John Hill & Co was started in 1898 by a former employee of W. Britain named Mr F. H Wood.
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.
[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.
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.