The World of Model Soldiers

Part 2 (cont'd.): Model Soldiers from 1800 to 1939

By 1914 Britains were exporting to Germany and other countries. They continued manufacturing metal hollow-cast soldiers up until the middle of the 1960s, when a combination of prohibitive laws against toys containing lead, the availability of plastic - lighter in weight, with consequently reduced transportation costs - and the invention of the new plastic casting machines which greatly increased production while using a much cheaper material, all helped to bring about the death of the lead toy soldier as it was known to millions of children throughout the world.

The German firm of Heyde tried to outdo Britains and experimented with very large figures, 110 mm in height, not hollow cast but hollow pressed. These were true tin soldiers: hollow tin pressings soldered together at the seams, fixed to a base, hats put on their heads and weapons in their hands. The only examples that are currently available are of Prussian soldiers dressed in the Prussian uniform of the turn of the century, but painted in British colours, which was presumably to infiltrate the British market.

Heyde also made a range of solid metal figures with foot soldiers of up to 90 mm in height. Among some of the more extravagant offerings were sets of the Kaiser and his heroes, or his general staff. In all these figures the horse was cast without a base and was later soldered to a sheet tin stand, the bridle and reins were added separately, as was the cast saddle blanket, and the stirrups were also soldered on. The head of the man was separate from the body and had to be pegged in, and the sword, straps and slings also had to be fixed by hand. By having detachable heads, the same body could be used for a number of different figures and it was the heads that gave an impression of individuality as each head was carefully sculptured with or without moustache or beard, to give a reasonably accurate portrait in metal of the particular character intended.

Other manufacturers produced smaller and in some cases flattish figures. Haffner and Heyde had a range of figures of various sizes, some of the smaller ones becoming very flat. Britains made a 'B' series of figures which were about 45 mm high as opposed to the standard size of 54 mm. They made foot soldiers and horse soldiers as well as artillery pieces and limbers, and they were sold invariably with two fixed arms.

An innovation in the toy soldier field was that of the German firm of Hausser, who, realizing that mountains of sawdust were going to waste in the Black Forest from the wood-cutting industry, hit upon the idea of making what was in effect a papier máché figure. It was formed of sawdust and glue around a wire base, pressed while damp into a metal mould, heated in an oven until the glue had hardened, and then left to dry. In the 1920s and 1930s these figures, marketed under the name of 'Elastolin', were very popular all over Europe because of their cheapness of manufacture, their lightness when it came to transportation, and the tremendous variety in their positions. For the first time the manufacturers of larger toy figures were able to produce men in action that looked real. The disadvantage of the Elastolin figures was that they were generally made in the 65 mm size and therefore did not readily match in with the existing collections of toy soldiers of the standard 54 mm size.

The flat figures had always had a lively and realistic appearance about them, in the same way that a line engraving has, but the figures of the solid toy soldiers looked static and unrealistic. With their Elastolin figures Hausser attempted, as did the later model soldier makers, to create figures in lifelike poses. Because of their fragile components, glue and sawdust, very few of the figures survive to the present time; those that do are eagerly sought by collectors.

Elastolin also produced an enormous range of tin-plate vehicles and it would have been possible, had one had sufficient funds at the time, to have recreated in miniature the whole of the German army prior to the outbreak of World War II, complete with horsed and mechanized transport, half-tracks, tanks, artillery, field kitchens, ambulances, supply teams and wagons, and a whole host of the most beautiful model accoutrements.

Various other firms copied the Elastolin figures, the most famous being Lineol in Dresden. Firms such as Britains, Heyde, and Mignot also made numbers of vehicles, wagons, and guns to go with their soldiers and the flat tin soldier manufacturers very often made three-dimensional wagons or artillery pieces to accompany their small armies. The horse teams, instead of being engraved as two horses and cast as one item, would often be designed as separate horses and fixed into a three-dimensional harness in order to pull the three-dimensional cart, gun, or wagon which was often made from an assembly of tin castings, lead castings, and tin pressings: a combination of tin toys and lead toys.