John Hill & Company or Johillco was a British toy company specialising in the manufacture of hollowcast metal and later plastic

toy soldiers A toy soldier is a miniature figurine that represents a soldier. The term applies to depictions of uniformed military personnel from all eras, and includes knights, cowboys, American Indians, pirates, samurai, and other subjects that involve c ...

becoming second to

W. Britain Britains, earlier known by the founder's name W. Britain, is a British toy brand and former manufacturing company known for its die-cast scale models of agricultural machinery, and figurines. The company was established in 1893 as a toy soldiers ma ...

in popularity. It is unknown where the name of John Hill came from.

History

John Hill & Co was started in 1898 by a former employee of

named Mr F. H Wood. In contrast to Britains, Johillco was the first British hollowcast figure company to sell their figures individuallyGarratt, John G. ''Model Soldiers-A Collectors Guide'' Seeley, Service & Co., London leading to competition from Britains who later began to sell individual figures and figures painted less ornately to be sold in variety stores like the F. W. Woolworth Company. Johillco also manufactured

Coronation A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a coronation crown, crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the ...

and other souvenir items. The firm's original factory was located at 2-22 Britannia Row,

Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...

, London but the factory was bombed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. In August 1946 the company reopened under new management in Plumbe Street

Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...

. Also after World War II, Johillco's chief figure designer Wilfred Cherrington in conjunction with a Mr Leaver started his own company called Cherilea. In their book ''The Art of the Toy Soldier'', the authors note that due to the cheapness of the figures and the individuality of their poses, Johillco figures were found more in working-class homes than the expensive Britains that came in boxes of rigid identical poses. The authors also noted the company probably used a variety of sculptors leading to various grades of quality of Johillco figures, that the authors call "the good, the bad, and the ugly".Ehrlich, Burtt R & Kurtz, Henry I ''The Art of the Toy Soldier'' 1990 Abbeville Press In addition to toy soldiers and cowboys and Indians, Johillco made many figures of knights and a

movie tie-in A tie-in work is a work of fiction or other product based on a media property such as a film, video game, television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property. Tie-ins are authorized by the owners of the original prope ...

set of figures from

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...

's ''

Quo Vadis (1951 film) ''Quo Vadis'' (Latin for "Where are you going?") is a 1951 American epic film set in ancient Rome during the final years of Emperor Nero's reign, based on the Quo Vadis (novel), 1896 novel of the same title by Polish Nobel Laureate author Henryk ...

'' as well as

spacemen An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

. Johillco was slow to realise the effect of production in plastic. From 1956 they began making plastic figures in their hollowcast moulds under the name of Hilco but the company ceased in the early 1960s.

References

Model manufacturers of the United Kingdom Toy companies of the United Kingdom Defunct toy manufacturers Toy brands Toy soldier manufacturing companies {{Toy-company-stub

History

See also

References