Toy bootlegging, at its heart, is an anonymous pursuit, usually operating on or outside the boundaries of copyright law and trying to avoid simple detection. Thus, the companies involved often did all that they could to cover their tracks, and not lead any disgruntled toy manufacturers to their doorstep whose designs may been ‘borrowed’ or adapted with formal permission. This means that now, almost a lifetime later, so many of the Chinese makers of bootleg Godzillas remain unnameable – one immediately thinks here of the producers of the so-called ‘sharkzilla’ and its siblings, the producers of the bulging tongue group with “Made in China” under their feet in a circle, and the producers of the Heisei bootleg, to name only the famous ones (see my earlier and now vast post on Chinese bootleg Godzillas, as well as my separate post on the bulging tongue group for details of these). Thus, the finding of surviving packaging or variant marks that might lead to the unmasking of these producers has become an obsession for me, as each discovery is made against the odds, snatching a small victory from the almost inevitable jaws of defeat.

Imagine my surprise then, when just a few days ago, I spotted a sales post on Facebook with an example of a familiar Godzilla bootleg: the Heisei model, but with additional footmarks That I have never seen before. The Heisei Godzilla was produced following the Imperial large-size Godzilla, but with some features adapted to look more like the Dor Mei models, and its facial features remodelled to be more in line with the Trendmasters 1994 resculpt. They were the subject of an excellent blog post for Toho Kingdom, which notes that they were marketed as ‘Super Dinosaur’ models, with a wealth of information and images there.

(This image of variously coloured models with their sales tags [perhaps predictably with no manufacter’s name given there], from the Toho Kingdom blog)

These have a simple “MADE IN CHINA” under their left foot (NB. Toho Kingdom’s blog, perhaps in error, claims this mark was under the right foot), and until now no other maker’s marks have been detected.

(Images from the Facebook sales post)

Without apparently realising the importance of the information conveyed, the Facebook seller gave a photograph of the underside of the right foot of this beast, which has crucial company information printed on it:

(Image from Facebook sales post)

This would appear to be the lucky break we have been waiting for with this model. Here we have a production company name: “Playmaker Toys”, a toy production number: “140318/25”, and a production site: “Hui Zhou City, China” (now more properly ‘Huizhou’).

Playmaker toys appears to have been linked with similarly named Hong Kong-based companies such as Playmaker Toys Co. Ltd. and Playmaker Toys (HK), and the information that is available on the foundation of the last of those (established in 1982, and apparently now dormant with no listed employees, a defunct website and now registered to a single room in a commercial building in Kowloon, Hong Kong) would appear to be true for all of them. These companies seem to have operated in concert either side of the Hong Kong-Chinese border in the much discussed ‘front shop, back factory’ production method that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. In this, the heads and administrative departments of the companies were based in Hong Kong, but their factories situated just across the border in mainland China, where labour and land was staggeringly cheaper. In fact, Huizhou City is only 43 km. north-east of Hong Kong, along the Pearl River Delta where many of the Hong Kong production factories opened up in the 1980s.

Interestingly, the Toho Kingdom blog cautiously reported a rumour that these Heisei Godzillas were produced by Guangdong Ausini Toys of Guangdong, China – an existing toy manufacturer who were founded in 1991. I cannot find any link between Guangdong Ausini Toys and Playmaker Toys, but Huizhou is in east-central Guangdong province. This may have been a case of two toy producers working together to supply a large contract, or more likely, a simple misidentification of one major toy producer in the region for another.

Either way, we now have solid evidence of who made this Godzilla bootleg, and can excitedly tick this one off our ‘anonymous list’. It’s champagne all round, kaiju hunters!

• 'MUTTON DRESSED AS LAMB': Godzillas and kaiju that look vintage, but are not
• American made Pachi
• BOOTLEG DINOSAURS – a little off topic, but sometimes needed here
• BOOTLEG GODZILLAS
• Bootleg Tokusatsu from China and its immediate neighbours
• Bootleg Tokusatsu from the Americas
• BOOTLEG TOKUSATSU HEROES
• Central Europe – Godzillas and kaiju from behind the Iron Curtain
• Chinese-region bootleg Godzillas -the plastic tide from the East
• Chinese-region made Pachi
• European made Pachi
• European-made Godzillas
• PACHI
• Pachi kaiju
• Pachi kongs
• Pachi superheroes – Ultraman and similar
• The Americas – bootleg Godzillas from the New World