There Once Was Mobaco ...

Playing with antique toys: Mobaco Construction sets and JoHillCo (and Britains) hollowcast figures. (The Building Process)
HISTORY Mobaco Construction sets:
For more information see www.mobaco.nl/Building.html
and www.mobaco.nl/Home.html
"Mobaco was manufactured by the Dutch company N.V. Plaatmetaalindustrie van Mouwerik en Bal between 1924 and 1961, in Zeist, The Netherlands.
Moubal, as the company was commonly known, was a manufacturer of sheet metal products. Story has it that a few times a year they would clean their machines and make Mobaco parts.
Starting in 1948, Jumbo, a toy and puzzle company, took over sales and marketing. They redesigned the sets and manuals, added a few parts and turned it into more of a mass market product.
With the advent of Lego, interest waned. In 1962, Mobaco was discontinued, and in 1981 Moubal went bankrupt. Unfortunately, their archives were destroyed. Which makes it difficult to put together an accurate history. [...]"
HISTORY JoHillCo (John Hill & Company):
see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hi...
John Hill & Company or Johillco was a British toy company specialising in the manufacture of hollowcast metal and later plastic toy soldiers becoming second to W. Britain in popularity. No one knows where the name of John Hill came from.
John Hill & Co was started in 1898 by a former employee of W. Britain named Mr F. H Wood.[1] In contrast to Britains, Johillco was the first British hollowcast figure company to sell their figures individually[2] 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 and other souvenir items.
The firm's original factory was located at 2-22 Britannia Row, Islington, London but the factory was bombed during World War II. In August 1946 the company reopened under new management in Plumbe Street Burnley. 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".[3]
In addition to toy soldiers and cowboys and Indians, Johillco made many figures of knights and a movie tie-in set of figures from MGM's Quo Vadis (1951 film) as well as spacemen.
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[2] but the company ceased in the early 1960s.