1949 - 1960 (approximately); Early Toy Soldiers

Definitely in production by 1949 (when they were advertised in Toy Trader & Exporter), I'm guessing the unpainted polystyrene figures arrived first with the painted Polyethylene versions following at a later date, but that is a guess.

I only have two of the hard plastic ones at the moment; 'Airborne' and 'Knight in Armour', more will be added as I find them.

In soft plastic we see from left to right; '18th Century Fusilier', 'Paratrooper', 'Airborne' again (as opposed to paratrooper!!?) and finally 'German Soldier'. The paratrooper is now identified as probably the Trojan copy.

These figures were also issued in Australia by a company called Pierwood Plastics under the Fethalite label in the unpainted hard plastic version. Some of the names/titles were however changed.

Smaller (copies/pirates?) have turned up and various mould variants of the Paratrooper seem to exist - both versions shown in the Plastic Warrior publication 'Airfix - The Early Days' have different arm-gaps from mine - and each other.

A nicely painted knight to the right of a couple of unpainted figures, all soft ethylene plastic.

Three more have turned-up via MercatorTrading; a well painted (re-painted?) para and two sailors, the funny thing was I saw at least nine sailors at the show (Plastic Warrior's 32nd Toy Soldier Show), six of them as two lots (on different stalls) of three, crudely painted in white uniforms, these two and another in black/navy blue. Still after a pilot and a Japanese soldier!

A Pierwood Plastic / Featherlite lot send in by an Australian reader Norman Dunckley, they belonged to his late father and show 7 of the eight poses, from the fact that I've seen similar lots on Australian sites, it seems to me that they probably got the mould from Airfix, and ran them later, for longer?

The figures are given a quick paint which is similar to the Airfix paint schemes, but looks to be simplified, you can see with the knight that the under-colour of the polymer is the bright yellow of the unpainted, carded Featherlite set sent in to PW magazine.

This is made of an earlier hard plastic, from the damage; probably a Celluloid, and Cellulose Nitrate, not Acetate? The figure is literally exploding in very slow-motion as blisters of chemically-altered compound create larger masses of a powdery substance which has nowhere to go but out!

He was quite well painted once!

As well as the powdery-blisters the figure is cracking as it 'dries'out', despite not being exactly wet! I have had some success treating this kind of damage with  plumbers pipe sealant (SC125 Solvent Cement, active ingredient - Bisphenol A-epichlorohydrin! Although Methyl-Ethyl-Ketone adhesives will also do the job) on a similarly damaged Belgian JSB figure of the same era, and on 'sticky' Starlux and other French figures.

It doesn't restore the figures, but creates an airtight seal which retards/halts the degradation by restricting/preventing oxidation. It also restores the colours somewhat, but you have to work fast; A) to prevent the remaining paint running and B) because the solvent is a fast drying (curing or evaporating) medium.

The 'Airborne' figure in one of my original images above is almost certainly the Trojan copy, sold in carded sets of three, coded; 1193 - Parachute Battalion, the precise make-up of which remains unknown but may be two Airfix copies with one Timpo GI Binocular pose, or just three of the Airfix airborne poses? Two (the original and one supplied by Barney Brown of HeraldModels) are shown above.

As a result the little table I did now looks like this! There is still an '1136 Air Commando Tommy Gunner' from Trojan to be ID'd, but from the pricing it would seem to be a larger stand-alone figure, probably one of the many versions of the parachute toy of a chap grasping a weapon across his chest?

This is the paratrooper (posted August 2018), I only need a Japanese soldier and pilot for a 'set' although there is such variation with these I'll keep grabbing them whenever I see them!

You can see he's much better sculpted than the Trojan (and I'm 100% sure the other is the Trojan 1193 'Parachute Battalion' now), and he is also larger being approximately 60mm to the 54mm of the Trojan figures.

A comparison between the 'collapsed' figure I posted earlier this year (2018) and one of my older samples, I really can't account for the size difference, it's true that he was very degraded before I coated him, and seems to have lost most height from the legs and his neck (which has all but disappeared), but that doesn't really explain the difference.

I wonder if he is a copy, possibly home cast in Plasticine or Rawlplug's Plastic Wood (a good substitute for Elastolin, sadly no longer available), who looked a bit better when first produced?

As a result of having now ID'd the smaller Para as Trojan and with a question-mark over this sailor, I've removed the 50mm Tag, as most of the set stand closer to 60mm. 

Below posted - January 21st 2019 . . .

. . . at last - a complete set!

It's funny, but because I will be waxing lyrical about this set on the home-blog with duplicate images the same day I post these here and because this post is constantly added to and edited, this is - in some respects - 'just another addition', but nevertheless; many, many thanks to Glenn Sibbald of New Zealand for sending these to the Blog, a selfless gesture that frankly stunned me when I opened the parcel.

