The Super Cheap Wargaming Facebook group featured a post by Ron Lumbis about the current 30mm-32mm (ish) pound store figures.
I like the retro style of the packaging from Schyllyng with on the back of the box the pen outline of the figures inside, a little like the early 1960s Airfix boxes.
I also like the slight overselling – “INCLUDES TWO ARMIES” – obviously serious defence cuts have happened. What they mean is includes two different colours of figures, in this case the traditional green and tan of some plastic army men figures sets.
I see echoes of the famous Russ Heath Lucky Toys page adverts in US comic books for disappointingly flat mail order figures. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/classic-close-wars-and-comic-book-soldiers-back-to-the-forest/
You can also see similarly stylish packaging (short lived packaging and sold out) from 2017, the “WW2 Soldiers” tag a little misleading with the Russian Army looking troops.
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2017/10/26/retro-packaging/
Either box would make a good attractive mail order gift, one that I would happily have played with as a child, then have somewhere to put them back in the box afterwards.
The alternative packaging I have found for these figures over the last few years ranges from a flimsy plastic bag and header card of two different colours per bag …
… to the useful storage tubs of single colour figures occasionally found in Poundland UK.
Same figures, different colours, varying prices per figure, different packaging.
To me these are the modern cheap small plastic equivalent to the Airfix figures of our youth.
They are surprisingly versatile and at a penny or two each (prices are steadily creeping up) these anonymous and widely available ‘Made in China’ plastic figures can be cheaply and easily converted to a range of periods past and present – and future.
Several fantasy or sci fi gaming bloggers have used these same figures such as the Wargaming Pastor for his Death Zap future games.
Ross Macfarlane of the long-established Battle Game of the Month blog paid these figures and conversions a sort of dubious tribute when he described them as:
Hence my nickname for them of the “Penny Dreadfuls“, as this is what I once paid for each 100 figures for £1.
I have used them for many things from my Boy Scout rough conversions …
to Flash Gordon style space marines and little green men aliens.
The alien ‘cape’ is a card paper hole punch strengthener from cheap old luggage labels.
These figures adapt to modern as well as 19th Century colonial figures
Various theatres of War and historic periods suggested by paint conversions here
Simple cardboard hat brims (again from hole punch paper strengtheners or card circles)
Colonial highlanders from Carry on Up the Khyber … tissue paper and PVA kilts added
Simple desert or native warriors created by scalpel and PVA / tissue paper conversions
As you can see these are very versatile figures, with a little imagination, they can become many different types of ImagiNations figures.
Transport easily requisitioned from charity shop cheap finds …
Arguably Airfix figures have or had the advantage of scale model kits and buildings to complement their figures (although both often in and out of availability or production).
However, with a little imagination, suitable Pound Store playset or charity shop vehicles, terrain and buildings can be found.
A full blown pound store colonial skirmish for under a pound …
https://poundstoreplasticwarriors.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/pound-store-colonial-skirmish-part-1/
Suitable sized gaming accessories add variety to conversions – here an old Prince August homecast gun.
Or light railway battery ‘train in a tin’ style …
This paint conversion or scalpel and PVA approach works with any size or scale of cheap plastic Pound Store type figures as you can see from meandering through my blog.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN on his Pound Store Plastic Warriors blog, 21 December 2020
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 