About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
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.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

W is for Woolbro

Woolbro were one of the few Hong Kong names holding their own against Giant, others being Hagemeyer/Haglon, Gordy, Imperial and Empress, though none were as big as Blue Box. I used to think they were - like Winfield - an 'in house' brand of Woolworths, but it's clear they sold to anyone who'd buy their products, and that they sourced product from all over the colony, including the Blue Box/Rado/Ri-Toys empire.

This contains the commonly found mini-trucks based on the old Lone*Star/Dinky post war Humber trucks, along with copies of Britains 54mm khaki Infantry.

This set has similar contents (but with the later less detailed figures on ovoid bases - click on both images to compare), divided into two compartments, so you could divide them up with you brother and have a fight (no, not a war-game, a fight over who's figures were who's!).

An under-scale Saladin armoured-car is the 'highlight' of this set, along with copies of Airfix first version 8th Army and German WWII Infantry. Deliberately made to look just like a Blue Box play-set, it's nice to know they were cutting each other up, as well as ripping-off the European manufacturers. Even more interesting when we look at the next photograph;

Both these contain figures/products from Blue Box or Ri-toys, I have bags identical to the one on the left but with the Ri-Toys tree symbol where the Woolbro logo is on this header, while an unmarked vac-formed tray like the one on the right, contains more of the Blue Box cowboys with a little fort. The figures on the left are multi-coloured versions of the - usually green - French Resistance Fighters originally by Blue-box in factory-painted pale-blue hard polystyrene. The 'planes came in all sorts of HK sets. [20 NP = Twenty 'New Pence' dating this set to 1969/70]

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