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I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Showing posts with label Wagons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wagons. Show all posts

Saturday 16 July 2016

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Modern (Type II) - Padgett Brothers (A-Z) - Indian and Cowboy Playset

These represent perfectley and in every way, everything about current 'rack-toy' production: they are bloody awful!

The mounted figures don't fit their horses, everything is in a too large size to match any previous sets, there are not enough horses, the moulding is poor and the sculpting (despite the size) is worse, real 'Chinasaur' crap!

I bought this 'Toob' or bucket in 2010 from a rural 'gift warehouse' in the middle of nowhere somewhere between Oxford and Wantage, one of those building/gardening/farm-shop/timber-merchant/upcycling/paint-stipping/scrap-metal type co-ops you find in the sticks! I say this as I suspect - despite the date of purchase, that it may date from earlier, Certainly mid-2000's, but late 1990's even?

Padgett Brothers (A-Z) are an old importer, like Herbert Kees or Holland's now defunct Hagemayer, they have been around for the longest time, importing all sorts of goods from all over the world, and toys make up a very small percentage of their inventory. They were responsible for some of those 'Dummy Men' (as my Brother and I christened them) 12" dolls with blow-moulded limbs we were given by relatives who mistook them for Action Man back in the day!

One of everything in the tub except the wagon body which I left out of the shot by accident - in my attempts to arrange them all in a photographable rectangle! I expect there is a sixth Indian, they seem to have copied the same Airfix figures as the smaller set from  'W' in the 1980's, we've looked at (post below/'previous'), adding Airfix mounted figures from the same sets. Figure moulding is poor with most weapon extremities missing. The figures have a clear CHINA on the base

The poplar trees is an ex-Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) sculpt, the ex-Britains stand of palms being copied by lots of makers, but both here re-done in a heavier style and with the rest of the contents in a stiff ethylene plastic.

The horse, he seems to have elements of the old 'Jogging' and 'Flicktail', but is a wholly new sculpt, and so much bigger that all the others he shouldn't prove a problem to ID, so I've called him 'Modern II' just to give him a place in the tag-list. As a sculpt it's not that bad, and is about the only small-scale Hong Kong horse with proper sticky-up ears.

The interface between horse and rider leaves a lot to be desired, with one of the cowboys settling back into his saddle without actually connecting with his saddle! All of them stand proud of the horse due to the miss-registering the of locating holes in the horses with the studs on the riders, even though the riders studs are quite small, the plastic is too rigid to force the rider down further.

The wagon is a bit of a curates-egg, on the one hand it could prove very useful for 28mm war-gamers and role-play enthusiasts, but you'd need to source a better team, and a much better pole/draw-bar arrangement that the one supplied. The other problem with it is that you only get four horses in a tub, with two wagons. You also have four riders...the maths is there! Very silly.

The entire contents of a tub, glossy, large, poorly executed, but for younger kids: colourful and with some play value.

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But is it Giant?

I don't have to answer that, on this one, do I?

Hong Kong Hollow Horses - Modern (Type I) - W - Western Warrior

I do know (or have known in the past to be more accurate as I clearly don't know now!) what the W stood for, it's not Wing Lung (who are responsible for larger - 30mm - Airfix piracies), I don't think it's Welly (but I'll check!), it's not the Woolworth's mega-brand 'Big-W', nor is it Wentoys (although from that same late 1980's-early 1990's era of rack-toys), if anyone does know, let the rest of us off the hook, otherwise you'll have to wait until I remember/find the reference, and update the post...which will be...er...when I update it!

I'm pretty sure also that these late production figures have enjoyed more than one issuing 'Brand', so if you have them in another packaging, consider a guest-post to elucidate the rest of us! A couple of shots of the header card, and any variations in [wagon or tee-pee] colour are all that's needed.

Arlin Tawser (who believes the logo might be a double 'WW') reports on Plastic Soldier Review (PSR) that these were also sold as a set called "Cowboys, Indians, Horses and Wagons” in the 1990's, and further reports that his version of the set shown here has the foot figures marked 'CHINA', mine however have the normal smooth/unmarked bases.

