Three years ago I purchased a box of second hand plastic figures from a second hand store in Lower Hutt. Contained within the box was the two following figures.
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| Two red figures. Only 202 more to obtain. |
After much discussion with several friends, and some trawling through the internet, I discovered that these were figures from the Revolutionary War set produced by Helen of Toy (or a similar company such as Lucky products) and advertised in American comics when I was growing up.
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| This ad always got my attention. |
Of course,as a kid, I had assumed that living in New Zealand meant that I wasn't able to send away and take advantage of this offer, although I did discover that Glenn had, and that he wasn't alone in doing so - as my purchase in Lower Hutt gives evidence to. Of course, I might have ended up with the flats, rather than a set of fully round figures. Quite a detailed explanation of the full set can be found
here.
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| Size comparison with Airfix Continental and Imex American Militiaman. |
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| Size comparison with Italeri AWI French mounted officer. Black horse is by Eagle Games. |
So it seems that the foot figure is around 20mm, while the mounted figure is closer to 25mm. I am planning on painting them both up for use with my AWI British as something different, and as a nod to the comic book ads that first got me interested in AWI.
i remember these well, same thing.looking at those ads wishing....my grandmother ordered the Woods Edge set and all i got was the figures and nothing else. oh well.lots of fun.
ReplyDeleteIn the same lot I got some WW2 Giant figures that were similar to those used in Woods Edge. They are neat figures with lots of character.
DeleteI also remember these well. I talked my Dad into sending away for them. Back then I was very happy with those fig's. I think I gave mine to Glenn in the end, could be wrong about that though.
ReplyDeleteWish I had talked mine into it. Still, he always bought me a packet of Airfix or Matchbox soldiers when we traveled up to Christchurch, plus lots of HK knock offs too, so I can't complain.
DeleteUsed to see the adds in the comics..I always dreamed of having any one of the set, but I never actually got hold of any..in those days the USA seemed to far away.
ReplyDeleteCheers
paul
I loved seeing the ads in the comics - finding out that I actually have some figures from one of them makes me feel quite chuffed.
DeleteI picked up a set of those in or around 1972, and picked up a set recently at a second hand store, they're still in a bag in the game shed....was thinking of mixing them in with
ReplyDeletelead Minifigs.
My two samples have painted up well, and I plan to mix them in with my various plastics. I would be very interested to see how they look mixed in with Minifigs.
Deleteinteresting figures
ReplyDeleteThe figures themselves are very basic, it is the associated memories of the comic book ads that fired young imaginations that make them special.
DeleteI used to see these advertisements, and for mine they might as well have been on sale no where but on the moon. Beyond that I never knew until well into my twenties that you could get cheap plastic figures in this country. I used to wargame with bits of straw, or paper cutouts (hand drawn), or bricks from a Betta Bilda set.
ReplyDeleteThese last, by the way, were very versatile. The bricks gave you infantry of the RED and WHITE armies, but you could build tanks, guns, even warships (windjammers or battlewagons) and aircraft. They all looked squared off and stylised, of course, but they did the business.
Despite their inability to resist a direct hit from a well aimed marble (flicked as in the game, not thrown), I insisted on building bridge towers, funnels and recognisable gun turrets on my vessels. My brother's warships tended to resemble Merrimac in their complete absence of sticky out bits to take damage. My slightly better aim more or less equalised the contests.
Naturally, this kind of treatment didn't do the integrity of the building sets any good. The thing is, that building set would be quite a handy asset these days for building urban terrain...
Nostalgia. Ain't it a ... something... That Italieri figure looks very nice, by the way.
Cheers,
Ion
Those advertisements feed my imagination still.... and given that they are no longer available except by chance or ebay, they still might as well be from the moon!
DeleteYour description of your earlier games sound awesome!
DeleteMy brother and I tried wargaming in the 70's. I used Airfix Napoleonics, he these figures. After he won the first battle, he went and ordered several more boxes of them. After that he just kept sending in more troops into the battles and overwhelmed my Airfix army.
ReplyDeleteWhen he "grew up", he threw the army out! Needless to say I wasn't happy.
Since then I have managed to buy quite a few sets online.
Hmmm.. each box would give a nice mix of horse,foot, and gun - quite a cunning way to field mass armies. I imagine that your brother's method was much cheaper than using Airfix figures?
DeleteThanks for sharing your story, and good that you were able to track some down! I think that a single set could yield two quite respectable V&B forces!