1973 [WWII] British Infantry (2nd Version), 01703-5 / 9 01703 - HO/OO

So these were the new version, much anticipated, they were a bit of a disappointment when they finally arrived, and most of the criticism of the set found elsewhere over the years is well founded. But - there's always a 'but' - it doesn't add up to much really, as the set still delivers a decent bunch of figures, well sculpted and ten times better than the Combat Group set they replace while paying homage - through a stretcher team!

It's about how much the problems bug you, or how much you are willing to let the problems bug you! They are thinnish, they are under-equipped, and too 'clean', their uniforms are too tight...but...they paint-up OK, sculpting detail is fine and they are a vast improvement on the Britains-clone blobs.

A nice painting guide from the 1980 catalogue, the image taken from the back of the long boxes of that era. In point of fact the battle-dress was a tad darker.

The slightly larger ammunition box illustrated is an accurate representation of the ammo-box for the Bren gun, but its carrying handle was actually on one end, so it would hang with the long dimension in the vertical. An academic point as the actual figure sculpt clearly carries the thinner box configured for the belted ammunition of the Vickers MG! The figure from the older set of Combat Group however, could very well be carrying a Bren gun ammo-box!

Atlantic's figures, I think the Airfix set pre-dates them by a year or two, but they were close, however while some of the Atlantic poses are quite nice, the set as a whole owes more to the dancing loons of Cherilea and its UN troops then to any others! They were also a deal taller, but a lot of that was down to the deep, heavy bases. I had more to say about this set on the main blog a while ago.

The 1975 Airfix catalogue (image provided by Kostas again!) was a cross-over catalogue, with the older 'blue box' imagery in the main (Ancient, Medieval, Waterloo, Wild West, WWI etc...Civilians!), but with the WWII sets illustrated as joint-set photographs in the new 'white-box' or 'corner-graphics' artwork.

The OBE's in this sample are not much it has to be said, but I had a major paint-stripping session a year or two before I'd even heard of blogging, or handled a computer for that matter, so these are what's been painted in what's come-in in mixed-lots since about 2004/5?

I can never imagine what makes someone start painting their figures all-over jade green or gloss balck, but then I remember I had some silver Marines when I was a kid, which I must have painted myself in a mad moment, so it was clearly just part of being a kid...thinking about it as I was writing that (I'll get rid of the resultant typos before you see them), it struck me that actually it probably goes something like this...

You think - on the spur of the moment - "I'm grown-up enough to paint these (at age 6-8 or so) without supervision...and no-one is watching"...you get the paint out, you find a flat-ended craft brush in your school pencil-case (or the jam jar on the window-sill by the kitchen-sink), you open the thinners, then you dip the brush in the paint...it comes out dripping! You panic, realise you haven't the faintest idea how to paint a floor or a barn door, let alone 20mm figures...You stab a clumsey hand at the bayonet you intended the silver for or the boot that the gloss black was destined to coat, a large quatity of paint then uses the laws of water tention to flow down the rifle, slide effortlessly over, under and around your fingers and on down the figure...Your limited life experiance then kicks in, instantly you realise 4 things: 1) you have not got a painting cloth; 2) that blob of paint is going to drip off the figure (onto your trousers or the carpet) if you don't do something; 3) the rest of the paint on the brush is now flowing down the handle toward the other hand and 4) you need to do something about 1-3, now! So...you spread the rest of the paint on the first figure; it's still pooling....you do a few more and hey...it'll help your story that 'that's what you wanted to do', you run to the loo and grab some loo paper, you clean the brush and the fingers (at this point some story's will get worse with incompatible thinners or the introduction of water or washing-up liquid...nightmare), you put the figures somewhere to dry - hoping they won't be found before you can hide them...upturned box at the back of a drawer near a radiator was a good one...and ergo...oddly-painted figures in you nascent collection!

The experience only encourages you to try the matt green with a proper brush a few weeks later or the next time you're alone in the house!

