Lost in the Toybox: Yung Kung Fu

The Durham Yung Kung Fu Chop is a rare, vintage 1970s bootleg action figure by Durham Industries, featuring a young Asian boy with a spring-loaded, karate-chopping arm activated by a button, known for its collectible status, especially in its original packaging, despite the company's reputation for crude toys. 

Key Characteristics

• Manufacturer: Durham Industries, known for novelty toys.
• Year: Created around 1973-1974.
• Design: An adolescent Asian male figure in simple robes with a mechanism for a chopping motion.
• Action Feature: A push-button activates the arm for a karate chop.
• Collectibility: Considered a "grail bootleg" due to its rarity, good packaging art, and unique concept. 

Why it's Notable

• It taps into the kung fu craze of the 1970s.
• Despite Durham's typical low-quality production, the figure and its packaging are well-regarded by collectors.
• Finding one mint-on-card (MOC) is extremely difficult, making it valuable to vintage toy enthusiasts. - Generated by AI.

Well, we had one. It's construction was cheap, and it must have been inexpensive if our parents got it. Sub-MEGO, but 'compatible.' Going now-a-days for $75 to $100. Durham Industries was centered in Hong Kong, a division of View-Master. They also made an 'adult' figure.

Mouse Memory

We had two or three of these kind of toys, friction powered, not wind-up, I think from one of our uncles, Mom's brothers. I think ours had black tails and, perhaps, black ears. Listings say that they are from Lehmann's, a company in West Germany. 'Vintage.' They were weird, spinning around and then shooting off in a random direction. Strangely robotic, soulless. Most of our toys had some sort of charcter suggested by their design; these didn't.

 

Lost in the Toybox: I'm Dakin It

In the late 60's early 70's there was a company called Dakin that made this line of animation figures. I can't quite figure out if this is the same company that later made stuffed animals and Jurassic 'little animals,' though it appears to be so. They tended to have hard hollow plastic bodies and many had hard feet that acted as a 'stand', though the limbs and heads tended to be more pliable, and of course jointed at the shoulder and neck. The majority of the line were Warner Brothers characters, but they seemed to include several 'lesser' animation lines, like Hanna-Barbera, Popeye, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Never Disney, of course. Some of the more 'human' figures, like Yosemite Sam or Olive Oyl, would include articles of cheap cloth clothing separate from the body mold. I remember them as being somewhat ubiquitous in gas stations; lots of people bought them as 'mascots' for their cars or trucks. Our cousin Monroe Jr. (Pop's nephew, but he was old enough that Pop treated him more like his own cousin), also a truck driver, had an amazing collection in his room at Aunt Melva's, that he quite rightly never let us fiddle with. I wonder whatever happened to those?

Anyway, we kids wanted them all, of course, not possible financially or always available, but we got these above few over time. We had no real idea of who Cool Cat was (the 'final star of the Warner Bros. Original theatrical cartoons'; in other words, not on TV yet, and maybe a sparse comic here and there) but cool enough; we were much more familiar with Daffy and the Roadrunner and Coyote. I can't remember at this distance whether we had a Bugs Bunny or just really wanted one: my brother John would probably be able to tell me (well, no, we didn't have a Bugs; did I dream it?). We always thought they were a little off-model, but with merchandising the way it was, we took what we could get. Here's a selection of what was available.

Pop Cultural Detritus

 

A selection from the Little Black Suitcase of various well-played-with toys, many from our earliest days, some from when the nieces and nephews were little. 

Back to Square One

 

The Story of Werewolves by Thomas G. Aylesworth

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

I really wanted to continue my LOTR postings, but everything today seems to be conspiring against my concentration, including disruptive (but welcome) home visitors. So here are various memories and associations. I may be able to post a LOTR later this evening.