Historic Hartland Injection Molds

Text & Photographs Copyright Mike Jackson 1998-2008
Hartland Plastics created the Western molds back in 50s and early 60s. Over the years they have been in the hands of numerous companies, but they are now in the safe hands of Hartland Collectibles, LLC in Missouri. Recently, Ken Movold and Sheryl Leisure poured through the molds, one by one, and documented much of it with a large group of photos. The molds can weigh a ton or more each and require a fork lift to handle.
Hartland Collectibles, LLC has generously offered to share these photos exclusively through this site! Besides their newsletter, The Hartland Courier, these photos will be available no where else! These mold photos have revealed a wealth of knowledge, previously unknown to most collectors!
The two photos at the top of the page are The Rifleman and Paladin. Their molds include their saddle, hat, & gun. They are in different molds of course. However, in later years, Hartland did combine two figures in the same mold—probably to save money in molding and production costs. Note: These molds appear to rise "up" from the background, but in reality, they are recessed into the molds. It is a tough optical illusion causing some edges to disappear.
 
800 Series Riders
Wyatt Earp Rider:
This mold contains a single rider, two hats, two saddles and three regular pistols. No Buntline! As stated on the Earp page, I never thought they included the Buntlines with the early sets. It was not until they produced the Earp Gunfighter that they created the Buntline and then “maybe” the later Earp Riders got them. Possibly they will turn up a mold with a variety of oddball hats and pistols they would have used to fill orders for modified molds.

Brave Eagle:
Unfortunately, the camera used to take these photos was dropped along the way and many of the photos were black on about 1/3rd of the print. In this case we will have to wait to see the rest of the mold which probably contains the knife, bow and headdress. If you study this photo, you will see that the main body is made of two parts, plus the two parts that make up the head, and two parts that make up his right arm! I always wondered how they solved the undercuts required to make the head and braids. This solves that mystery.
First Chief Thunderbird Mold:
A few of the early Chief Thunderbird figures lacked a mold mark. They probably came from this mold which was later replaced with the mold below. Accessories for this figure were included in the mold shown near the bottom of this page. As you can see, one of the four figure "halves" has been cut off the mold.

Chief Thunberbird, second mold:
This mold has all the parts for the Chief Thunderbird parts for the set except the horse. In fact, this one also has a rifle and shield which were only shipped with the sets on occasions.

Annie Oakley:
There aren’t any big surprises here but it is a very nice mold shot showing the figure, saddle, two hats and two pistols. All the saddle molds are like this one with the fenders and tapaderos folded out. Interestingly, the paint masks are also molded to fit the saddle in this position, so the silver dots have to be painted in this position. Then the saddle must be heated enough to straighten the fenders and tapaderos.

Tonto:
As with many of the sets, Tonto included his special saddle along with the two halves of the figure. If you look carefully, you can see two pistols, two feathers, and two knives.
802 Small Cowgirl Mold:
The large cowgirl mold contains the two halves of the figure, one saddle with the dashes or laced edges, two pistols, and two hats. I am fairly sure it would have been produced in 1954.

Lance O'Rourke, Mountie:
This mold his own saddle, hat, and pistol.

General Lee:
Besides the figure and hat, I can see two swords
900 Series Riders
901 Large Champ Figure Mold:
This mold contains the two parts to the figure, two guns, a saddle and TWO different style hats! Interestingly, the saddle included in this mold is the one with dots. The saddle included with the Cowgirl mold has the dashes.
902 Large Cowgirl Figure Mold:
This mold shows the larger Cowgirl, with two hats and two guns. On close inspection, the saddle has the large laces or "dashes" around the edges. Between these two photos, it is apparent which saddle was designed for the Cowboys and the Cowgirls.
 
