“He was a skater boy, she said, ‘See you later, boy’” – the Godzilla, Gorosaurus and Kong mini-figures on skateboards produced by Hang Yip Plastics of Hong Kong, most probably in the 1980s

Somewhere in the blizzard of strange toy mashups that was the 1980s, and driven by the booming popularity of skateboarding, a lot of mini toy-figures on skateboards hit the market. I was way too physically uncoordinated to ever get on a skateboard or view them as anything other than instruments of torture, but many were bitten by the bug, and numerous toy companies tried to jump on this marketing bandwagon, by sticking increasingly more unlikely characters on pull-back-and-go or battery operated skateboards. Crazes like this, and the fast-money to be made from them, are rich and productive ground for toy bootleggers, and Hang Yip Plastics Ltd of Hong Kong (incorporated in May 1983, and finally dissolved in 2000), bounced into this arena with a range of four Godzilla-, kaiju- and monster-themed figures.

These are mainly known under the toyline ‘Fun Skaters’, and I am fortunate to own a full set still in their plastic-blister and card packaging.

The characters here are a squat and chunky grinning Godzilla in green, another standing Godzilla in yellow, an orange Gorosaurus in his famous two-legged-kangaroo-kick position (here riding on his curved tail) as seen in the 1967 film ‘King Kong Escapes’, and King Kong in a naturalistic black. They attach to the skateboards by an upside-down T-like protrusion under their feet which fits through a small rectangular hole in the skateboard, so that when the figures are then turned 90 degrees this protrusion locks and holds them in place.

(Image from a defunct online sales listing – here to show the locking mechanism)

These figures on their own stand about 55mm. tall (and 70mm. tall on the skateboard), and the skateboards are 85mm. long. The cardbacks measure 202 by 130mm., and in the ‘Fun Skaters’ line are blank on their backs.

The cardbacks are marked with Hang Yip Plastics’ symbol in the bottom left-hand corner, and next to that under the bottom of the plastic blister include the line: “Hang Yip Plastics Limited”. Other statements with “Made in China” and a product number ‘89913-5’ appear in the opposite right-hand bottom corner. Many surviving examples of the packaging have local Western distributors’ labels stuck to them, and two of mine have the labels of Bestoy of Wrexham in Clwyd in north-eastern Wales (incorporated in February 1985, and went into administration and was dissolved in 2004). The same distributor-labels are found on the packaging of numerous other examples of these figures (see here for two found in the UK, as well as here, here, here and here for further examples).

The excellent and informative Sphinx Godzilla guide (vol. 1: American Godzilla Items (1961-1998), p. 98; downloadable here) lists these ‘Fun Skaters’ among products sold in the US, but I suspect a small error has crept into their research here, and this cardback with the ‘Fun Skaters’ toyline might have been solely produced for the UK market. Of course, I am prepared to be corrected if anyone can produce a ‘Fun Skater’ cardback with a distributor’s sticker from anywhere outside the UK, but I can’t find one.

In addition, four other cardbacks from two different distribution regions are known to me. The first three of these are for the ‘Surf’ and ‘Skatasaurs’ toyline (I’m assuming the last one here has suffered from a lack of careful proof reading at the design stage, and is to be pronounced ‘Skate-a-saurs’, not ‘Skat-a-saurs’, with that pronunciations nonsense-worded jazz-singing or more unfortunate poop connotations).

Let us look at the two cardbacks found with the ‘Surf’ line first:

(Images from a long defunct online sales listing)

The cardback here shows minimal changes from the ‘Fun Skaters’ line, with some token switching of one predominantly blue and empty background for another and a new drawn skateboard-logo, but has the welcome addition of photographs of the whole range in black-and-white on their reverse, as well as the statement that “4 styles available” to confirm the impression that the entire line was shown on the reverse. Most of the examples of this cardback known to me have distributor stickers of Small World Toys (of Beverly Hills, CA., incorporated in 1974 and sold in 2004 to Debra Fine, later restructured as a subsidiary of Small World Kids Inc., which in turn filed for bankruptcy protection in August 2007, and was then purchased by a group of former employees and partners, surviving now in that form) affixed to their upper corners.

