Hong Kong Toys Vintage Plastic Fantastic and Identification Tips

VINTAGE HONG KONG TOYS: FUN FOR ALL THE GIRLS AND BOYS

Grok and I agree, this would be my toy factory.

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These are a good example off a quick production run of 17 Jewel kid's toy novelty Hong Kong Watches. The imprint of "HONG KONG" can be seen on the back. They are flexible bendable plastic sloppily done but to a ten-year-old in the1970's, stunningly beautiful.  You can see if you look close, some uncut plastic parts, as they were molded hastily and not really quality checked for perfection. For Sale at RetroChalet.etsy.com

Not many people today might actually realize that Hong Kong produced so many wee plastic novelty items and charms.  Everything now is made in China. but it's important to note, and if I could give them a title, I would crown Hong Kong "The Original Kings of Trinkets and Charms". 

Things Made:

• Gumball Machine Prizes
• Charms of all Kinds
• Barbie and Fashion Doll Accessories from tiny suitcases to doll combs
• Toy Cars and Trucks, Planes and Trains, Boats and Ships
• Plastic Whistles 
• Gag Gifts, bugs, etc.
• Little Plastic Toy Puzzles 
• Little Army, Military, Police Figures
• Small Miniature Pinball Machines
• Plastic Animals
• Pencil Erasers and Pencil Toppers
• Carnival Prizes and Novelties
• Play Make Up Sets 
• Dress Up Accessories and Jewelry (like the watches above)
• Play Food Sets 
• Halloween Decorations
• Christmas Decorations
• Valentine's Day 
• Knock-Off Character Toys

The three wise men were in a package and came with the tag Made in British Hong Kong.  It is rare to find the original tags like this.  This is a hard plastic.  For sale at RetroChalet.

The list goes on and on.  In the 1960s Japan was making a lot of tin toys, which transitioned into Hong Kong's plastic of the late 1960's and early 1970's. Hong Kong, at that time, were under British rule which continued up until 1997.  Most of their novelty toys stopped coming into the US by the mid to late 1980's when China started producing. I wonder what happened to all the toy factories. Where are they now?

As a kid growing up in the 1970's into the early 1980's, I was living the dream of buying the cute little trinkets with my allowance. A dime bought me some really nifty retro things! I grew up on a small street called Dale Avenue in Baltimore County, Maryland.  My elementary school was right next door to my home, and my mom enjoyed making me often walk to the top of the street to the market with my friend Kelli (older, and more like a chaperone to me back then) to get her something by foot. For me it seemed like a long way, but in reality, it was two blocks or so and I had to do two steps to Kelli's one. 

The coffee set, above, is an example of the marking on the package.  Adorable little trinkets. The picture and item are from LongAndDrew on Etsy.  A real bargain today for $14.95 for the vintage plastics collector.

In between Jack's Market and my home, used to be a tiny candy and toy shop. run by a very lucrative couple who lived there. I'm pretty sure you've seen this type of set up, where there's a two-story house and the bottom is a business window and entrance. It was not by chance or by accident that the owners soon realized to put this set up to good use. All of the neighborhood kids who went to school there would be walking around the neighborhood and word quickly spread that they had the goods we wanted. 

An Example of the doll accessories, in RetroChalet.  Note the "mold lines" and excess plastic on some of the bottles, sloppy glue, discoloration, etc. 

I always made Kelli stop so I could go in and she hated it. She wasn't a candy or plastic girl, so I had to make selections quick. I remember trying to collect all the toy car erasers they had. When they heard the bell on the door, (I can still remember the jingle just like it was yesterday), the couple would come down from upstairs to wait on us. They had ice cream, sodas, candy (from Pop Rocks to wax cigarettes), 1980's rock band buttons, trading cards, baseball cards, school supplies, chips, popcorn, and a crap ton of Hong Kong novelty toys.  It seemed like such a huge store back then, but in reality, it was the size of a large living room cramped by the drink coolers and freezers that lined the walls on the right side, and massive toy shelves on the left. They had a counter and a push button cash register.  

I probably should blame them for my early love of all things plastic, and I probably was considered a valued customer. For just five to ten cents, I cleaned up on junk. They knew, when my allowance came, I would be back. I was going to buy them out of their Hong Kong toys.  So they kept getting fresh stock.  They had the whole neighborhood hooked. 

Now some of the things were just going to break over time like kites, or little plastic whistles.  However, the small "bugs" and "spiders" lasted the stomping on when you scared your friends.  Good for multiple uses, so I figured it was a good investment in some of the items.

These are the bugs I was telling you about. Source: My Pinterest, was in my shop.

