Mystery Monday: Unidentified Hong Kong terrible cowboys and Indians set

For this month, I've been planning to return to my old, masochistic time table of a blog post every weekday, and to get things in gear, I decided it was time for another round of mysteries after not doing one since April. This time around, I decided it was time for yet another block of material I've had backlogged, as a further reminder that not being mysterious does not translate into merit. To start off, here's a closeup of a few of the group with the Timmee battle mountain, which has been a little neglected itself.

For the backstory on this one, I inherited this set from family who are long gone. I remember playing with them occasionally as a kid myself, mostly as targets for a dart gun set that was included. (More on that momentarily...) For provenance, my best guesstimate is that they date from the 1960s, almost certainly not later than the early 1970s. Whatever their original date, the figures, the guns and the darts were all packed together for as long as I knew of them in a repurposed candy box I'm sure is from the 1980s or later. By the time I started this blog, they were already long since packed away and half-forgotten. I suppose they really came back to mind after I posted about the 6-inch Marx wild west figures, starting with the giant Indian I had forever. (See also the gunfighters and weird Ukrainian pioneers.) After a while, I decided to break the old set out; I never doubted I still had them, and I knew I had found them as soon as I saw that damn box. I was genuinely excited when I opened the box. The could have been Marx figures, or copies thereof. They could have been Timmee/ Processed Plastic figures I barely remembered having myself. They could have been MPC, Lido, or some other brand I had only heard of. What they actually were is absolute kaka. Here's a lineup to show just what I mean.

"We must repel the white men, or our sacred Battle Mountain will be turned into plastic Mount Rushmore!"

On inspection, the one consequential thing I discovered is that their only manufacturer's mark was "Hong Kong", which as I commented with the cartoon animals is only somewhat more specific than Planet Earth. It was also all too clear that they were appallingly awful, to a degree I'm not sure I can capture in these pics. Here's a lineup of the cowboys, which are represented by half as many sculpts. This is possibly because they were meant to be outnumbered, or it may just be that more of them got broken or thrown away.

And because it was driving me nuts, I've gone back and added a pic of the cowboys with the Galaxy Laser Team commander. As previously discussed, he's a bit smaller than most "army man" figures at exactly two inches, but still taller than these guys. And the guy on the left is actually shorter, not much bigger than the original/ mini astronaut. And what the Hell is on the end of the green guy's gun is anybody's guess.

Finally, here's a small grouping of horses and riders. These are all that I found, without any extra horses or riders on their own. As you can see, there was one sculpt of a cowboy and one of the Indians, though there are two of the latter to one of the former. If you looked at just these, you might think the set is okay, but I still have more to show you.

At this point, I'm backing up. Of course, I have tried looking these guys up. I got as far as finding some pics from online listings that I'm sure are from the same set of molds, including at least one additional cowboy sculpt. The one really interesting discovery was a group that were painted, but not enough to break my usual policy against copying from or linking to sales pages. I did make somewhat more headway, however, with the dart guns. Here they are, in full glory and indifferent lighting.

The markings on the guns identify them as from Placo, a manufacturer evidently prolific enough that a search or two for information produced an auto complete for "dart guns". They were making these and similar guns from the 1950s to the 1970s, which in itself is no help at all. The darts, however, are marginally helpful: Where the earliest sets  would have had suction cups on plastic shafts, these are all rubber, so probably from the 1960s. As a further curiosity, a single gun of apparently the same design was included in a Spider Man dart gun set from 1981, which I'm absolutely satisfied is of later manufacture than these. Here's a closeup of a gun with the manufacturer's mark.

Now to bring this to some kind of conclusion, here's a few closeups, starting with a gunslinger. Not bad, but why is his hat over his face? And why do his revolvers look more like ray guns? And speaking of, it's still not obvious how little detail is in the face, basically eyes and sort of a nose, no more.

And it's still better than this guy, a gunfighter even more unthreatening than the Lido draft dodger. It looks like he's holding something in the other hand, but that's just "flash", which I found in exactly the same place on another figure. Is he supposed to be surrendering? Or a "casualty" figure??? The people making these clearly didn't care. 

Then there's the rifleman, here with a defect that actually makes his weapon look more modern. Here you just might be able to see how little went into the detailing. I tried to convince myself he was supposed to have a bandana over his face, but I just don't see it. Then there's the thing sticking out at his hip; it's clearly supposed to be a holster, but just try working that out from the shape. I can further confirm, other copies of the sculpt are no better.

Finally, here's one of the Indians. The pose is very similar to ones I have seen in Marx sculpts. What I can't work out is the thing under his right foot. It's definitely supposed to be vegetation, and to me it looks like nothing so much as a prickly pear cactus, but again, just try working that out.

"Of course I'm rushing forward screaming! There's a cactus on my foot!"

With that, I'm wrapping this up. These guys are just the kind of awful that can be amusing for a while, but I've been at this longer than I planned on and the fun factor is already wearing thin. The one thing I'm still tempted to do is chamber a round and see if the dart guns still work, except as an adult, I don't want to have to check where an errant dart might go. So, I'm quitting this trip down memory lane while I'm ahead. As always, more to come, and hopefully better!