Looking for info on Palitoy Cardback Production

olisuds

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Hi All,

I'm looking for info to help me better understand the cardback production process for Palitoy and overseas for Clipper, General Mills etc. Whilst I have a reasonable understanding of the Kenner pre production process for cardbacks I'd like to understand how Palitoy produced their card backs. I believe they were produced from Lithographic printers in the Northampton area. Does anyone know which printers they used and if they are still around today. How did the production process work and link in with Kenner design and proofing? I'm hoping that some of you Palitoy experts can share your knowledge on this.

Thanks Oli
 

Sparky P

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The go to guide for all things palitoy might help you.

https://www.freewebs.com/mrpalitoy/
 

olisuds

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Yes I'm familiar with Jason's awesome guide. Nothing on how the cards were produced though as far as I can see.
 

Pomse2001

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olisuds said:
Hi All,

I'm looking for info to help me better understand the cardback production process for Palitoy and overseas for Clipper, General Mills etc. Whilst I have a reasonable understanding of the Kenner pre production process for cardbacks I'd like to understand how Palitoy produced their card backs. I believe they were produced from Lithographic printers in the Northampton area. Does anyone know which printers they used and if they are still around today. How did the production process work and link in with Kenner design and proofing? I'm hoping that some of you Palitoy experts can share your knowledge on this.

Thanks Oli

Oli, that is some some good questions, I wish I could help. Maybe Jason know something about it :?
 

mr_palitoy

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I believe cards to and including Palitoy 45A where printed in Hong Kong Factories, and then the ones from Palitoy 45B (and German/Clipper ESB) and after were printed in the UK (excluding factory code variations like 45cg, 45cn etc which were still printed and assembled in Hong Kong).

No proof cards etc have ever come to light for Palitoy, the closest we have come are 4 unused cardbacks that popped up on ebay a few months ago which appear to be of thinner cardstock and texture to the standard printed cards according to the buyer.

German ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-C-3PO-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364083693?hash=item2f1dd6dded:g:10EAAOSwTfFbQeYK

Palitoy ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Boba-Fett-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364083104?hash=item2f1dd6dba0:g:rG8AAOSwQM5bQeha

Clipper ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Luke-Skywalker-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364082417?hash=item2f1dd6d8f1:g:aE0AAOSwBfdbQekQ

Palitoy ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Han-Solo-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364081751?hash=item2f1dd6d657:g:fr8AAOSw~7ZbQenm

The descriptions say:-

"My father used to work for a lithographic printing company in Northamptonshire where they printed the cardbacks for the original Star Wars figures. I was lucky enough to have some spares brought home, so here is one of them! I've marked this item as new as there are no rips or tears like most original cards. It does have a few wear and tear scuffs around the edges, but nothing that detracts from this unique item."

That story checked out.

Hope that helps!

cheers Jason
 

Pomse2001

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mr_palitoy said:
I believe cards to and including Palitoy 45A where printed in Hong Kong Factories, and then the ones from Palitoy 45B (and German/Clipper ESB) and after were printed in the UK (excluding factory code variations like 45cg, 45cn etc which were still printed and assembled in Hong Kong).

No proof cards etc have ever come to light for Palitoy, the closest we have come are 4 unused cardbacks that popped up on ebay a few months ago which appear to be of thinner cardstock and texture to the standard printed cards according to the buyer.

German ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-C-3PO-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364083693?hash=item2f1dd6dded:g:10EAAOSwTfFbQeYK

Palitoy ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Boba-Fett-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364083104?hash=item2f1dd6dba0:g:rG8AAOSwQM5bQeha

Clipper ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Luke-Skywalker-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364082417?hash=item2f1dd6d8f1:g:aE0AAOSwBfdbQekQ

Palitoy ESB:-
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Star-Wars-Han-Solo-original-unused-cardback-extremely-rare/202364081751?hash=item2f1dd6d657:g:fr8AAOSw~7ZbQenm

The descriptions say:-

"My father used to work for a lithographic printing company in Northamptonshire where they printed the cardbacks for the original Star Wars figures. I was lucky enough to have some spares brought home, so here is one of them! I've marked this item as new as there are no rips or tears like most original cards. It does have a few wear and tear scuffs around the edges, but nothing that detracts from this unique item."

