Whilst they may not have come from a pound store, these plastic Heroscape figures were sort of free.
I bought two or three cheap bashed Master Set or Starter Kit boxes of Hasbro / MB (Milton Bradley) Heroscape: Rise of The Valkyrie for the interlocking plastic hex terrain pieces and along with two of the sets were the original 30 pre-painted figures per set.
I never quite understood or liked the Heroscape rules system, but thought the prepainted figures worth keeping.
The different Heroscape squads in this Master Set are:
Izumi Samurai figures
Mech figures – Zettian Guards or Soulborgs, led by giant mech Deathwalker 9000.
Krav Maga agents from Earth – FBI or X Files type government agents led by Agent Carr with his Sword of Reckoning. Some extreme corsetry going on here!
Alien Marro figures from the Planet Marr (obviously).
‘Elite Airborne’ WW2 American based figures
Fantasy type Tarn Viking Warriors who go berserking!
The original figures come with game character cards listing movement, weapons ability etc. But if you are not playing ‘the game’ as designed, you can make all this up yourself.
There is more about the original Heroscape game at
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11170/heroscape-master-set-rise-valkyrie
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroscape
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Heroscape_supplements
https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/HeroScape_Figure_List
I like the crazy mix of periods and characters, a bit of time trickery much like the BBC TV episode and book Doctor Who: The Wargames and also the Time Conquistadors game on Vicky’s Crazy Wargames World blog.
http://crazywargames.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/time-conquistadors.html
This is summed up well on the Wikipedia entry:
“At its essence, Heroscape is an epic battle between and among characters from multiple cultures, periods, and genres, taking place on a three-dimensional gaming surface of various elevations and terrain types. Although the game manual contains ideas for scenarios, many players combine multiple sets of terrain tiles to create large playing surfaces, and develop their own house rules and custom scenarios.”
“The heroes are inspired heavily by popular science fiction and fantasy, as well as the Old West, the Roman Empire, ancient Greece, feudal Japan, the Scottish highlands, the Nordic sagas, American history, medieval Europe, and classic mythology, among others. A single team may consist of heroes from many genres, with dragons, elves, robots, angels, demons, vampires, werewolves, dinosaurs and wizards fighting alongside (and against) soldiers, vikings, knights, samurai, cowboys and futuristic agents and more, including various forms of animal life, such as wolves, spiders, and serpent-like vipers.” Wikipedia entry for Heroscape
In terms of scale or size, the Heroscape figures measure in at around 35mm excluding base.
This doesn’t quite match any other figures I have and may be part of the reason why many people didn’t warm to the game despite several relaunches. If you launch your own scale, the chance of using other maker’s ranges are reduced. You can both dominate and limit your own market and audience in this way.
However as ‘free’ figures they work quite well for my duelling games for example.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/heroscape-duelling-in-the-garden/
The game has its own fans (Heroscapers or Scapers) and fan website, with many figure conversions and fan-derived rules extensions to keep their game fresh: https://www.heroscapers.com/community/blog.php?u=2