This - at day of posting - is a 'New to Hobby' packaging of the early Airfix figures, as produced by Pierwood next-door in Oz, but clearly a New Zealand issue, the brand unknown. They could be Pierwood-supplied (they share the same figure-descriptions) but they are presented in a different order and NZ had a lot of here-today, gone-tomorrow plastics firms at the time, anyone of whom could have borrowed the moulds from Pierwood, or bought them?

The figures; in the order in which they are numbered by the unknown New Zealand issuer, which differs from both the Aussie order and the order given in the Airfix catalogue seen in Plastic Warrior magazine's Airfix 'Special'.

These have all the properties of polypropylene, but that’s an illusion, due to their mint'ness, they are actually a cellulose acetate and the Knight, Pilot and the Pirate have all started to arch backwards slightly with the spine-tightening of old-age!

I've redone the table to reflect the new set but sticking it down here as a replacement would require a re-hash of the previous version's blurb/paragraph, so I'm going to leave it there, and possibly - for context - re-install the two even-earlier versions roughly where they were, so the progression of information over the nine-odd years of this post/page can be seen! And the whole point of this Blog is to be like a scrap-book.

The re-titling of these antipodean sets is also interesting, as clearly the Japanese was dropped out of deference to the sensibilities of those who had shouldered so much of the burden of that (then recent) campaigns in the Pacific theatre, but the dropping of the German as well suggests that they just decided to excise the whole still-smell-the-two-nukes-on-the-breeze Second World War 'business' altogether?

The Commando and Airman are also fair title-adjustments but the Pirate name-change is less obviously explained!

16-07-2019 - Sent in by Glenn Sibald, extra to the above, and found a few months later, these are likely old Peirwood examples from Australia, hoovered-off an antipodean auction site, years-ago, showing various plastic colours and the 18th Century Fusilier/Pirate in close-up from various angles, highlighting the sculpting quite well, along with a couple of the other figures.

The above trio were sent to the Blog by Danny O'Neill from Mildura in Australia, who remembered going with his parents to purchase them loose from counter displays. Now he initially though they may have been in Coles - a chain of stores in Australia (Tom Clague sent us their recent premiums, not that long ago - Home Blog) - but when I got enthusiastic about that 'new' nugget of information, said he wasn't sure it was Coles?

However, he is sure they were loose-stock, not part of a boxed-set, so they may have been Woolworth's or another store - he also remembers toy shops with loose figures, but a little later - when these were procured toys were scarce, hence his having hung on to them as a nostalgia thing, a tangible link with childhood memories . . . isn't that why a lot of us collect?

He reckons it was the very early 1950's and - as he told me the year he was born - it would have been. Also you can see; he picked the classic triumvirate of servicemen - a soldier, a sailor and an airman!

This all raises the question; were they shipped-out Airfix from the UK, locally produced by Fethalite or brought across the straights from New Zealand . . . the search for information goes on! And here's thanking Danny for one of the links in the chain.

In fact, and thinking aloud, going back to Glenn's contribution; didn't Toltoys handle Airfix in the Antipodes at one point . . . I think I've raised that before?

This is a Polish copy, early PZG (Polski Zwiazek Gluchych - Union of the Deaf or 'Polish Association for Deaf People') I think, they don't seem to have copied all the figures in the set, but certainly the sailor was a useful figure to copy being a pretty universal uniform from the 1910's-what? 1960's? When this figure is dated to. I have seen the knight I think and another Polish collector has reported the same paratrooper used by Trojan and BR (among others - see above), so they may have copied all eight?

This image is reproduced courtesy of Tadek Norek (many thanks Tadek / wielkie dzięki Tadek), also a Polish collector who tells me the plastic was called 'cauczuk' (or - in Russian - Kaukazuk 38-41) and it seems to be a rubberised polymer or vulcanised-rubber, of the type also used for tank's track-pads, roller-skate wheels and outdoor, water-proofing, sealant type jobs. Later PZG output was nylon-6

Well a lot has happened, since I last edited this page, for which you will need to read the new 'Special Publication' from Plastic Warrior on BR Moulds. It seems that BR Moulds issued a home moulding set (which I believe Trojan had at least one of!) which explain the sub-size versions, including - probably - my crumbly sailor. I've picked up a few more Airfix ones and Peter Evans has sent me an interesting variation, so we're adding six images today (June 2022)

I won't edit the previous stuff, as I only had a few when this page started, so the story is followable as more empirical evidence has come to light, and it should all remain clear, even where it changes!

Here we see all my sailors, with two Airfix soft plastic (polyethylene), one New Zealand hard plastic (polystyrene) and a probably home-made figure, utilising the BR Moulds tool, but using some scrap plastic which hasn't stood the test of time!

The paratrooper, self-explanatory, and I'm sticking with the Trojan attribution on this one, he keeps turning-up (I mean I've seen four or five over the years, including mine and Barney's) in paint which matches their other figures, equally I have seen examples which don't, and I suspect Trojan (who had their fingers in many pies) got hold of a mould. It's the only mould of all those listed by BR which I think Trojan utilised.

