A wonky and tiny Parade was all Hamley’s had to offer …
Crossposted from my Man Of TIN Blog Two …
https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2023/04/16/a-trip-to-hamleys-toy-shop/
Tag: Airfix
Hing Fat 54mm Plastic WW2 Italian Infantry
Hing Fat 54mm Samples group 3: The next instalment of painted Hing Fat 54mm plastic sample figures are these WW2 Italian infantry.
You may have read in my previous posts on WW2 French Infantry and WW2 Russian Infantry about how these arrived as a Lockdown gift from Peter Evans. These are spare sample figures – Peter imports these China Made figures and regularly sells sets of Hing Fat figures on his eBay shop figsculpt.
The whole unpainted Italian set in bright green plastic (!) can be seen on Peter’s eBay shop here:
Image: Figsculpt EBay site with permission.
I compared these Italian figures to the Airfix WW2 Italian Infantry which I painted in OOHO and 1:32 scale back around 1980. The latter larger figures are quite the collectors’ item now, due to a short production run.
The Hing Fat Italian’s eleven poses included this curious Bersaglieri, those of the splendid feathers on the hat or helmet and the impressive running trumpet playing. 
Something about the gloves and jacket suggested snow clothing, so I checked out a suitable WW2 figure (albeit an Alpini?) Funcken’s Arms and Uniforms 18th Century to the Present Day – see further below.
The boots or legging on these Italian figures range from puttees to leather knee leggings. I like the contrast of the curious green grey leather of Italian equipment with the white snow jacket.
Hing Fat figures are toy soldiers, not military models. They are sometimes criticised for their over large weapons but these would survive vigorous play unlike some more fragile figures.
One of the other figures has the curious soft fez headgear worn by blackshirts. Again in various uniform books, these are shown in Italian grey or desert khaki, so I opted for a desert khaki figure for contrast.
These fez figures would make some interesting Spanish Civil War conversions.
Finally the figure that look most like the Airfix poses, the lying down crawling whilst throwing a grenade action pose. I have amounted him on an MDF bases so you can see home more clearly and he can stand.
What took a while to track down before posting here were my Airfix Italian Infantry figures, not much used since they were painted c. 1980 / early 80s. I remember these coming out, a brand new set of Airfix figures, an exciting event worth saving the pocket money for.
Here to finish off are some comparison shots of Hing Fat and the nearest equivalent Airfix figures:
So an interesting set, worth a few sets acquiring for games or conversions.
Next week’s sample will be … a surprise. (I haven’t decided yet.)
Meanwhile check out the Hing Fat range on Peter Evans Figsculpt eBay site.
Blog posted by Mark Norris, 27 April 2021
54mm Hing Fat WW2 Russian sample figures
Russians! This is the second trio of figures that I have painted up from Peter Evans’ kind gift of some Hing Fat sample figures.
The first post a week or two ago was WW2 French:
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2021/03/29/hing-fat-plastic-54mm-french-ww2-figures/
Peter sells these interesting 54mm plastic Hing Fat figures via his eBay shop / seller site figsculpt https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/figsculpt
The full set of the Hing Fat WW2 Russians (image: Figsculpt EBay site)These are attractive figures that remind me of Airfix and Matchbox, which I would happily have bought and played with as a child and that work well today.
I have painted these with glossy shiny toy soldier style with pink cheek dots but I have yet to gloss varnish these. These were painted using Revell Aquacolor Acrylics. My gloss spray varnish supplies nursed through Lockdown have finally run out.
Some lively Russian figures and a curiously posed rifleman, shooting from high up or aiming low.
I like the range of costume and headgear, as well as the one with shovel tucked into a belt, protecting the back? Armour plating?
Size comparison with 1:32 Airfix Russians that I painted and gloss varnished when I was a child.
One of my 45 year old Airfix Russians had a crumbling base and missing SMG barrel end, so this has been repaired with wire and a new MDF base. He lives to fight again alongside the new Hing Fat recruits.
Curiously the old Airfix 1:32 Russians are not currently in the Airfix winter 2021 rerelease / preorder. Previous releases are around secondhand online.
Next week: Probably – Italians.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 14 April 2021
Christmas Biscuits or Mysterious Jungle Carvings of South America?
Following up my post on my recent painting of 54mm Mixtec and Zapotec figures, I saw this and thought South American stone carving!
