filled with Dennis fire engines (and County tractors) being test-driven or 'shaken-down' around the area, and they often went through Fleet, sometimes as plain chassis, with the drivers' using motorcycle helmets and four-point, racing seatbelts, perched - as they were - on a temporary seat over the bare engine! I seem to recall the seats were held-on with a literal network of bungy-cords, but it was probably coloured rope!

 

While it is also similar to the Bedford RL 'Green Goddess' wagons of the Auxiliary [Army] Fire Service (AFS), and of the fire-strikes fame! All gone now, along with everything else in the cupboards - Thanks Tory voters, you know the price of everything and the value of nothing, least of all 'society'.

In both sets, the figures are slightly over-scaled at 28/30mm, but all the vehicles could carry-off service in 1:76/72nd scale armies or on HO or OO-gauge layouts, or maybe not the two cars; just the lorries/trucks?

B is for Blue Boxes . . . Blisters & Bags!

While I was emptying the house I grabbed the opportunity, last year, to put a large board (an old home-pool table without legs, Mum used for her puzzles) on the sofa, and throw a bedspread over it, to make a largish 'studio' to shoot the Blue Box packaging, and this; not so much a comprehensive post; more of an 'overview', is the result!

Going back to the early days of Blue Box, or even pre-Blue Box - the pink box with the Crescent gun copy is an unmarked generic and can therefore be considered a Tai Sang toy rather than a Blue Box toy, contracted-out to a western buyer - are these mostly simple closed boxes.

 

Fold-&-tuck lids, lift-off upper sleeve lids and some with perforated lines to allow for fold back display examples on counter-tops or in shop-windows or display cabinets. The farm set is probably a little later (1970's) than the others, which are mostly 1960's, the gun may well be a 1950's item.

The window era brings us the 'decker' concept, where pricing within a larger display is denoted by the number of levels (or the width of the tray/plinth) of each set, this is all 1960-70's stuff and the basic unit is a single-decker!

Here you can see on the left two versions of the smallest set, card base-insert is identical with the same figures glued-in to the same spots. One with a two-sided window on an otherwise normal box with fold and tuck ends, the other an 'ultra modern' (at the time) variation (it's still how posh gift chocky-things, soaps, small electrical gadgets and the like are packed at Christmastime today) with an all-over folded plastic case, stapled to the plinth-base.

Similar packaging on the larg construction set, while the smaller one has a stand-up card extension for more graphical information, and the larger US army set (bottom right) is about as deep as any of these sets got, so you can see there's no room for the gun, which you-know-who was falsely passing-off as Blue Box a few years ago . . . well I think he still is; they never corrected or deleted any of their nonsense!

So then we add a deck, and get double-deckers, not the buses, not the chocolate-bars! The extended display area of the cards is off the front face on the two small scale sets, while the larger scale US troops - with the same small scale vehicles and equipment - get multiple windows, one highlighting each element.

 

The smaller set on the far right will be returned to but note how ultraviolet (sunlight) has completely discoloured the back body of the truck, both medics and the stretcher-patient, but has left the cab/chassis snow-white. It's all in the batch of polymer, I've said it before, and I'll say it again!

Triple-deckers! The trays seem to be the same trays that were in the single-decked sets above, and while you get green (friendly?) OR grey (enemy?), the contents are otherwise pretty random, with truck, tank and gun trays in the grey set and truck, truck and gun in the green, and with random loads/bodies on the trucks, there may have been some more, and some less disappointing sets in this line!

If you were a poor kid on a sink-estate, and you unwrapped one of these at Christmas, you would have been more genuinely joyful, than some rich-kid getting his cabinet of Meccano or whatever.

 

And I know that; we can't complain, we had a pretty privileged, middle-class childhood, but money was tight, and we had friends who got pillowcases, not stockings at the ends of their beds, on Christmas mornings, but their toys were all broken and unloved stuffed into all these drawers, we looked after ours . . . not the packaging mind!

But yeah, the mighty four-decker! The one on the right (like a fair few of these) is near-mint from James Opie's collection, the one on the left is a mess, but it's mostly there, I have seen a few over the years, where everything is still tied-n with its elastic bands (smaller items were glued), and it's just in need of sorting/ordering properly (even the teeny helicopter), and the figures returning - they are with all the loose ones. Scale in both sets, like most above, is all over the place!

Modernity arrives in the guise of vac-formed blister packaging, earlier sets stapled to their backing cards, later sets heat-welded to them, with hanger holes sometimes present for the true 'rack' toy! Julius Caesar still has his chad intactum, as the actress said to the bishop!

The 'Battleground' set (also hanging-on to its chad) is another Tai Sang generic (possibly for FW Woolworths, it has the look of a Woolworths cheapie?), and probably pre-dates the supply of the hard-plastic brown figures to Tri-Ang Battle Space, so people trying to call the figures 'Giant' when they were only a jobber are missing the point, they are Giant, in or with the packaging, otherwise they are Tai Sang/Blue Box.

We've seen these before I think, and they are oddities, with the one on the left for Woolbro, the one on the right more generic, again containing 'Blue Box' items, but as generics - Tai Sang.

 

Ledapak is also mentioned and may be another recipient (of the right-hand set), or the maker of the vac-forms, which include the crude Fort Apache frontage. The left-hand set also looks pricy for what it contains, and I wonder if they were experimental marketing? Both also came from James.

On the left here are some standard rack-toy bottle bags with header cards, in the case of three; the header having a long-tail to form the backing-card at the same time, in the case of the little set with 45mm US soldiers, the backing card is a seperate piece slipped behind the product.

 

On the right are some of the second-tier Hong Kong cloners, copying the already poor-quality Blue Box, with 2nd generation piracies! And they are there with one, two and tree decker's, blister cards, bottle bags and a closed box.

 

The only brand - on the right - is the Lucky Toys fire-set, they did a larger three-decker too, and (whispers) they are nicer sets than the Blue Box ones; much better build-quality! The camouflaged three-deck set should be the same colours as the pair of two-decks, but is sun-faded, contents/origin are the same. We looked at the Wild West set years ago - it's all on the Blue Box tag somewhere!

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Finally, not Blue Box at all, but along with numerous ex-Marx tools, the Rado Industrial Co., trading as Ri-Toys seemed to inherit some Blue Box or Tai Sang mouldings, and certainly knocked-off others, so here are a few of their packaging types, taking us through the 1980's and into the 1990's with the central combat set.

And that's a pretty-good overview of forty-plus years of Hong Kong rack-toy output and the types of packaging at the lower level end of the market, if I say so myself!

 

Thanks to everyone who's ever saved me stuff, on this one, as I know James, Adrian and Trevor have given me Blue Box packaged sets over the years, John's helped me hunt them and bring them back from the far flung corners, Gareth let me photohraph his Marx/Sunshine version of the Wild West set for an earlier post . . . it's not that Blue Box are rare; they’re not, but there's a lot to track down as they were one of the biggest HK manufacturers for years and one of the first to own-brand, so there are tons of variations out there!