Here's a few things you can really notice about Hong Kong toys when identifying them: 

• MOLDING LINES PROMINENT - Anything plastic from Hong Kong, has really prominent molding lines.  They must have made them fast, and cheap, and rightly so as back then they didn't cost very much. The five and dimes needed stock and needed it quick, as did corner stores, toy stores, and the carnival booths. Every time something new came out, the trinkets and novelty items from Hong Kong would come pouring in. 
• NOT SPOT ON, LOOKALIKE - Items that look very much like a character, but something is off.  Most every carnival prize was a really cute Hong Kong Toy. One of the ones I can specifically remember was a "knock off" Snoopy.  It was actually a Lucite plastic. I've found one on Etsy and am listing their pictures here.  Many times, the character didn't look exact or quite right, and you could tell it was a knockoff.  This was in the time before iPhone and WWW so no kid at a carnival was going to call the Snoopy people and complain about such a thing as a knockoff toy (the nose was too long, etc.)  I really don't think that the Hong Kong toy companies did this on purpose, I just think some of them were very bad artists. 
• OFF CENTER, AWKWARD - Even the words "HONG KONG" when stamped in the back can look awkward or out of alignment. The faces on the 17 Jewel watches above are a bit off center.  Toys will look funny or awkward (as if they had to meet a million-toy deadline by the morning so they just let the machine do its own thing.).  I bet that exactly what happened. 
• HARD PLASTIC, OR SOMEWHAT PLIABLE, ONE EXTREME OR THE OTHER - I can distinctly remember two types of toys. The first being hard plastic, like a lot of the small dolls, whistles, little figurines were more of a hard plastic, toy pellet guns, etc., much like this Nativity Set below. Today when you find them, they have a very hard feel and almost as if you are scared to drop it and it will crack them.  The other end of the spectrum was very soft pliable toys. If you have ever seen a "record player" made for Barbie dolls, it is a small plastic record player and has little plastic records.  Many times, the record is hard plastic that which we are speaking of, but the player is bendable, and on the underside, you can read HONG KONG. More pliable items included toy car erasers, and pencil toppers, plastic insects and slightly bendable items.
• HONG KONG will be embossed on most things with usually raised lettering or indented, and sometimes even the words "HONG KONG" are all out of whack. Not perfectly straight, or printed offset.  If you don't see any marks, then there would have been original labeling on the packaging or box, such as the small tag insert letting you know it was made in British Hong Kong such as the nativity set above.

This picture demonstrates how characters resemble but look "off".  This Snoopy knockoff is from 20thCenturyStuff on Etsy, and currenly little Snoopy is for sale there.

These little boats are awkward, they open but what did they hold? Made in Hong Kong. Find them at RetroChalet.etsy.com

Now NOT ONLY were they manufacturing, but they were working for other companies. For instance, TYCO had moved production to Hong Kong in the 1970's and they were producing toys for them.  If you are interested in seeing a few more tidbits:  

Here is a great article I found showing dolls inside a Hong Kong factory:  HERE.

Here is another good two-minute read showing the inside faces of a TYCO toy Lab HERE.

Thanks for reading about vintage plastic.

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This article was last updated on December 29 2025

Vintage Blow Molds Venture Plastics and Falcon Plastics

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Blow Mold Easter Eggs by the General Foam Plastics Company in Norfolk, Virginia

For Sale at RetroChalet

Don't  Put All Your Eggs in One Basket!

What if I told you to picture a vintage blow mold, would you comment below the very first idea that popped into your mind. I'm going to wager that it would either be something vintage Christmas (maybe Santa or a giant candle) or Halloween (maybe a black cat or a witch.)  Maybe even something marked Empire plastics, or something other than the two companies I'm talking about today.  Hard to find are the really well-made thick blow molds pre-2000's by companies who made them. Today's yard art and garden decor has taken on a whole new lighter plastic and sometimes the eggs blow clear across the lawn.  I understand and support the whole "eco friendly" movement, but still, it's not fun at all to chase them all the time.

Pic: RetroChalet

I'm pretty certain that the Easter Egg was not the first thing on your mind.  However, easily overlooked and underthought as a glorious blow mold. It's hard to imagine that the garden decor and vintage yard art "big eggs" of decades ago were made so well. 

These examples, are indeed, blow molded. So. let's dig deeper. These eggs above came from a late 1980's estate and are marked General Foam Plastics Company, Norfolk, Virginia, yet they are not actually foam at all. They are hard plastic with distinct molding lines.  Heavy for an egg if you will. The small ones are about 8" long and the large ones about 12" long. The company is still in business and has been producing fantastic plastic and blow molds since 1957!  The good news about these decorations is they will implant and stay put in your yard.  Easy to clean and durable, they have lasted almost 40 years now. 

My personal favorite: this big egg with the 3-D Bunny from Venture Plastics. For sale in RetroChalet Etsy shop.

