Examining the L.P Mystery

Following up on Mavericks marvellous blog on the LP spacemen, I asked about the significance of the 'monster' on the company logo, which seems to be gripping the two letters L and P and also what LP might stand for!

Maverick - long time collector of toy soldiers and expert on vintage toys writes:

"Yes the P could be 'plastic', but it could be Products, producers, partners, playthings, prime?

Personally I've often thought they may be the 'space' arm of Red Box/Blue Box, but I have no evidence, and as the current incarnations of both 'Boxes' clearly have a gap between them a mile wide, I'm inclined to think the historical link between the two - widely held in the Toy Soldier community - is tenuous to say the least! Notwithstanding the fact that the earliest documentary linking of the two is Garrett's Encyclopaedia, and he was not a great lover of plastic.

I would like to think the 'Monster in a Starburst' (My own moniker) is Godzilla, as that ties LP into that whole more innocent non-sexualised pre-Manga/Anime era of Harryhausen's stop-motion and Anderson's puppetry, and maybe the wider Western influences of Marvel/DC, Hammer films, Pyro toys and Aurora kits ?!

And yes, for years people thought it was ID, indeed the 'Atomic' playset magazine article is still calling them ID in 2004! My early manuscript entries went with the coverall ID/IDL/ID Ltd.? But as I liked them so much, I soon got hold of the 54mm Officer (bloke with pistol = officer, schoolboy logic...can't be argued with!), then picked up the cake decoration/fish tank pieces and soon realised with the aid of a jewellers eye-glass that there was a figural element.

Before the glass, I had thought it was an eagle hovering over the IDL. I once saw it on some largish packaging - can't remember what, but it's really clear when it's blue (or dark grey?) on white.

But you see...I've digressed into minutiae to hide the fact I know bugger-all else about them. But basically, in my opinion, and it's only my opinion, most of the companies we are trying to separate and understand are a single (but very amorphous) entity in Kowloon, using whatever means they can to get product into Western shops and send the cash back into Mao's Mainland, where their extended families are suffering under some daft eleventy-twelth-year-plan.

And LP's in there somewhere?

Manufacturers in Hong Kong used un-plated moulds that wore out quickly, so moulds would be re-tooled, re-cut, copied from masters, and surviving bits of multi-part vehicles could become a new vehicle with additions or a new 'joining' moulding.

And IF, completely separate entities were involved, they would - more as like - be intense rivals pirating each other as fast as they both copied the mother-lode back in the West!

...It's not that there weren't specific companies, there were, Blue Box for instance are still going today, and have a website with an 'about us/history' type page which waxes lyrical about the founder still being with them and having started the company in the 1960's without mentioning the vast amount of piracy the company indulged in.

But in the main, there would have been one larger firm with the power to deal with the Western agents, they would have subcontracted to their mates in the streets and alleys round about, or further afield..both Blue Box and Marx ended up with stuff marked Singapore and/or Taiwan, while the ex-Portugese colony of Macau often provided product to others.

Then there are those companies who's product was considered good enough to approach for the purpose of manufacturing directly to a single Western company, with moulds shipped out from the European/US factories. This is what happened with Kader and Model Power who ended up with ranges of their own moulds...and moulds from Airfix/Mainline/Palitoy/Tyco ect...and are now major Toy companies in thier own right, while still supplying product to third parties. While some of the moulds actually survived in the UK with Dapol in Wales!

Model Power - as an example - have figures from Hornby (The current soft PVC/vinyl range) which Hornby have carried since about '79, they also do factory painted vertions of the IHC figures (in polyethylene), but seem to have supplied unpainted nylon/rayon/ethylene (?) Firemen in yellow to their mates down the lane for generic pocket-money diecast's of the 'corner-shop' rack-toy variety, AND carry some poor piracies in a third material (cheap stuff) of the Roco marching and sitting Infantry!

At the bottom of the heap, the little guys down the alleyways would produce small runs of mostly pirated or simple construct pocket money toys in cheap low-grade moulds, which they would hawk both to Western buyers at a constant stream of toy fairs in the Hotels of Hong Kong Island or Kowloon and to their larger brethren in the modern factories on the big industrial estates of the New Territories.

In the 50's - of course - using Marshall Plan money, many W.German and Japanese concerns where playing the same game, but these are usually marked as such. Beach/sand-pit toys, money boxes, little girls jewellery boxes, pencil toppers, pencil sharpeners, cheap toy soldiers, cars, trucks and planes...in short everything the HK guys could do.

Back in Hong Kong, other things that make it so hard to work out what is what and who made it are two further factors, first, if you mould was dying, or you didn't have time to complete an order, you'd get someone else to finish it, or repackage something near identical to yours and secondly, the wheels, pilots, passengers and wind-up motors where bought in from small companies who specialized in that kind of work. Stickers, transfers and instructions - not to mention the boxes themselves - would come from paper and/or print companies. Screen-printed tin-plate has connections with the food industry and the battery motors and electronics were often bought in from Japan and Taiwan.

The myriad of questions posed by Western enthusiasts and collectors will only be answered if people in HK (and Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Macau....) start to gather the data themselves. To date they have not shown that same level of interest in historical research. However, as mainland China's GDP increases to Western levels, they are starting to buy-up oriental art and antiques and take them 'home' in large quantities (and - often - for a pretty penny!), so maybe that new-found interest in the heritage of the region will filter down to the toy/novelty industry in time?"

So, is it possible that SWORD toys came out of this rich melting pot of companies and processes ? Were the original toys taken and pirated and copied and re-copied to make endless variations of cheap toys to make money for the Hong Kong industry ? Let me know your views!