Side view of the 2 cm green and grey 203 figures
This recent gift was (I think) bought last year from a seaside gift shop, part of the Combat Mission branding that we have featured elsewhere on this Pound Store Plastic Warriors site. However it can be found online for around £5 including delivery.
The tiny Airfix sized OOHO or 1:72-1:76 2cm type figures are clones or copies of two familiar Airfix figure sets of American Infantry (4 poses) and British Paratroops (2 poses).
They have muted details but are not too distorted with minimal flash and have good bases. Even without vehicles, these 200 odd figures would be 1p to 2.5p each.
Being a cheaper play set, both sides of German / Grey and American / Green troops use the same moulds / figures. Ditto the jeeps and tanks. They all make good enough generic WW2 / modern infantry and vehicles.
Green troops have a radar or searchlight jeep, along with a small multiple rocket launcher.
If you don’t want to use the flag-post mound for its intended purpose, it can become infantry cover.
Overall this is good (play) value, as you can buy these playsets online all in for about £5 and free delivery.
Given that you have 203 figures in my set, approximately four boxes of Airfix figures, this would cost you in the shops about £20. Add in the hard plastic tanks and jeeps similar to the Airfix ones from the 1970s, this £5 set proves good value to the young and not so young gamer.
Quantity has a Quality all of its own, someone once said. “The phrase has been popular in the US defense community since the 1980s, sometimes acknowledging it as a US coinage, but often misattributing it to Clausewitz, Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev, but mostly to Stalin.” http://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-own/.
As poses go, we have a fair share of each of the poses but this leads us to having too many pistol waving (American Infantry) officers and too many (American Infantry) bazooka men. Obviously you can reuse pistol guy in other roles as vehicle crew etc. That saying, Airfix and other plastic figures have their fair share of useless diorama poses in each box.
One of the typical play set minus points for some is the weird period mix and oddities of scale. These are generic WW2 and postwar figures next to a WW2 type tank and WW2 or postwar type jeeps but the modern odd one out is the secret Stealth type jet.
If you are role-playing a pound store WW2 skirmish rerun of Germany versus Britain and America, this could be a prototype or experimental Me262 type variant jet fighter.
If you are role-playing Green versus Grey in your ImagiNations scenario, again it could be a top secret stealth fighter etc.
Britain vs America? Available play set Amazon U.K. June 2020
The German / American branding is fairly fluid, depending on which bag you get. Other versions of the same figures and vehicles can be found online with desert tan and green troops, marked by flags as Americans and British!
It is the sort of playset that I would have been happy to have bought with my pocket money as a child and even today as an adult gamer, I could enjoy this for what it is.
I might rebase the figures. I might remove the stickers and even add a lick of flesh paint, maybe some brown or black paint on boots and weapons. But I will enjoy them for what they are.
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on Pound Store Plastic Warriors, 23 June 2020.
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 
Rocket propelled jeeps are the best! 🙂
Regards, Chris
LikeLike
Typical shabby Nazi Trick!
LikeLike
I’ve been looking for this exact set for a while! I find the softer details on the figures to be a strength rather than a weakness since you can paint them as basically anything. I’ve built a few sci fi forces out of these guys in the past including bits from that strange discount set with larger figures but that has 1/72ish scale sci fi tanks in it.
LikeLike
It is still available on Amazon – and probably with ‘other online retailers are available’.
The softer details are an intended strength in their design with the Peter Laing 15mm figures that I also collect.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do like your Peter Laing figures. I’ve also often looked at the simpler figures from Spencer Smith for the same reason.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think they both have a lot in common – probably it was a production quality issue compared to today’s methods – but it was put to good use to make them more flexible as figures for paint conversion. I have a small number of ACW AWI Spencer Smiths 80s plastic and later metal bought possibly for Close Wars but once they were no longer mass plastics bagged, thought them a little pricey as metal figures go. They still hold a large nostalgic charm for many.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How ARE you painting them? I’m struggling to paint the Armies in Plastic figures; granted I won’t be using them for programming for a long while, but the paint flakes like, well, something flaky. Junior General suggests Krylon spray paint as a good undercoat for soft plastic figs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have yet to posing any AIP figures so can’t offer any experienced advice re flaky paint – maybe some of our fellow 54mm gamers forum could suggest re undercoating these plastic figures https://littlewarsrevisited.boards.net
My usual undercoat is cheap craft shop Acrylic in the uniform base colour, white or black. I prefer the monotony of undercoating to mucking around with spray paint. I no longer use enamels which do flake.
In my excitement at getting this new playset painted and on the table, I forgot to wash them in detergent / washing up liquid to remove any mould releasant but it didn’t seem to affect any subsequent undercoat or painting .
To be honest I was quite as lazy with these as my seven year old self with real Airfix. They were already the right uniform colour. I simply painted the base, boots and equipment, rifle, face and hands in turn, finally the helmet for good measure, kept it very simple as I was doing 20 a side and their simple washer basing. Childishly happy and satisfying!
LikeLiked by 1 person