Hong Kong /Made in china copies

Some of us on here will remember these models but a few will not! They were mass produced in 70s and 80s and were usually copies of other makers.Many were badly made and badly painted but some were not too bad,scale and attention to detail were sadly lacking!!I have chosen some of what I consider better models,not fantastic but at least reasonable.A few were really good-the aardvarks-which I have shown with the other standard of the day also with a quite well made Giant Anteater .For some reason also quite a few Giant Anteaters and Pangolins were made back then considering how few were made by current companies until a few years ago.
I have also included some of the worse ones-Zebras were an are where they failed miserably-many 'Zebras' were just horses with stripes and bad stripes at that!Also the over wrinkly hippo and Indian Rhino and the Gorilla with its hand on its hip as if it was waiting for a bus!!!
I have also included a rather nicely made Draught horse and a surprisingly well made Mule-don't se a lot of mules!

Nice collection. I like also these chinese figures, many are not bad

I LOVE them

Of course it is wonderful to own some of the beautyful high-quality models, but these have a history, and they have been very important to lots and lots of children

IMHO they give an extra dimention to any collection

People from our age group grew up with these, whether we liked them or not. But they are an important part of the history of animal toy models. Some are indeed not so bad and may not even be copies. Is the panda a copy or original Britains? This bull, goat and sow were very common. Does anyone know what they were copies of?

I also remember buying these figures in bags and spending many hours with them, their prehistoric cousins, and Breyers. I don't remember the draft horse, but it looks very like a Breyers I had at that time period. Maybe a copy?

I am just so much older than you, that they probably were not available yet ( In Denmark at least) when I was that age.
Or perhaps I was just a "Reisler-snob"

Yes would agree that they are part of model animal history and for me they were all I had growing up before Britains came along
The panda is a copy of Britains-the paintwork is best at the front as on the back the black paint leaked a little!!
I just assumed that the bull,sow and piglets were copies of others but maybe they are original.The bull model was exceedingly common and came in different colours.
It would be interesting to find out if the Draught horse was a copy of Breyers.

Roger - the bull and goat are Crescent copies I think, while the pig with suckling piglets was taken from a French maker maybe? Starlux, JIM, or someone like that?

Good to know,thanks!

smallscaleworld wrote:

Roger - the bull and goat are Crescent copies I think, while the pig with suckling piglets was taken from a French maker maybe? Starlux, JIM, or someone like that?

Thanks for this useful information. I have some hidden in a box somewhere. I need to check whether they are originals (probably not).

Here is an eBay auction of the Breyer I'm thinking of, I used to have it but it is long gone. It was sold as Clydesdale Mare.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Breyer-Horse-Clydesdale-Mare-and-Foal/254603979232?hash=item3b479469e0:g:raAAAOSwO

Looks similar, no?

Yes looks like that could be the one

Now most of these models were knock-offs from Britains, i see Hausser-Elastolin, Marx(the blue squirl is original as it looks), and other American stuff from the 1950's and 1960's.
Now once i started my collection with knock-offs in the early 1960's, which were either together in bags or on blisters.
What me annoyed me already then, was the fact, that all of these animals were in the same scale, mostly 1:32, or even smaller.
Thankfully i discovered Britains in the 1970's, and Hausser-Elastolin(living in Germany back then).
It takes a lot of reseach to really find out to see which brands really made some models the very first.
To me it is still a riddle who made the diverse pangolins, giant anteaters and aardvarks, although they were alreade available in the early 1960's as knock-offs.

And they were not only made in Hong-Kong, b


ut also in Singapore and Macau.

The list of copies is almost endless, and yes, the early copies have the same quality as the originals, most probably because the moulds were still fresh.
Look at the most right collie, from which i still don't know who made it originally.

Some Singapore copies...

Hong-Kong