That story checked out.

Hope that helps!

cheers Jason


Thanks jason for the great info, there is so much still to learn :D
 

olisuds

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Great thanks Jason that's really helpful.

So trying to piece this together, cards up to and including 45a were produced in Hong Kong. Were they assembled there too or sent to the UK to be assembled?

And 45b and onwards (excluding some anomolies) were produced in the UK at Lithographic printers that supplied Palitoy? I guess i'm keen to know more about this part of the process. Did Kenner provide the design in some format to Palitoy and they shared with the printers? Did the printers mock these up or provide design concepts or were they already provided that?

Apologies, lots of questions that i expect are extremely difficult to answer and to be honest my knowledge here is very limited so my understanding and assumptions may be completely wrong.

I was actually the buyer of those unused ESB cards. I have reached out to the seller a couple of times to see if i could get anymore background info but unfortunately he hasn't responded. What interested me most about those cards was that all of the unused cardbacks i have seen to this point have ROTJ that were obtained or originated from the Palitoy factory. These ESB cardbacks originated from the lithographic printers in Northampton so I was keen to understand their purpose and nature. Perhaps they were design samples provided to Palitoy or perhaps they were just part of the regular production run that would have been sent to Palitoy and assembled. I had noticed that the card stock was much thinner than normal and very much reminded me of the "common proof card" format however since I don't have a production card to compare it against I'm unable to verify this yet and didn't want to make assumptions.

Anyway it has sparked a lot of interest in learning more about the design and production process for Palitoy cards.
 

mr_palitoy

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olisuds said:
Great thanks Jason that's really helpful.

So trying to piece this together, cards up to and including 45a were produced in Hong Kong. Were they assembled there too or sent to the UK to be assembled?

And 45b and onwards (excluding some anomolies) were produced in the UK at Lithographic printers that supplied Palitoy? I guess i'm keen to know more about this part of the process. Did Kenner provide the design in some format to Palitoy and they shared with the printers? Did the printers mock these up or provide design concepts or were they already provided that?

Apologies, lots of questions that i expect are extremely difficult to answer and to be honest my knowledge here is very limited so my understanding and assumptions may be completely wrong.

I was actually the buyer of those unused ESB cards. I have reached out to the seller a couple of times to see if i could get anymore background info but unfortunately he hasn't responded. What interested me most about those cards was that all of the unused cardbacks i have seen to this point have ROTJ that were obtained or originated from the Palitoy factory. These ESB cardbacks originated from the lithographic printers in Northampton so I was keen to understand their purpose and nature. Perhaps they were design samples provided to Palitoy or perhaps they were just part of the regular production run that would have been sent to Palitoy and assembled. I had noticed that the card stock was much thinner than normal and very much reminded me of the "common proof card" format however since I don't have a production card to compare it against I'm unable to verify this yet and didn't want to make assumptions.

Anyway it has sparked a lot of interest in learning more about the design and production process for Palitoy cards.

Congrats on the auction wins, those are pretty unique cards!

Evidence would suggest that both the kenner and palitoy cards were initially assembled in the same Hong Kong factories as the same bubbles and factory presses can be seen to be used on both.

Compare the 12 back Jawa bubbles on Palitoy cards:-

https://www.freewebs.com/mrpalitoy/sw12bcardback.htm

With the Kenner ones:-

http://www.12back.com/features/vcjawa/vcjawa.php

The bubbles used are the same, the movement of the tab location on the cloth cape is also seen on both Palitoy and Kenner cards. This would suggest they were assembled in the same place.

It's possible that some may have also been sent in unassembled form too later on before production of the cards moved to Northamptonshire.

The factory code cards like 45cn and 45cg and some 65 backs would appear to have been assembled in Hong Kong as they use unique bubbles, folded footer on Fett 45cg and have a perforated tab punch on 45cn not seen on the Palitoy cards produced in the UK.

