The World of Model Soldiers

Part 3 (cont'd.) : Model Soldiers Since World War II

One of the latest developments in this line, and this is the first time that the combination of both model and toy figures has ever been achieved, is in a new production of figures which have the detail of a model soldier but because of their mass production, and the fact that they are designed to complement a collection of toy soldiers, are produced at a price which is less than half that of the model soldier. Made by the firm of Soldiers of Lambeth in south-east London, these figures, Soldier’s Soldiers, can be provided with a dozen different arms and can therefore be assembled in a variety of different poses. Because of the detail on the figures, they can either be painted up as individual pieces and take their place on a shelf or in a display alongside some of the finest model soldiers that have been made, or they can be painted with the traditional gloss paint and fall in step with the metal products of the early toy-soldier makers.

There are curious figures which are called semi-round or semi-flat, depending presumably on whether one is primarily a flat-figure or a round-figure collector. These have never been produced for the serious collector but have invariably been made as toys. Some of them have occasionally been massed into large armies and used as war-game figures but would not be used or purchased out of preference today in view of the availability or custom-made figures for war gaming. The semi-flat figures were very often painted with a coloured spirit wash which gave them an almost luminous appearance in bright shades of blue, mauve, orange, magenta, and amber. They were very popular between the wars and from time to time appear in the surplus which is an adjunct to every serious collection.

There are moulds available for these figures, which were made of aluminium in the early 1950s and 1960s, but currently two firms, Schildkrot in Germany and Scad in France, are making moulds for 30mm, semi-round figures, from vulcanized rubber, which is the moulding compound that the majority of the professional soldier makers use. The figures available at present are from the Seven Years’ War. They cast quite pleasantly and are sold all over Europe in a variety of toy and hobby shops.

The semi-round figure has also been made in plastic and for many years the British firm of Spencer-Smith Miniatures has been producing war-game figures about 28 mm high, which are semi-round and made of a softish plastic. These figures are very similar in style to those produced by Holger Eriksson for the firm of S.A.E., Swedish-African Engineers, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The consistency of tin is such that it can be poured and will pick up the finest details from the mould. In order to make the flat figures the manufacturers had to use a fairly pure tin, so that this would fill the cavity of the mould and pick up the sharpest and most minute details which were engraved by the master figure maker. One of the reasons for the advent of the half-round soldier was that the rising cost of tin caused manufacturers to look for an alternative and cheaper metal and they settled on lead.

A much softer metal, lead has flowing properties which are similar to that of warm toffee; thus, when it is poured into a mould, the viscosity of the liquid metal is such that the finer points of the mould are not readily reproduced. The makers therefore could not easily cast in the flat moulds and started to make them fatter and thicker, with less sharp detail. Children did not have sufficient discernment to be able to differentiate between the fine tin figures and the coarse lead figures, whereas the parents were readily able to appreciate the difference in the retail price. Thus, the tin soldier started to move away from the child towards the collector, the child having to put up with the cruder figure, the collector tending to reject these figures in order to buy the finer-detailed tin soldier.

The figures that Britains made were not in fact lead or tin, but a mixture of both. They were tall enough and the capacity of the mould was large enough for the lead-tin mixture to flow relatively freely; and, because of the amount of tin in the mix, they picked up sufficient detail in the casting process for them to be able to compete with the toy soldiers of the German manufacturers.

Anything that one maker can produce, another can either improve upon, or copy, and in the early days of their toy-soldier manufacturing, Britains had to prosecute, often successfully, other companies that were pirating their goods. The laws of copyright have changed over the years, and today the only thing that makers can sue for is the piracy of their trade name, which is usually marked on the base of the figure.

Unfortunately, it is only necessary to remove the maker’s name from the figure and possibly alter the stance slightly, or the angle of the head, or the way the rifle is carried, to make, in the eyes of the law, a completely different figure, which is therefore free of any copyright. Once the figure has been painted, one can probably only tell it is a fake by stripping the paint off, and this is the last thing that any self-respecting model-soldier collector would do.