It's like stealing candy from a...Winkie?

Who made these? Probable Manufacturor: Hing Fat [CLICK] which has a Hong Kong base [& ".hk" domain] and similar stuff.

Who originally sculpted them remains a mystery. As I like them, I hope he's not pulling rice somewhere as a political dissenter of some sort. I'm OK if he's a commie, as long as he is allowed to sculpt in peace! :)

Seriously!!
EDIT: I finally found the lid, which has the best codes:


So, a few days ago, I was innocently studying in one of the comfortable "real living room" chairs I inherited when we sold off the family beach house. It should be noted that I was not - repeat NOT - looking for any gaming projects. I was, however, looking at the big mess my son had left on the coffee table from playing with his friends. It looked something like this:

I've since organized it a bit for this analysis.

One thing is for sure - all these toy Army Men are not created equal! 

In size, proportionality and crisp sculpt quality, the Soldiers seem to be made from two different companies. All I can figure is that they were mixed together due to a WWII theme. The British and Japanese figures are as good as or better than a lot of metal wargame sculpts! See for yourself below.

Note that the grid is about 1" or 24-25mm square

The Limeys in 11 poses:


Bren Section:

Well, it's "the Bren guy" with the "only other prone guy" really.

Sgt. York? Or perhaps Sgt. Lancaster? And a standing guy whose pose is hard to discern...peeking around a corner? Just starting to run? Leaky bowel syndrom pose?

Thre solid poses. Guy to right is either about to bust a door down or give someone a wood shampoo!


More Bren gunners. Something about the helmet bumping against the upside-down magazine feed has them not only wearing Scottish bonnets, but holding the weapon well away from their faces. Accuracy just may be affected!


And of course the command section. Nigal Pennyworth and his trusty bagpipe operator, Jock Glenlivet. 

It's a well-known fact that the Brits used the indecipherable communication ability of native "bagpipe whisperers" to confound Japanese signal intelligence gathering.

Next up, the Sushis in 14 [!] poses:






Major Kancho and his radio operator:


Sniper and surrendering guy:


Defiant Hero, Marching and Out of Ammo guy:


MMG Section:


Banzai Guys!


Shooter and Sentry guys:

These Brits and Japanese are startlingly nice, full of character and fun, heroic poses. Also, they are also made from "almost hard" plastic. It is not at the *SNAP* level of styrene that is used for modern plastic sculpts by Perry Brothers, GW and Warlord. Still, it can be trimmed easily and cleanly with an X-acto blade and almost filed or scraped cleanly using the side of the blade - I experimented a bit.

All of a sudden, I have a WWII project for One-Hour Skirmish Wargames! All I have to do is get the Brit/Jap figures out of Mr. Winkie's hands. He can keep the rest.

In contrast, the US and German figures are, well, typical plastic army men. Sculpting a bit off, proportions a bit flat, weapons a bit odd, etc. Check out comparison shots below:









Main oddity is that the "typical" US / German figs are about as hard as the nice Brit and Jap sculpts. All I can think is that they had the molds and a bunch of plastic and decided to run the figs off whatever was laying around the factory.

What I really want? More of these nice sculpts and more variety, plus their best opponents: DAK Germans and US Marines or Army / Pacific Theater of Operations.

So, anyone know who these Guys are???

EDIT: Thanks to John Y of "54mm or Fight!" blog for leading me to a very likely ID of these figs. The toy plastic Soldiers world is a bit more complicated even than the metal one! Most importantly, there are more nationalities to grab!

EDIT 2: Ran across an interesting post here:
http://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2017/07/erwinwatch-hing-fat-not-dgn.html

Basically, the guy says that "DGN" is not a company, province, etc of China but is short for "Design" and the company that makes the figures is Hing Fat, an "on call" manufacturer of...whatever you're willing to pay for. He seems to have an on going argument with two other guys about it. However, most important for us, the figures are consistently listed under the Hing Fat label, and uncommonly as DGN, so that may be worth noting.

Also of note, the Hing Fat figs come in tubes that are partially randomized - you need to pay extra at eBay to get a perfect distro of the figure poses from someone who has bought a lot of them and are now selling them in collectors lots of all 12-ish figs. That being said, the bucket my son was given seems to be the cheapest way to get a large number of them, and most if not all the poses. Said bucket was purchased at Amazon, btw, for about $20 [free shipping...depends].