A GIANT of the Toy Industry - My Favorite Toys as a Kid (Kid = 1950's to present)

Bet you thought it was Marx right? Not this time :-) Over the past several years I have been buying - and occassionally photographing - toys made by Giant Plastics Corp of Hong Kong as well as clones made by YF, Lucky Clover, and unbranded offerings - all of them most likely using the original Giant tooling. Helen of Toy was also a big player in the HO scale market and some of their offerings were all new tooling and differed from Giant's designs. Marx did have an excellent line of miniature playsets as well, however, their figures were 30mm which is larger than HO scale. Toy collector's tend to not know the difference or simply choose to ignore the size differences. HO scale is 1/87 and is the most popular of the scales for train layouts world-wide. Train people know that because by nature they are rivet-counting stickler's for detail. Toy collector's don't seem to get it because - toys! - if it's smaller than 2", to them it's HO scale. Hey, got news for you: anything larger than 1/87 is NOT HO scale, it's something else!

Okay, time to climb down off the soap box! LOL 

Giant was a favorite of mine as a kid. The sets were über cheap and the figures were in recognizable poses as I already had the larger Marx or Monogram versions that were used by Giant to pantograph down to HO scale. This has all has led me to acquire some other small (HO scale-ish) toys from brands like Airfix, Marx, Kleeware, and whatever else in that size range as a way to expand the overall small scale battlescape. 

After concentrating on my Ancient and Roman figures, of late I've been working on American Civil War (ACW), modern military, and space. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Space

GIANT'S range of space figures included astronauts and aliens, and a space ship. I haven't yet photographed the aliens and I do not have their spaceship

Modern Military

Some of GIANT'S modern military stuff. I'm not sure about that bunker though - it may be another company. GIANT also made a series of German's of which I have a few but haven't photographed yet

GIANT landing craft

Here's a whole series of Kleeware army trucks. They're a tad small for HO scale and GIANT figures but they'll do in a pinch for playing Little Green Army men on a small scale

American Civil War

The American Civil War figures were really at the top of my list (along with Vkings)

The wagon is not marked GIANT and is probably Lido which made a series of Old West wagons in HO scale

I have more, but these were the only ones I've photographed to-date. I got this lot from fleaBay already painted. I'll leave them alone 

Vikings

Also up there with ACW as one of my favorites were the Vikings

Ancients/Romans

My third very best favorite of the GIANT line.

It can be argued whether or not these were Romans, Greeks, Macedonians, whatever. In any case I always played with them as 'Romans' as a kid.

Mongols

Below: YF No. 810 Mongolians and Castle Playset

YF was one of the companies that marketed GIANT clones. I have no idea how they fit in to the history or timeline, but believe they were a post-GIANT company using the old GIANT tooling. I haven't taken any pics of my actual GIANT branded Mongols yet. 

American Old West

Sorry, this is kind of a lame pic but shows how these figures can accumulate. On the left of the box is American Old West and in the middle-to-right is ACW

Lucky Clover Toys Set No. 6648H Fort Frontier Assault. Like 'YF', Lucky Clover offered up GIANT clones, again, probably made from the original tooling

Unbranded GIANT clones

American Revolutionary War (Rev war)

Sorry - no got :-)

I have literally just a handful of GIANT Rev War figures which haven't yet been photographed. 

The Rev War era, while interesting, is not something that appealed much for me toy-wise and over the years I have sold what little Rev War toys I had.

Size Matters - A Look At Some Of Those Small Toys We Had As Kids

They were cheap. They were everywhere.And they were fun. I've featured toys made by Giant Plastics Corp (aka Giant of Hong Kong) before but let's look at a few pieces from other comapnies that just sort found their way to the house :-) These may have been Giant clones or totally different sculpts but back in the day they could be found in grocery stores, drug stores, 5-&-Dime stores - you name it. They were cheap rack toys out of Hong Kong and even kids whose parents didn't have a lot of disposable income had a chance to get some of these. Of course, here we are some 50+ years later and prices have gone through the roof for some of these while others are still reasonably priced.

Westerns! I loved watching Westerns on TV as a kid so it's no wonder I had a lot of Old West themed toys. Okay, that being said I didn't actually have any of these pictured here today but they still bring back the memories and flavor of a time gone by. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Frontier Coach and Wagon (Hong Kong)

This bag with Stagecoach stapled to card appears to be a clone of a Giant Plastics product

These would be 1/72 scale NOT HO scale which is 1/87 and much smaller!

Hong Kong Frontier Set with Fort Cheyenne

The name 'Fort Cheyenne' was used on numerous Western fort toys and playsets back in the day. This is among the smaller versions

(These would be 1/72 scale NOT HO scale which is 1/87 and much smaller!)

Lucky Clover Toys Set No. 6648H Fort Frontier Assault

yet another Fort Cheyenne

(These would be 1/72 scale NOT HO scale which is 1/87 and much smaller!)

Here's a lot of loose Lido wagons I picked up some months back

This picture of Lido's western style wagons courtesy of Kent Owen Sprecher on his excellent website Toy Soldier HQ (see sidebar on right)

Here's a larger soft-shell carry-all I featured in the early days of the blog. Just another example of a Fort Cheyenne toy