It's a mystery where all the proof cards etc for Palitoy went. In Cincinnati skip divers rescued all the Kenner proof cards we see today. In Coalville or similar it looks like everything ended up in the bin. Not even Palitoy employees have turned anything up. Maybe the Palitoy landfill will reveal something!

cheers Jason
 

_Lee_

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Nice buys Oli.

I myself believe that only the first production run was assembled in HK, and that latter lines ,including some 12 backs ,20 back and 41/45 back logo'd cards were assembled in the UK. Part of me thinks that they all were, but that's up for discussion. It doesn't make any sense to ship say , 24 figures in a case rather than 200 loose in the same size box. Surely, that would drive production costs up. It would have been just as easy to have the loose figures sent aside from the packaging. The MIHK type on cardbacks refer to the country of origin of the figure itself and not the packaging. I think this is a little misleading to some, but again its up for debate and there is no outright proof as to how and what was packaged over there and here.

With regards to factory presses, I don't think we can use that as proof. The same machine type could have been made exactly the same for Palitoy factory. Im sure if we were making cars and nearing the computer age at the time we could have designed multiple units for a production line.I worked in engineering for 14 years and we had 40 of the same machine that could do exactly the same as the other, and we are talking machines which were made in the 1960s/70s.

Lastly, I don't think there was any need for Palitoy proof material anyway. Kenner held the rights to the line and Palitoy was only the British Licensee. The cards were already designed by Kenner and it was a case of changing the logo and other parts. Maybe there were qc sign offs etc, but nothing near the amount of proof material on the USA side of the coin. I do believe there may be some photographic material out there though.

As always, its a mystery that we will never know and that kind of makes the hobby all the more interesting.

Lee
 

olisuds

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Thanks Jason, great info and research. I should have known you'd have the details on this kind of thing.

So the cards produced by Palitoy seem to be quite limited to some 45 back, 65 back and what about tri Logo?

Therefore I'd guess the available pre production material was quite limited. Although I would imagine even the cards produced for Palitoy in Asia would have sent samples back to Palitoy for proofing.

I'm not sure if I've got this 100% correct but my understanding is for kenner the "production like" sample cards with the thicker stock came from the Asia factories whilst the thinner stock "common proof cards" came from Cincinnati in US.

Wouldn't that be great if the Palitoy Landfill ended up being the dumping ground of Palitoy proof cards?!
 

olisuds

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_Lee_ said:
Nice buys Oli.

I myself believe that only the first production run was assembled in HK, and that latter lines ,including some 12 backs ,20 back and 41/45 back logo'd cards were assembled in the UK. Part of me thinks that they all were, but that's up for discussion. It doesn't make any sense to ship say , 24 figures in a case rather than 200 loose in the same size box. Surely, that would drive production costs up. It would have been just as easy to have the loose figures sent aside from the packaging. The MIHK type on cardbacks refer to the country of origin of the figure itself and not the packaging. I think this is a little misleading to some, but again its up for debate and there is no outright proof as to how and what was packaged over there and here.

With regards to factory presses, I don't think we can use that as proof. The same machine type could have been made exactly the same for Palitoy factory. Im sure if we were making cars and nearing the computer age at the time we could have designed multiple units for a production line.I worked in engineering for 14 years and we had 40 of the same machine that could do exactly the same as the other, and we are talking machines which were made in the 1960s/70s.

Lastly, I don't think there was any need for Palitoy proof material anyway. Kenner held the rights to the line and Palitoy was only the British Licensee. The cards were already designed by Kenner and it was a case of changing the logo and other parts. Maybe there were qc sign offs etc, but nothing near the amount of proof material on the USA side of the coin. I do believe there may be some photographic material out there though.

As always, its a mystery that we will never know and that kind of makes the hobby all the more interesting.

Lee

Thanks Lee. And sorry I didnt mean to miss your thoughts on it. I was a little slow with my reply.

That is a very good point about country of reference on the cardback possibly referring to where the figure was produced. I had considered that myself.