Now these smaller eggs look exactly like the egg molds used in Norfolk, but they are marked Grand Venture (circa 1998) and are actually a line from Falcon Plastics of Washington, Pennsylvania. The larger eggs definitely stand out versus their competitors, as they have a bunny on the egg!  Falcon made a crap ton of holiday blow molds however this "division" of the company was short-lived lasting only ten years. Well, technically speaking--there is some confusion as to this matter. 

There is , I'm happy to report, still at the time of this writing, a Falcon Plastics on Wylie Avenue in Washington, PA, which I'm assuming is the main central hub for the six or so molding factories they still do own across the nation, (and their website at the time of this writing boast they have been in business since 1975).  The words "blow molding" can also be found on their sites. 

That leave two theories.  First, according to the website "Blow-Molded" these particular style holiday molds seem to have disappeared after 2005.  This could mean the company is correct, but the actual molds of the holiday lines were sold or parted off to another plastics manufacturer who at least, acquired some of the molds.  The second theory is that it's an altogether different company with the same name in the same town, who was around the same time, yet, I don't believe in such coincidences, do you?

The one thing that's great to see on the Blow-Molded site is the fact they have digitized the actual blow molded catalogs from this company and the one above of Christmas, Halloween, and of course the Easter Egg molds as for the nifty eggs above. I'll link these great eggs below for you to visit their site and relish in the glory of the blow molds!

This acquisition style information is not that unusual.  Often times due to the market growth and either demand or lack thereof for said plastics, it wasn't uncommon for one manufacturer to merge or acquire another. This holds true with molding machinery dies and presses and the molds. The molds must have been the diamond in the rough.  If someone was facing financial crisis, the most economically sound thing to do was to call a competitor to sell out what you could.  In this case, I assume maybe it was no longer profitable for the Grand Venture line of Falcon Plastics to continue, so it may have used some decision making. 

What's interesting is to think if the company was only around ten years, how many eggs marked Grand Venture are still in existence in people's attics or basements?  Does your grandma have these on her lawn? If so snatch one up and look at the markings!

The backstamp of the Grand Venture line of blow molds. Source: RetroChalet , Etsy

How many have ended up in landfills?  Too many, probably, to count. That's why I'm offing my eggs to someone who can appreciate them. 

So, tell me, what fond memories of blow molds do you hold? Do you have any in your home or decor now? What is your favorite all time blow mold? 

Further Reading: 

 You can see them on Blow-Molded.com here.

Happy Collecting!

Cindy

Editor and Owner of Melmac Central

Plasco Plastic Art Corporation Toys, Play Plastic Tea Set, Welcome to 1940

The front of a box, or an advertising signs, with colorful graphics for sale at RetroChalet. 

In the 1940's. the PlasCo name was synonymous with great toy kits for kids.  Little girls could obtain a plastic tea set or dinnerware set just like Mommy's china ones!  They can still sometimes be found in the original boxes which were colorful lithographic designs of the 40s and 50s.  Often lithographed with bright vibrant colors, these sets were just lovely for collection and display. Some had matching forks, knives, and even napkins!  Not all pieces were properly marked but once you familiarize yourself with a few mint in box sets, then you can surely recognize it. 

Inside of the tea set box, from Geraldine's Toys, this set for sale on Ebay. 

Surely a must have for the little girls of the 1940's, who would spend hours playing tea with dolls and bears.  They even made a lot of dollhouse furniture, I am unsure if each piece was marked properly, so some may be hard to tell, but it is out there, and you can search for it. 

A Plasco Dollhouse furniture backstamp courtesy of GamGlamVintage on Etsy.

Buy this at GamGlamVintage on Etsy!

For boys there were western sets, farm animals, toy soldiers and more.  Most of the information that I have found about this company comes from the Toy Soldier HQ, which you can peruse here:    TOY SOLDIER HQ INC <P> REL PLASTICS TOY SOLDIERS AND FIGURES FOR SALE (angelfire.com)   who has a great history on PlasCo and many little boy toys for your perusal, a quite comprehensive list.  This will be helpful next time you are out thrifting or estate sale junking, you will know what to look for.  

The Name, So Confusing!

In fact, the name PlasCo wasn't really the name of the company per se.  It was the Plastic Art Corporation, a subsidiary of REL plastics molding that was created just for the manufacturing of a toy division.  So the name PlasCo was somehow obtained from the Plastic Art Corporation (how, I do not know because they left the Art word out completely, just sayin'.) 

The company thrived in the hey dey making towns for twenty solid years from the 40's to the 60's but later things slowed down and according to Toy Soldier HQ, they were defunct in the 1980's.  

A tea set in the original box is still appealing to plastics collectors who collect tea sets, plastic dishes, melamine dinnerware, or doll and bear themed collections. Mint condition can go from $30-$80 depending on piece count, style and rarity.  Many of the soldier and military collectibles are still popular among male collectors today, and are cute and detailed for small plastic toys. 

How cool it must have been to have toy set like this to play with your dolls and bears in a time before technology of today existed. Life was so simple then. 

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