Knights; two Airfix, one 'styrene (left) and one 'ethylene (right) and a New Zealander who is markedly smaller.

Again labelled-up, and there's no suggestion Trojan had anything to do with this one. Two Airfix (in the middle) and an NZ, with the painted one having a question-mark, he's got a few differences (slightly shorter figure with a fatter head?)  and might be another BR Moulds example? The sticker may be a collectors cataloguing thing, but I see no reason to remove it until I know what it represents, which I probably never will, so it stays!

Peter Evans, roving reporter and joint-founder of Plastic Warrior magazine, had a go at making his own copies, using a mould-over copy process, his has ended-up slightly larger than everyone else's, and is manufactured in a kind of cold-casting (?) rubber which has the feel of PVC, but is probably a lot safer to work with! Slightly marbled in a red and white, giving mostly an overall pink, he's my Puce Pimpernel! Cheers Peter!

 

I didn't date the last few updates, but it keeps coming in, and this next lot was all added 14th June 2025;

 

These were some shots I took just to compare between Airfix and New Zealand examples, although with some size difference between two of the 'Airfix' paratroopers (the soft polyethylene one is bigger?), it's still not an exact science, and may never be!
 

Also, it's an odd selection of figures, with six basically WWII, and two historical, and six basically British and two foreign/'enemy', the German and Japanese infantrymen of WWII.

 

For the first fifty odd-years of the sample collection, I had no Japanese example, and when I got one, it was the New Zealander from Glenn! However in 2024, Chris Smith kindly sent me two good ones and a bunch of damaged examples, so here are the good pair with an Airborne, for sizing.

 

Typically, once you have one, they keep turning up and these two came-in recently as part of the 11 figure sample in this and the next image, these being all soft plastic (polyethylene), and probably all Airfix, with the Pilot and Paratrooper being equally probably home-painted?

 

While these four are hard polystyrene, and again Marlborough's man, on the left, is almost certainly home painted. I will, when I next gather them all together, compare the bright red German with his New Zealand oppo', but for now, just further examples. Note how the factory painting of the Japanese soldier is pretty consistent through several iterations of plastic colour.

 

The previous two images were of the 2025 Plastic Warrior toy soldier show plunder, while this and the next are actually the plunder from the 2024 show, which I thought had been buried in the storage unit with photography, but which I managed to find and shoot the other day (June 2025), so I've added them below the 2025 stuff, to match the chronology of the pages updates!

 

These three are all hard plastic, with two stable polystyrene to the right (home-painted pilot, I suspect), and a rather dodgy sample of phenolic or urea-formaldehyde polymer to the left. I'm assuming, from the pin-mark, these are all Airfix production.

 

It's important to get these early ones up here before they disintegrate completely, and if you have a few, I'd urge you to get them shared, here, with PW magazine, or any platform you're on, if only so we can build a picture of all the colours used, what is - now - eighty-odd years ago?

 

I also picked-up five soft polyethylene figures, at the '24 show, probably also all Airfix production, with various remains of paint on them, hard to call the C18th chap as home- or factory-painted, but I'd favour home if I had to call it?

 

Several have the remains of that heavy Khaki paint, we've also seen on the Motorcycles, along with the sorry tale of stripping a batch, before we'd made the connection. Whether it was an Airfix paint-job, or some end-user's commercial venture is, and will probably remain, an unknown, moot point! 

 

Three different colour variations of the home-cast versions from Peter Evans, these are a harder polymer than the slight rubbery pink one seen above somewhere, and I don't know how many colours he experimented with, but the hardness of the polymer was probably dependent on the mixing of a two-part system, or activator of some kind? Alongside a damaged Japanese infantryman which must have come-in at the same show?

 

While I was shooting the above ('24 stuff), I also re-shot the figures Chris Smith sent me that summer/autumn (just before I left the flat i think, so June'ish?), alongside, on the right a probably home-painted one which arrived from Chris via Lee Turner, these are likely all Airfix production.

 

Chris also sent me a near complete run of Fethalite figures he'd sourced in Australia, with two non-stable early ones, and five hard polystyrene examples, they have the pin-marks at the front, and are bigger than the NZ versions, so the conclusion would seem to be that they either used the same tool as Airfix (before or after?), or just got a load of loose product from Airfix, to repackage 'down under'.

 

This could have gone by sea shipping, at little expense, compared to the UK/US tariffs of the time (lifted by Nixon in the early 1970's), or the expense of secure [air-]mailing tools? Note: the yellow knight is on the turn, with a matt surface building on the outer layer of the figure.

 

Chris also sent me some damaged Aussie  'styrene ones, with more of the shrinking/crumbling examples, which are shown here for completion/to expand the sum-total of knowledge on these, their plastic colours and attempted paint schemes!

 

The metallics are so close to the Airfix production, my own feeling is that Airfix shipped product, rather than shared the tool with Pierwood/Fethalite, while New Zealand did their own thing, probably without permissions (?), over the straights of the Tasman Sea!