Unfortunately we had already eaten the rest of the packet of these ‘speculoos‘ or Spekulatius spicy Christmas ginger biscuits by this time, delicious seasonal picture biscuits which are:
“traditionally baked for consumption on or just before St Nicholas’ Day in the Netherlands (5 December), Belgium and Luxembourg (6 December) and around Christmas in Germany and Austria.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculaas
Unfortunately we had already eaten the rest of the packet of these ‘spekulaties’ spicy Christmas ginger biscuits by the time I found this odd one.
I coated this biscuit with several coats of PVA, having thoroughly dried it out first on the heater.
I then painted this Revell Aquacolor Acrylic stone grey and mounted this into a wooden block, painted grey.
Chintoy 54mm Conquistadors puzzle over these mysterious fierce stone carvings.
The original Spekulatis design up close. I wonder what is it supposed to be?
I’m not sure how long this biscuit will last before it breaks down, the PVA glue coating will only preserve it for so long.
But it will be fun while it lasts!
To keep this super cheap or Pound Store, even the jungle foliage is scrounged, being unwanted old cleaned-up fake aquarium or vivarium plants …
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, 7 December 2020
WW2 Wargaming on a Budget – Tom the Wargamer and Historical Wargaming on YouTube
Interesting blog post by Scotia Albion about a recent series of YouTube videos by Tom a young wargamer talking about budget ways for a young gamer of getting into historical wargames (as well as Sci-fi and D&D). For example:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oCeHBYNCRI0
https://scotiaalbion.blogspot.com/2020/09/tom-wargamer-future.html
Good to see positive and supportive comments by many other (older) gamers. I think we all recognise a bit of our early gaming history in Tom’s short Youtube videos.
Good to see Peter Dennis’ Paperboys books of figures, rules and terrain featured.
Good to see Airfix red box WW2 Infantry featured as a budget alternative to more expensive plastic figures for Bolt Action games etc.
A shame for younger gamers like Tom that the Airfix range is so intermittent and patchy historically on the Airfix.com shop and elsewhere
Adding in tanks, Tom admits, is going to get fiddly (kit making) and expensive – a shame the Airfix range of cheap readymade plastic tanks, landing craft and vehicles is no longer around.
For cheap tanks etc, you need to go Pound Store and cheap plastic playsets but choice of tank may be limited by the historical accuracy of Bolt Action rules.
Anyway good to see younger voices coming through. Bravo Tom!
Everything that Pound Store Plastic Warriors is about – wargaming on a budget.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on Pound Store Plastic Warriors 20 September 2020.
My Plastic Warrior Show in a box!
I haven’t made it to the Plastic Warrior Show in London yet (the next one is Saturday 11th May 2019). I hope all those who travel to this annual event have a great social time and a good rummage through the boxes and trays of plastic figures. http://plasticwarrioreditor.blogspot.com
Instead I have been rummaging through a fabulous box of 130 broken or damaged plastic figures bought from Barrie (“Redhalliwell” on eBay) for £3 to £4. Strangely no one else bid. That’s about 3p a figure – sent straight to my door!
Barrie mentioned interestingly that 2019 “is our 32nd Show. When we first started it was mainly collectors who came but now we get a lot of 1/32nd war gamers coming as there are cheap figures to be had.” (2019 Show details at end of post).
These playworn battle scarred veterans deserve some care and attention. Some Plastic figures from the 1950s and 1960s are now more brittle than others and these clearly have seen better days. My Broken Britain’s metal hollowcast figures in some ways will outlive these.
A few hours later the harsh sunlight was fading and photography was easier.
More damaged 1950s and 1960s khaki infantry, one Crescent figure with a melted base and a Crescent mortar man.
These should be 130 useful figures for the conversion and repair box.
Interestingly my usual repair glue – fast setting standard Superglue cyanoacrylate – does not seem to work on these plastics. Any better ideas?
I know there is a special Plastics Superglue with an activator.
——————
From a previous post comment by snaves?
Reminder: the PLASTIC WARRIOR figure show
Saturday 11 May 2019
The Harlequin Suite
The Winning Post Inn
Chertsey Road
Whitton
TW2 6LS
60+ tables packed with figures, mainly reasonably priced and LOTS of “junk” boxes
Further details tel: 01483 722 778
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN on Pound Store Plastic Warriors, 30 March 2019.
Saluting Donald Featherstone’s Centenary
Celebrating Donald Featherstone’s Centenary on 20 March 2018
Donald F. Featherstone (1918 – 2013)
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 20 March 2018.
Brian Carrick’s Big Wars
“I can trace my Wargaming origins, as I suspect many of my generation can, back to the days of plastic toy soldiers and cannons that could fire matchsticks being sprawled out in full battle array across the living room floor. The days when Confederates and Germans (both being grey) took to the field against anything in green!”
