The World of Model Soldiers

Part 4 (cont'd.) : Current Figures Up To 20 mm

The firm of Greenwood and Ball, when John Greenwood was still in command, produced a wonderful range of 20 mm figures, beautifully hand painted, mainly for diorama use rather than for war gaming, and should these figures be found they are worth collecting because of their artistry.

Peter Laing makes 15 mm figures and produces a wide range of adequate castings covering the majority of the periods.

All these manufacturers are beset by the problem of rising costs, especially in the last two or three years, and most of them have had to diversify in order to keep their industrial wheels turning. The price of raw materials has increased enormously as have overheads, labour and packaging costs, postage, and rent of premises.

The retail price of the majority of model soldiers on the market has hardly increased at all, however. This is partly due to the fact that manufacturers are producing more goods than are required by the consuming public, and so, many do not dare put up their prices in case they price themselves out of the market, and also because the methods of production by becoming more sophisticated are reducing the actual cost of production.

As with the larger figures, the small figures have had their share of pirates and piracy. A collector who cannot afford to buy a complete army of figures, restricts himself to the purchase of certain ones – the general, the officer, the standard bearer – that he wants in small quantities, and then makes a mould in order to cast his own models.

This is usually acceptable to the professional war-gaming fraternity, the makers and sellers of these figures. Everyone has to start somewhere and it is better to have the collector buying at least a selection of figures rather than none at all.

The trouble starts when the would-be war gamer starts to overproduce and, finding that he has a surplus of figures, attempts to sell them to friends or in the local hobby shop; or, worse still, he starts advertising them and selling them by mail in direct competition with the original manufacturer.

In many cases the pirated figures are inferior copies but they are also being sold at very much lower prices. The pirate does not have to cut costly master figures, he probably finds his metal on a scrap heap, and he is casting in his spare time and therefore does not count the cost of his labour.

All this means that he can undercut the professional manufacturer quite severely. Several prosecutions have been attempted in recent years, but because of the difficulty of patenting a model of the human figure, the majority of pirates get away with their offence.

Some figures that were sculpted in Britain have become so popular in the United States that they are now produced there under licence. The most outstanding achievement of this nature is that of the firm of Miniature Figurines, a Southampton-based firm which has been producing both small and large figures for the last 15 years.

It now has an operation in the USA called Minifigs USA which, by casting on the American continent, is able to produce the Minifig figures and have them in the shops or posted to the American customer at a much lower cost than would be possible for the British parent company.

The Yorkshire firm of Hinchliffe also has a licensing agreement with an American firm, Heritage Models of Dallas, Texas, for casting and distribution and, at the time of writing, the firms of Heroics and Ros, and Soldiers are negotiating similar rights. Barry Minot, one of a new breed of artists making and manufacturing for mail order also has an outlet in the United States: the Barry Minot Miniature Corporation of Garden City, New York.

The American firms who have been operating for a number of years include those of H.R., Thomas Industries, and Scruby. Jack Scruby was one of the early pioneers of war games and war gaming, and for many years in the early days of the hobby he had a magazine which was distributed on a paid quarterly basis throughout the world of enthusiasts and war gamers, who took part in international competitions.

Each subscriber would be given a battle or a tactical problem to overcome, and, by setting up this conflict with a local friend, they were able to fight through and produce a result, which was then relayed back to the main office of the magazine for inclusion in the overall strategic outline.

Whereas the most usual way of playing war games in Britain is with model soldiers, in the United States the majority of people tend to play board games with counters. The aesthetic appeal of a board game obviously does not match that of the game using model figures, but, according to the exponents, the mental powers needed are fare greater.

Because of the number of board war gamers in the United States it appears that the American manufacturers of war-game figures have never had a worthwhile return for their money and there are relatively few manufacturers of 20 and 25 mm figures in that country. The majority of Americans buy their figures direct from British manufacturers.

On the European Continent, war gaming did not have a great following and any that was done usually involved flat figures. However, in the last few years, because of the availability of the 1/300th scale figures, many more European war gamers have come to light and now avidly collect and fight with these tiny soldiers.