28 November 2002

Dimestore Figures

Maybe if you pass by one of those cheapo shops "everything under $1.00" or whatever your equivalent currency may be in the kids' toy section you might be lucky and find some of these cheap toys, usually made in the Far East.

"British" Soldiers 1/72 scale

Not a real Brit to be seen, but in a brown plastic you get for just about 1.00 euro / dollar a bag with 15 identical sprues each of which has with 12 figures - an amazing 180 soldiers. These "British" soldiers are scaled-down copies of Airfix 1/32 scale US Marines, German Infantry and German Paras, and are all slightly smaller than their Airfix counterparts as you can see from the photos. The "American" soldiers are just the same figures but moulded in green plastic.

Though the detail is not as good as their original counterparts, they're not too bad. 

The Airfix 20mm size set of US Marines includes all the scaled down figures from their 1/32 set, except that the officer brandishing a pistol was never included. These dimestore figures do have him though !!


Russians

Airfix never scaled down their 1/32 scale Russians, but someone in Hong Kong decided to do so sometime in the 1990s. 

The detail is a bit rough, but even so they really are quite passable and once painted they make quite nice wargaming figures. The officer with binoculars is especially effective.


British Paras 1/72 scale

Now we have British Paratroopers this time, and are roughly modified and scaled-down copies of Airfix's 1/32 scale British paratroopers and are all wearing berets - no helmets to be seen. 

Most have deformed faces, they look like they´ve just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. 


Australian Infantry 1/72 scaleSoldiers

A rough looking bunch of large misfits here as you can see compared to the original Airfix figures 


In the end, there's nothing like the real thing but for a smallscale miniatures enthusiast figures like these can be of certain interest and sometimes even fill gaps and it does show though that whatever you do, if you make a good product, someone, somewhere will always try copying it, with varying degrees of success and it confirms the old saying "imitation is the best form of flattery".