(From an eBay sales listing)

A slightly variant cardback for the ‘Surf’ line occurs without Small World Toys’ stickers, but additional text noting that these ones were distributed by “Madison Ltd.” of “Hackensack, NJ” (this was an alias or sub-company of Davis Brothers Wholesalers, Inc. of Hackensack, who operated in the 1980s and 1990s – I cannot find accurate incorporation or dissolution records for this company, and readers should beware that occasional online records referring to the mid-1990s relate only to a product recall by this company in those years). The same “Madison Ltd” is what is printed inside a drawing of a yellow tag on a cord placed in the upper left-hand corner.

These ‘Surf’ skaters often appear with pricetags in USD and were clearly sold in the US market.

The ‘Skatasaurs’ toyline I know of only through the Sphinx’s guide, and I give one of their two images below:

(Image from the Sphinx’s guide: see above for fuller reference)

Again, little has changed here, with only a token redesign of the cardback to use a new background (again predominantly blue and empty) and drawn skateboard-logo, and with cartoony drawings of the individual figures now moved to the front of the card. I would love to hear from anyone who has one of these cardbacks, especially if there was a distributor’s sticker on it.

A final example of these skater-toys comes from Wentoys Import-Export GmbH of Düsseldorf, Germany:

(Images supplied by an Instagram user named ‘kollektornius’: for details of them see below; used here with their kind permission)

Wentoys were a toy distribution and import company based in Düsseldorf, who were active from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, selling a vast range of inexpensive rack toys and bootleg items, almost all sourced in Hong Kong and China.

Here the cardback has been completely replaced by a German-language design used as standard by Wentoys for all their products, with only minimal variation (see examples below), with the addition of their toyline name ‘Dino-Skater’ and a cartoon prehistoric-themed scene of a cave family, a dinosaur and a pterosaur.

(Examples of other cardbacks from Wentoys products; images from various eBay sales listings)

The reverse of the cardback has a design including a road safety message for children that is found on the reverse of all Wentoys’ cardbacks.

I can trace only two examples of the ‘Dino-Skater’ King Kong figure (one in the collection of an Instagram user named ‘kollektornius’: see here for the Kong, and here for other posts from this fantastic collection, well-deserving of a long look; and another advertised on eBay by a German seller, but when I bought the latter, the seller sent back that too-common message that dashes all joy and the thrill of acquisition from the collector’s heart: ‘Sorry, I cannot locate this now in my stock – I will refund you’). Both Kongs from the ‘Dino-Skater’ line are of identical design to those in the other lines shown above, and must be from the same molds, however, these Wentoys Kongs were produced in a gloriously attractive purple-pink colour that significantly adds to the pain of not acquiring one (why, why, why am I denied my Vino-Kong?).

I have not been able to find the two Godzillas or Gorosaurus in this ‘Dino-Skater’ line, but I suspect that the naming of the line ‘DINO’-skater was not for the Kong figure, and so examples of the Godzillas and Gorosaurus most probably exist as well. If someone has one, please do get in touch – Ich wäre Ihnen sehr dankbar.

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So, here at the end, we turn to my theory with these.

It is clear that Hang Yip Plastics must have been behind all of these toylines. The products must come from the same molds, and most of the cardbacks are near-identical. The Sphinx suggested a date of “1980s” for the ‘Fun Skaters’, and the “1990s” for the ‘Surf’ and ‘Skatasaurs’, but I do not see any dating criteria here. What I do see is a relatively distinct geographical distribution pattern, with the ‘Fun Skaters’ apparently distributed in the UK market by Westoy, and two known US distributors: Small World Toys and Madison, those based in the south-west and north-east of that country. We cannot know at the moment of the distributor of the ‘Skatasaurs’ line and so must set that one aside for the moment, but I have a hunch it will have been by a US distributor at some geographical distance from Small World and Madison. Finally, Wentoys dealt with distribution in Germany, and presumably the surrounding countries in Europe.

These would appear to be regional spheres of influence, with each distributor apparently entering into dialogue with Hang Yip Plastics regarding their preferred cardbacks, and Hang Yip Plastics then producing those cardbacks to order for each individual local reseller and uniting these with their main stock of figures, before shipping the bespoke final product to the Western resellers. I have a hunch that this activity happened at much the same time for all these resellers, and allowed Hang Yip Plastics to scale up their sales by operating in multiple geographically-separate regions at once.

All that said, I still mourn the loss of my pink monkey … sigh. Back to the collector’s mantra: one day, one day, one day, and hopefully soon.

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Confessions of a Kaiju Hunter