A GIANT UPDATE: The Collection is Complete

Last year from October-December, I was covering GIANT Plastics Corp.'s (aka Giant of Hong Kong) line of HO scale space toys, but there was one piece that eluded me: their spaceship. I already had the VHTF flying saucer, and I had a spaceship in the collection which would work quite well with GIANT figures, but the original spaceship was a bear to find. Wellll, guess what? You got it - one became available with a host of figures and I snatched it up! The picture below shows the job lot I received. It was awesome having all the astronaut poses, as well as all the alien poses with multiples to boot! In the coming days I'll be featuring photo essays on the spaceship as well as the aliens because there were a bunch of poses in colors I didn't yet have. Be Blessed and Enjoy Life! Ed 

GIANT Knock-off Silver Blow-Mold 3in / 76mm Alien

My series on GIANT Plastics Corp space toys is finished but even so the occasional odd post will probably show up from time to time, like this googly-eyed blow-molded silver alien. It is obviously a knock-off of one of GIANT's alien figures but is considerably larger as you can see by the photo below. I came across this a few months ago during a random fleaBay search and had to get it. I can only assume that whoever made this, most likely made the other figures in the series, so as they say, the hunt is on! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 9 FINAL The Invasion Continues

I'm wrapping up this series of GIANT Plastics Corp. HO scale space toys with this final set of invasion photos. As stated in a previous post, GIANT never made 'casualty' poses and I didn't want to carve up and modify these because they're just too expensive to do that. You'll have to use your imagination as to who wins this battle, but as you can see, the invaders have multiplied over what was shown yesterday. Are there more out there? Is this just an advance party? Will our Starship Troopers be able to allay the onslaught? That is now your story...!

Next up in our series of fabulous old school space/science fiction toys will be Remco's Hamilton's Invaders! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 8 The Invasion Continues

The Tri-ang Moonscape is being used for these photos. We can imagine this terrain to be in a different location than the purple MPC Golden Astronaut Moonscape. In this scenario, two of the alien spaceships have landed and the Martians (I like referring to GIANT aliens as 'Martians' - gives it that old-time feel) are beginning to appear over the ridge. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 7 The Invasion

One of the pitfalls of using these figures for a diorama is that there were no purposely-made casualty figures, and quite frankly I'm not talented enough to put these guys under the scalpel and modify them into casualties (besides - those little Martian dudes are waaay too expensive to be carving up!!). Sooo anywho, my photo sets will feature incoming 'swarms' of invaders and then promptly trail off into the sunset, leaving the rest of the story to your imagination. Enjoy for now! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 6 The Invasion Set-up Using The Original Tri-ang Base

In the first set of GIANT Starship Trooper photos I recently posted, I used the later purple vacu-form Moonscape from the MPC Golden Astronaut Super Set No. 3202. This base is nicer in that it has more flat spots detailed into it to allow for setting figures on it. Its purple coloring also gives it that other-worldly look. However, for the photo series I'll be posting next, I used Tri-ang's original white vacu-formed Moonscape from their SpaceX Superset 1 No. 1175. The original Moonscape is a nice looking piece, but lacks flat spaces allowing for placement of these small figures. The next installments will be the final series of GIANT space toys - until I get more toys or more ideas for photo shoots. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

MPC Golden Astronaut Super Set No. 3202

Placing these small figures on the MPC base was fairly easy.

Triang SpaceX Superset 1 No. 1175

My Tri-ang Moonscape has a significant bulge in the crater making it difficult to stage these tiny figures on it without them falling over. The rest of piece is no better, having few enough spots flat enough to accommodate the figures. It's a nice looking piece but using it in this capacity is a challenge.

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 5 Still Preparing For Invasion

Sorry folks - I've been a busy fellow of late. Here's a few more photos of our Starship Troopers getting ready for an impending invasion. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 4 Preparing For Invasion

It's been quite the busy week here and I've had to back away from blogging for a bit. As I write this, it's nearly 8AM and I've already started a load of wash as well as getting out the Christmas tree and starting to get things ready for the annual Christmas train layout. Our layouts are not large, elaborate affairs because we live in a postage stamp sized house, but we do what we can. More on that later.

In the meantime, the GIANT Starship Troops set-up continues with these shots of our intrepid outpost garrison prepping for an alien invasion. One of the alien ships is visible in the background and troops and armor are starting to amass in preparation. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 3 Uneasy Feeling

The outpost guards don't feel right - a gut feeling they've learned to pay attention to since being stationed out here at the edge of the Solar System. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

GIANT Starship Troopers Play Time - Pt 2 Keeping Watch

This Ed Emshwiller Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine cover may have inspired GIANT's design for its spacemen. In return, using that served as the inspiration for my photo shoot. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

I've posted this photo before as kind of a stand-alone space art post, but now we'll use it in its original context. These Starship Troopers are pulling guard duty for their outpost

Because I really didn't have a lot of room to work with, to make the shots 'work', I had to come in close to the Moonscape or crop the photos significantly as you'll see when the other photos are posted

GIANT Plastics Corp. (aka GIANT of Hong Kong) / Helen of Toy Space Toys - Pt 29 FINAL - Helen of Toy Odd-&-Ends

While the GIANT Plastics line of 25mm soldiers didn't last past the '60s, the tooling was re-used by other companies and the toys kept being produced. The 'GIANT' logo was taken off of the molds and generally only the 'Made in Hong Kong' lettering remained. One of the biggest post-GIANT producers was Helen of Toy and they re-made all the popular series like American Civil War, Old West, Ancient Greeks/Romans, etc. They did a lot of advertising in comic books and some of the sets they sold were in the form of games which included playmats and spinners. For the space toys, they also included a lot of really small accessories like tiny rocket ships, domed habitats, radar sites, etc. 

Starting tomorrow and for a few days afterwards I'll be posting photos of the set-up I did using these toys. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The paper playmat measures 12.25" (31.11cm) x 25" (63.5cm) 

This is a scan of the spinner art. I actually have the plastic spinner arrow that goes with it

This is a backing card those toys packaged in a plastic bag

This is the only small Helen of Toy space accessory I have so far that I'm aware of. Who knows, maybe there's more little space toys out in The Cave that I haven't recognized as Helen of Toy!

If you look at the comic book ad you'll see all kinds of nifty little doo-dads.

Here's a photo of the job lot this came in to show relative size

Another job lot picture - this one showing the plastic spinner arrow

Another job lot photo showing a spinner with different artwork