So begins Brian Carrick in his article on “Big Wars: Nostalgic Wargaming”. He then went on to summarise H. G. Wells’ Little Wars rules, useful at a time when reprints were hard to come by and then outline the current erratic state of figure availability.
I was intrigued by photos of Brian Carrick’s village of Airfix Jungle Houses, Britain’s Deetail British Infantry Attack Boats and a scratch built gunboat with Britain’s Lifeboat sailors.
I found this article in the Battle for Wargamers Military Modelling Extra Wargames Manual really inspiring at the time it came out (1983) as I had not come across any serious adult gamers who used 54mm figures or the garden.
Gunboat envy and ‘whole village of Airfix jungle houses’ envy ensued.
Donald Featherstone’s Skirmish Wargaming, borrowed from the local branch library, was too much of a mathematical rules puzzle of charts to me but I loved the illustrations, scenarios and photographs. They featured Airfix and other plastic figures that I had. I could one day sort of be like these giant gamers and gaming authors.
Little did I realise at the time that one day 35 years later that I would be chatting on blog comment sections about garden games with the article author Brian Carrick through his fabulous Collecting Plastic Soldiers blog and the 54mm forum Little Wars Revisited.
Brian’s blog Collecting Toy Soldiers is at http://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.co.uk
http://littlewarsrevisited.boards.net
Blog? Websites? Internet? Surprisingly this 1983 Wargames Manual did mention the word “Computer” on the cover and listed “machine gaming” amongst the articles.
For me then, (war) gaming in many books and magazines was unattainable, glossy, expensive and for grownup wallets, a far cry from playing with the bashed-up Airfix at my disposal. A lot like the eye-candy front cover of this interesting manual / magazine extra.
Today there are a good range of 54mm plastic figures in many historical periods and still affordable buckets of Green Army Men. Despite the disappearing number of toy shops, there are in pound stores or online lots of ‘pirate’ or pound store figures (soldiers, cowboys, Indians, knights etc) at entry level cost for youngsters.
An impressive author’s list for this 1983 special edition edited by Stuart Asquith:
At least there was a free Cut out Saxon Army – too precious to cut out at the time – and one lacking any opposition without buying more card warriors from Standard Games (a range now vanished?) One day I will scan and make these Saxons. Paper soldiers have returned recently with Peter Dennis and Andy Callan’s attractive colourful card soldier series for Helion books.
Inside were tempting adverts, the lure of grown up metal. I had already made my first forays into Peter Laing 15mm figures, a few English Civil War figures with my pocket money each month. I went for a historical range that Airfix sadly did not do. Peter Laing kindly did not mind such small orders but I later bundled up several months pocket money worth of orders to save postage.
Unattainable in price at the time were the home cast Prince August Moulds – “send £3.95 … for an 8 days trial …” These had to wait another 30 plus years until I stumbled over them again in a craft shop. Their range of “mould your own 54mm traditional toy soldiers” that I eventually fell for was not yet mentioned here.
A fan of the Fighting Fantasy books from the library (“to take the left hand door to uncertain death, turn to page 37”), there was also the lure of Dungeons and Dragons. I was bought a D and D boxed set which I never understood. Interesting to see the introduction to Fantasy Wargaming article by a young John Treadaway, now Editor of Miniature Wargames.
This is a lifelong hobby, or one that you can return to throughout life. Although I have still to obtain the desirable games room and hex table shown here:
Here to conclude is the whole article by Brian Carrick, reprinted with his permission:
Brian’s comments on erratic or faltering plastic 54mm figure availability were sadly true for many years until quite recently. “The decline of Airfix … the demise of Timpo … Britain’s once famous range of guns now badly depleted.”
As Brian Carrick concludes his article, Big Wars:
“… I should point out that there will be as many differing views as to the value of such games and how they should be played as there are 54mm gamers. I imagine this is largely because there is no representational body that I know of to develop this section of the hobby by the exchange of participants’ views.
I hope that this article will have provided the spark to kindle some interest in potential recruits to the ranks of 54mm Wargamers and perhaps provoke some comment from existing enthusiasts who, in the past, have had little voice in the hobby media.”
Big Wars PostScript:
When I contacted Brian to ask if he was happy for me to reprint his photos and article, he replied: “Gosh is it really 35 years since I wrote that! the pics weren’t very good I’m afraid …” but they made a big difference to a young gamer like me. They stopped me throwing out many of my childhood 54mm figures and chasing proper small scale shiny fashionable metal as I got older, even when I stopped gaming for a few years (college, first jobs etc – usual story).