You may be right on there being no true proof cards for Palitoy. Although when you consider that the true proofs are the cromalins and that proof cards were often samples sent for other purposes like marketing and toy fairs etc I wouldnt be surprised if samples were created and sent to Palitoy either from the factories in Asia or the Lithographic printers in Northampton. It appears that Palitoy were not producing them themselves and this was possibly outsourced so you would expect samples before going into production
 

mr_palitoy

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In the lot of 13000 unused cardbacks that Toni acquired after the Palitoy factory was cleared, 45B's are the earliest card listed. To me this indicates earlier cards were assembled in HK as none of the loose cards have surfaced. All of the Palitoy 41 back cards have a K or S factory code on them to indicate that they were produced in HK factories in the same way the 45cg, 45cn etc were produced.

The numbered bubbles used on the 45B single stem cards are also used on the 45A cards, this could point at 45A cards being assembled in the UK, but without any unused cards or suspect Toy Tonis on 45A, it speculation to say that.

cheers Jason
 

Clarkspie&chips

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Dave Tree would be a great chap to contact as he has heaps of Palitoy knowledge. A few years ago he unearthed an uncut trilogo sheet -

http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=18730&start=45

This was a reject due to the sheet being in the machine upside down for one of the colour passes so it's safe to say that trilogo card backs were printed and cut in the UK.
 

olisuds

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mr_palitoy said:
In the lot of 13000 unused cardbacks that Toni acquired after the Palitoy factory was cleared, 45B's are the earliest card listed. To me this indicates earlier cards were assembled in HK as none of the loose cards have surfaced. All of the Palitoy 41 back cards have a K or S factory code on them to indicate that they were produced in HK factories in the same way the 45cg, 45cn etc were produced.

The numbered bubbles used on the 45B single stem cards are also used on the 45A cards, this could point at 45A cards being assembled in the UK, but without any unused cards or suspect Toy Tonis on 45A, it speculation to say that.

cheers Jason

You are right Jason it does make sense considering what has surfaced through TT.

Holy crap was it really 13000 cardbacks that Toni acquired? i thought it was only about half that.

Clarkspie&chips said:
Dave Tree would be a great chap to contact as he has heaps of Palitoy knowledge. A few years ago he unearthed an uncut trilogo sheet -

http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=18730&start=45

This was a reject due to the sheet being in the machine upside down for one of the colour passes so it's safe to say that trilogo card backs were printed and cut in the UK.

Yes would be great to get Dave's thought on this. That Tri Logo sheet was an awesome find. I wonder if it's still intact.
 

Dannywhiteley

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Regardless of then being proofs or samples or just unused cards, the price of these was an amazing steal. Especially that Fett. :shock:
 

olisuds

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I was very surprised they didn't go higher. Typically in the past unused cardbacks have sold for around 40-50% of the equivalent proof card value although more recently I've often seen them sold for similar prices to proof cards which seems crazy.
 

_Lee_

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mr_palitoy said:
In the lot of 13000 unused cardbacks that Toni acquired after the Palitoy factory was cleared, 45B's are the earliest card listed. To me this indicates earlier cards were assembled in HK as none of the loose cards have surfaced. All of the Palitoy 41 back cards have a K or S factory code on them to indicate that they were produced in HK factories in the same way the 45cg, 45cn etc were produced.

The numbered bubbles used on the 45B single stem cards are also used on the 45A cards, this could point at 45A cards being assembled in the UK, but without any unused cards or suspect Toy Tonis on 45A, it speculation to say that.

cheers Jason

Very interesting Jason. Im pretty sure ive got some Kenner cards/bubbles at home that are numbered too. Ive never understood why Toni apparently got all of the said cards aswell? Id hazard a safe bet that Toni wasn't the only one being naughty :)

Also, and this is a point over looked that ive mentioned before and not only in my previous post - is the better business decision to card them in HK or in the UK? Im still on the fence about it, and still think the figure is made in HK - not the packaging. Why would they box the larger ships here, and not the figures? It doesn't make any sense???
 

Pomse2001

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mr_palitoy said:
11500 cardbacks, I overstated a bit.

cheers Jason

that is still a crazy number, does that mean that there is 11.500 fake moc out there ? do any of you have any idea about how many he did before he was busted ? :?
 

olisuds

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I've been meaning to get around to taking a decent picture of the unused card backs.
 

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