Standing Gunfighters
Maverick Gunfighter:
Finally, the mystery of the Maverick Gunfighter is solved! Through the years, we all knew that some of them stood better than others and more than likely it was a minor difference in the two sets of mold cavities. This one has two regular pistols and three hats, plus two complete figures and arms.
The photo on the right shows a zoomed in section of the mold above. The outer edge of the hats look like Maverick hats to me. Notice the code letter above each hat. Many Maverick GF hats have letters inside, such as O, E, R, or U.
Vint Bonner Gunfighter:
No surprises here. One figure, two arms, a gun, and a the correct hat.
 Jim Hardie Gunfighter:
This set has three hats and two pistols. There was only one figure in this mold, too.
Paladin Gunfighter:
One figure, a pair of arms, one hat and one pistol.
McKay Gunfighter:
This mold has one figure, one hat, one pistol, and a pair of arms. The hat appears to be the correct one.

Troop Gunfighter:
The other shot I have of this figure was at an odd angle, but it clearly shows the whole mold. This photo shows only the front half of the figure, hat, and one arm. Note the Dillon shaped, oval crowned hat. This one lacks the small line around the edges, found on Dillon hats.
 
Saddles & Accessories
800 Series Plain Saddle:
This photo probably answers a couple of questions. This mold contains four saddles used by Lone Ranger, most Ward Bonds, most Dale Evans, and most Josh Randalls depending on which color of plastic was being run through it. There are little bumps where the holes would have been punched for the cinch strap indicating it might have been a later mold. The saddle that is probably in the Lone Ranger mold might not have the bump. If you look closely, you can see five additional guns which got molded each time the press was run. This probably explains the black pistols which several collectors confirm getting when they were young. Additionally a few have even been found still in the factory sealed bag of parts. Over the years I have found a few silver pistols which have been rubbed enough to see black plastic underneath, so many of them may have been painted even if they were molded in black from this mold. Most Lone Ranger saddles that I have seen were molded in black Of course, if this mold had been shot with brown plastic for Dale or Josh, the pistols would have also been brown.

Rifle Holed Saddle:
Quite a few of the later saddles were molded in either black or brown. This mold would have saved a lot of time and money for the company.
900 Large Champ Saddle Mold:
This mold contains two large Champ style saddles with the “dashes”—as opposed to the style with the dots around the edges on the Champ Figure mold above. This might explain why they are a bit more common and also show up on a few Cowboy sets. Extra saddles were shipped to Mission Supply in Florida to be sold as replacement parts. Note how the fenders and tapaderos are flattened out. I had assumed they placed the saddles over a cooling rack soon after de-molding where the stirrup sections would have cooled in their shipping shape, but Sheryl Leisure told me that the copper spray masks were also in the shapes as shown above. So, after painting, they were heated and reshaped! All saddles were molded with the fenders and stirrups or tapaderos flattened out like this.

Early Accessories:
This mold contains five pistols for the Large Champ sets, six of the earlier style pistols (no rear gun sight), two tomahawks, one shield, two spears, two Cochise style rifles, two knives, and two small Thunderbird bows.

These accessories would have needed for the first Chief Thunderbird sets in 1954.
Some early Hartland photos showed Chief Thunderbird with a shield and rifle. This mold was probably made in 1954, long before the introduction of Brave Eagle.
 
