Blue Box an Introduction

Our very good friend Erwin Sell has written series of articles on Blue Box. In the coming week or so we will be showing many of the figures this Hong Kong company made. First up is an introduction on Blue Box.

Peter Chan Pui founder of Blue Box started manufacturing and marketing his own toys in 1952. Shortly after his early start into the toy manufacturing business he ventured into making all sorts of plastic toys and is well known for the reproduction of early British, other European and Japanese toys that seem to look like toys from these countries, but are not exact copies. Also Peter Chan Pui produced large quantities of toy soldiers. The figures that represented the armies of WW2 and post war mostly original designs not copied or cloned. In most cases so were some of the western and American Civil War figure series, Tarzan playset and others. In case of figures design, Blue Box did do poses that were copies of other companies’ poses, other figures were based on other figures with changes and finally many new original figures were created.

Accessories were done in scale-approx. with 45-50 mm figures and other accessories were in more HO scale.

The first sets were either done hard plastic (fragile) white or cream painted over with not painted vehicles or partially painted vehicles/accessories. Later figures were painted and unpainted soft plastic. These figures were packed in cases too with accessories and vehicles as well. Originally sold in window square or rectangular shape window box with blue cases-that is why they are called Blue Box with logo in red/white. Later bag sets were with soft plastic unpainted or partially painted start to appear with some vehicles but not all time and much later more cheap economic version unpainted bags were sold till most molds were wasted or copied/cloned by smaller other HK firm that destroy the detail.

Some vehicles/tanks were redesigned from same set and sold with friction system later along without figures and in some cases with spark fire effect too. Such as ZERO Japanese plane

Original plastic (space set) was done with space men and rubber type painted aliens, the cannon and rocket were all hard plastic and the original design resembles LIDO/SUPERIOR Captain Video sets but not same or close at all. It was sold in a large 101 pieces space play set with cardboard litho painted base.

I should note that for some odd reason I have come across with same figures poses in different sizes, some in 30-35 mm scale and others in 45-50 mm scale both with BB logo bellow and painted. Assuming first and finding later more than one mold was done per set by a subsidiary firm in mainland China to be sold at local (china mostly) area. I do have many painted figures but prefer the unpainted figures as the paint used back then cover most detail and blur the faces and uniform.

Therefore for I like to clear with pictures provided and compare to other firm figures that scale do match or blend well with some of smaller Airfix /else figures.

Australia and New Zealand were the closes and largest markets, HK export large quantities to South America mainly Argentina and Brazil and the Caribbean, with Cuba being one of its  main customers.

US least and apparently not in large quantities being most fount in states the unpainted version. American GI’s was sold most in US in many variation, few in hard plastic.

What I have is base in my personal child collection, few finding after and else. I cannot attest that all I show/said is what they neither 100% corrected but is what I had found and my research. Thank you for your time and enjoy.