Quite familiar to collectors, both because they are the more recent, and because they have a useful set of Airfix piracies as foot figures, instead of the tired-old ex-Giant/Britains Swoppet mouldings or Crescent 54mm's that everyone had been using for the previous 30-years.

You also get a wagon which is easy to sort from similar examples, a cloned (and miniaturised) Britains Herald Totem-pole and the same donor's tee-pee/tipi, so - lots of play value.


The horse hasn't got a specific title in my 'system' being a Smoothie who's also a Remould, and made (like the rest of the contents) from a tinny, rigid ethylene, that's quite distinctive enough to sort-out of mixed lots, the whole set oozes 'new production' when compared with the bulk of HK hollow-horsed Cowboys & Indians from the 1960/70's.

Basically I call him 'Modern' as I do several other, dissimilar, mounts also known as moderns, so for tagging: I've called him 'Modern I'. Crudely marked with a quite large 'HONG KONG' in the top of the body cavity reading head-to-tail in squared letters, it's also got quite think sides. Note also the reinforcing on the inside-legs of the black one, about 10% of all the horses have this, presumably one of the cavities was so treated, probably to prevent curving of the legs after release from the mould-tool?

The all important shot in this post . . . at last! Someone designed some new figures! OK, they took them from Airfix's 54mm/1:32nd scale cowboy and Indian sets, but as Airfix hadn't seen fit to update their own small scale atrocities with better figures, even with their own large-scale, pantographed down, we were just happy someone had!

Six-each of both foot cowboy and foot Indian poses were nicked, and they were issued in four basic primary colours, although (as always with these cheap figures) much variation in shade or hue between batches.


The mounted figures can be mistaken for other set's figures, a couple of them (Indian archer and full war-bonnet) are old, tired, rehashed poses, and the colour variation is wider than for the foot figures - they may well have been bought-in from a third party - but there are a few signature features that make them reasonably easy to sort-out of larger mixed lots.

The Mohican haircut of the brave with flapping jerkin sets him apart from similar versions from other sources, while two of the cowboys are all new; Britains Herald lassoer and Swoppet twin-six-gunner (I think the other guy may be the Crescent firing-back pose?). Then there's the aforementioned dense, tinny plastic for one, large, reasonably long and directly-opposite locating-studs for another, the flash on some of the figures &etc. Once you have ID'd a few you will get a feel for them and it's easy to find the rest in a big lot!


The wagon is very easy to separate from other HK wagons by dint of having a standard towing eye at one end, and - for no explicable reason I can come-up with - a crude copy of the Giant chariot drawbar-front, combined with another towing eye at the other end! As that original Giant feature was itself a ruination of the - even more original - Marx chariot's ornate tooling, it is a complete mystery why someone in the 1980's decided to sculpt it onto the other end of an otherwise OK covered-wagon!

The wagon is also much shallower than most HK Wild West wagons, having only one plank, more of a tray than a box-body! In other respects it is the same basic ex-Giant design, based on the old Tudor Rose vehicle, with the tilt-tabs punching through four locating slots in the corners of the bed.

The other accessories so far associated with these figures/this set are the very crude copies of the Britains tee-pee and Totem-pole. The pole is - I think - unique to this set (in the small scale that is, I think it was also issued with 45'ish-mm figure sets?), while the rigid plastic separates this version of the tee-pee from earlier softer ethylene ones issued by Einco and others.

Now Known to be from the Wing Wah (WW) Plastics Factory, of Smithfield Road, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong (Hoo Sai Industrial Building).

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But is it Giant?

No! Don't be silly! This is a tail-ender of its type from the ay'tees! All 'big hair' and shoulder-pads, T'pau, Frankie Goes to 'ollywood, Top Gun and Max Max III with that Tina Turner; "Why, you're just a little raggedy set of Cowboys and Indians"!