Horse Molds

900 Large Champ Horse Mold:
There were two slightly different Large Champ horse molds. This one has the solid mane, suggesting it was the later one.
According to Sheryl Leisure, the person at Hartland Collectibles, LLC who took the photos, this one does not have a hole in its back You can see the tail at the top of the photo.
#800 Small Champ Horse:
Without the numbering on the back of the photos, I probably couldn't have told this mold from the 900 series mold. This mold made two full horses at a time.
#840 Slender Tailed Walking:
The walking horse was used on quite a few sets. From what we can tell, the walking horse mold with the wavy tail was modified to be the cropped mane horse for several years. In later years, this horse appears to have been used for the cropped mane horses, too, but those manes look like they were sawed off.
#850 Wavy Tailed Semi Rearing:
This mold was numbered the same as the smooth tailed Semi-Rearing horse below. This horse was heavier and used more plastic, but it is hard to say why they stopped using it.
#860 Full Rearing:
This horse was used by Roy Rogers, Lone Ranger, Annie Oakley, and Ranald Mackenzie. There were two horses in this four cavity mold, common to later horse molds.
#850 Smooth Tailed Semi -Rearing:
This horse seems to have eventually replaced the wavy tailed semi-rearing horse above, using the same number (written on the mold)
#870 Mane Down Semi-Rearing:
This horse was used in the Remuda set, as the Ring Eyed horse, and also for quite a few of the later riders, at least for a short period of time. Near the very end, Hartland was probably only using this horse and the slender tailed walking horses.
Mold Notes: With the exception of the 900 series large horse, each mold contained four body cavities—enough to make two complete horses. On many horses you find, there is either a "1", "2" (or no mark). The two halves had corresponding numbers to keep them from getting mixed up when they were assembled. We are only seeing half the molds in these photos. The other half would have very little detail, creating the insides of the horses.
  
Miscellaneous Extras
Wrangler Horses:
Hartland Plastics introduced this grouping of three horses for the Ike, Pete and Kid figures shown below. In later years, they were sold unpainted, & also as stand alone horses with slightly different colors schemes.
Wranglers:
Alkali Ike, Commanche Kid and Cactus Pete. Part of this mold photo was not useable, but I am certain at least one more cowboy was in the mold.

Long lost Lone Ranger!
This figure is roughly the same size as Cactus Pete, Alkali Ike, and Commanche Kid and was to be numbered 601.

This figure was never produced. In fact the connecting gateways were never opened, so it is apparent they never even ran a single injected piece. No one really knows what happened, nor exactly when this mold was produced.

Knowing the Ike/Pete/Kid sets were produced in later years, it is probable that they were searching for a new market in the early 60's. We will probably never know whether they planned on producing a full series of their popular figures. You can see his little pistol and hat, unlike the other three figures (all molded from the same mold).
500 Series Mini Horse and Riders:
This is a photo of parts of three different molds needed for the set of Mini-Horse and Riders. As you can see, all the figures are in one mold, all horses in one mold and all hats in another. Additionally, there was an added on section of mold for the mini-Rifleman rifles!

I've been told that it is possible to plug up individual cavities of a mold so the plastic didn't get injected. Also, it is possible to go ahead and mold everything in the same color, then grind up and re-use the plastic on pieces molded in the wrong color. Since some hats were white, and some brown or dark maroon only, you would have to speculate they chose one of these options. Someone has asked about the validity of finding a white Earp mini hat not long ago and that might explain a little of which choice they made. In the case of the riders, many were ochre plastic while some were white plastic. I can't tell by the photos if they were organized on the mold to make it easy to block off half.
500 Series Mini Lone Ranger:
Apparently, Hartland Plastics originally began making a mold for each of the Mini hose and riders. This mold contains two horses, two hats, and two Lone Ranger figures. This mold was replaced by the grouped molds above.
Bullet:
Half of this photo was cut off due to the camera getting dropped, causing many of the photos to be black on one side. I believe this mold actually has four pairs of this figure, but I only could see two of them in this picture.
Close-up of the two hats in the 901 Large Cowboy mold on the left. The right photo is the useable portion of the Ranald Mackenzie mold photo. Interestingly, this mold contains four of the longer style Winchesters used with quite a few of the later horse and rider sets. Ironically, I don't think Mackenzie ever was shipped with one!
Close-up of Josh Randall's Mare's Laig gun, along with a regular pistol. Randall and Longley are both in one single mold.
The original molds are stored in a warehouse somewhere in Missouri at this time. The photo on the left shows one of two walls lined with the molds stored on wooden pallets. The fork lift is needed to move each mold, weighing up to a ton each! A mallet is being used to break open molds which haven't seen light in decades. Thanks again to Hartland Collectibles, LLC for the exclusive photographs!
This page last modified Thursday, October 18, 2007