Thanks Brian for all you have done for 54mm gaming for many years past and for many years to come.
Blogposted with gratitude and reprinted with permission by Mark, Man of TIN, June 30 2017
More Combat Mission 80 pound store plastic soldiers – Part 2.
Previously on Pound Store Plastic Warriors we looked at my favourite charging figure out of the pack of Combat Mission 80 Soldiers.
There was another slender plastic old toy soldier style figure inside the pack that caught my eye, advancing with a sub machine gun.
A group of these roughly 42mm figures would make another fine SMG Sub Machine Gun unit all advancing together.
The original figure might have been an Airfix WW2 German Infantryman, shown here for size comparison. The pose also reminds me of several 1950s and 60s US infantry plastic soldiers that I have (somewhere!)
Crude as they are, they have loosened into a useful generic Imagi-Nations modern infantry type, much like the Italian made Atlantic “Euro Infantry”.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/18/tintin-and-imagi-nations-games/
The lack of detail might appal some and appeal to others; it becomes useful, something that is often said about my favourite slender 15mm figures by Peter Laing. With a paintbrush you can pretty much adapt these loose or lightly detailed figures to many periods.
For those pound store figures just with rifles, these could even be taken back to the 19th century with their equipment and simple headgear as I have tried to do with the red coat toy soldier style of painting. This is something that James at Quantrill’s Toy Soldiers has been doing too with the odd hat plume or Milli – putty Green Stuff slouch hat
http://quantrillstoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/how-to-make-horse-hair-plumes-for.html
http://quantrillstoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/ruritanian-tropical-uniform-4th-infantry.html
Grenade!
Another slimmer or slender figure from the Combat Mission 80 Soldiers pack is based on the very familiar Airfix WW2 German Infantryman throwing a stick grenade. The China made version has a distinctively different sort of grenade, more like a Home Guard sticky bomb!
I should be able to muster a unit of about about 24 of these plucky rifle grenadiers.
http://www.airfixtoysoldiers.com/set_list.htm
Over Here
The other Airfix figures raided for this pack include American infantry.
Red Devil Paras
One of the other Airfix ranges raided is the WW2 British Paratroops.
Other pound store copies
Copies of the famous Airfix WW2 British Paratroopers have cropped up in my other pound store packs of China made plastic Soldiers over the last ten years. Even older copies turn up inscribed Hong Kong, presumably pre 1997.
There are other websites out there that focus on plastic figures and their copies, notably Small Scale World: http://smallscaleworld.blogspot.co.uk This site has an impressive web list to explore the world of plastic figures.
Brian Carrick’s site http://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.co.uk also has good plastic soldier coverage and web links.
A fun summer of pound store plastic unit painting awaits.
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN for Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog, June 2017.
Combat Mission 80 plastic pound store soldiers Part 1 Charge!
Around at the moment in pound stores and seaside gift stores are these mixed bag of evolved , morphed, degraded or downsized ‘pirate’ versions of Airfix WW2 figures – Combat Mission 80 soldiers for around £3.50 – £4.00.
After buying the first bag, attracted by one of my favourite poses of the charging rifleman, I bought two more bags to get more of this pose.
The graphics for these suggest a more modern Iraq / Afghanistan “Desert Storm” type of content than the generic WW2 figures that are really inside.
The header illustration is more typical of the other Combat Mission figures that I bought recently which retailed at just over a penny each, whereas these 80 soldiers cost about 4 to 5 pence each (2017).
So whilst these 80 soldiers are not quite pound store prices, they are cheap in comparison to the Airfix originals. The equivalent 54mm / 1:32 WW2 Airfix figures would today at a average box price of £7 for 14 figures cost you about 50 pence per Airfix figure.
The probable inspiration for this figure can clearly be seen alongside the original Airfix German infantryman. Over 40 years of Hong Kong / China Made cloning has reduced the detail and the original size into what looks more like a Britain’s lead charging soldier.
As well as a half dozen similar figures painted in this toy soldier style c.2007/8, I now have 24 new charging infantry to paint up (out of 240 new plastic figures for around £11). They have shrunk a bit over the years to roughly 42mm, rather than the original 54mm.
One part of the attractive old toy soldier look is to have multiple figures of the same pose to make up units.
I look forward to painting up this 30 strong unit of charging infantry, having used my other metal or hollowcast similar charging figures for inspiration.
I will show the other 9 poses (such as those below) for the rest of the Combat Mission 80 Soldiers set in Part 2 (my next blog post).
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN for the Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog on a rainy 10th June 2017.
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 