These are in the bag marked: 'broken, converted and painted', and I didn't really know what to do with them - I'm wont to throw anything away - when it struck me the one at the back would look good crawling out of the water... a river, the sea or a flooded shell-hole. He's lost his feet as the knife de-basing him has turned-out as it cuts through the plastic, a problem cutting thicker sections of polyethylene.

There's never been the colour variation with this set you find with some of the others, partly due to it's late arrival in the list, partly down to luck. there is a darker run (slightly washed-out by the flash in this shot) and in certain lights you can find a 'greener' issue (more yellow in the mix?).

Complete set ready to roll, the poses are for the most part OK, but like their twin replacement-set; the German Infantry, they suffer from a couple of dumb poses (middle left) and I always found the officer to be a bit weak.

Basically you get more than enough for all the men in a late-war Infantry platoon, with or without a dedicated MG section, but without a mortar team. The two signallers can be a signaller and runner, or signaller and attached FOO, air liaison or similar, or you can leave one in the box!

For those who prefer to work from a one of each line-up. You can see all the criticisms clearly here...parade or range webbing, tall, thin and gangly with tight clothing, a couple of silly poses, but painted and based with a few other makes they pass muster for war gaming, and the detail is lovely, however inaccurate it might be in places.

Some sets of toy soldiers have identical stretcher carriers, this has them stepping-off from opposite feet which is a nice touch and a sign of the effort that went into the production of the set, even if it was ultimately a bit disappointing!

Comparison with the recent effort (type 4!) and they (the sculptors) still haven't really got it right (they will have their own page at some point), like their earlier brthren, paint will hide a lot of sins, but they can hardly serve together, one lot all lumpy, over-fed and cammed-up, the others hungry-lean, in parade-order with skin-tight tailoured uniforms!

The closest Airfix (or the owners of the 'brand') have ever got to decent WWII British Infantry was the ex-Esci/A-Toys/Italieri type 3 which had already been issued by...err...Esci, A-Toys and Italieri! The Bren guns are particularly poor in this set, but the PIAT is rather nice...if a little thin, and the comparison above suggests an easy conversion of the older prone figure to a PIAT-man?

The kneeling firer's from both sets make the same mistake as the type 1 (and the Britains Herald granddaddy of them all), in adopting a pose no man firing a rifle from the kneeling position ever adopted, ever, in the whole history of warfare, drill, and press pictures for dill manuals, indeed - I don't believe the human body can adopt that position without a hip or thigh being surgically dissociated first!...I just tried, you can; but it's bloody uncomfortable!

Marx (here Marksmen from Ri-Toys (Rado Industries) giants are not much of a threat despite being called 'HO' by the original maker, however the officer and the chap on the left of the line-up with the Tommy-gun, could be hidden in a platoon of Airfix after a matching paint job, they've both been to the same tailor as the Airfix chaps! [see the 8th army for comparisons of the rest of this Marx range, they are all wearing shorts]

How it should be done, Matchbox lead the way with a set of business-like poses and some nice AFV crew. However, the bases are a real pain with this set, small and slightly rounded they were table-top only, the carpet defeats them before the Germans have been set-up - if it's Matchbox Germans as well...it's an apocalypse! But they failed the colour rule as well...brown? For European theatre? NO!

Nitto get the colour rule, but totally muck-up the simple 'ish procedure of copying the figures with a copying machine! [pantograph] It doesn't help that they are trying to convert them to American M1-helmeted troops at the same time - the heads are so poor I think they came from Airfix 1st type Marines who (with a couple of Para's - also from Airfix sculpts) make up the rest of the group - now a Fujimi catalogue item.

Thanks to Konrad Lesiek I now know these (upper row, brown) were issued as kiosk novelties by Andrzej Kawecki, and are from Set 3 British Infantry, the only set of piracies of these figures I know of, and they're not bad, a slight loss of detail, but every pose has been reproduced, even the two different stretcher-bearers, all made - apparently - from recycled material; in this case a soft PVC vinyl rubber.

Indeed - I'd go further and say that by attaching the front feet to the bases, they have actually managed to improve the two dumbest (advancing, running) poses, and somehow they've got the captain/platoon commander to look more businesslike (or less foppish) just by copying him!

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1963 [WWII] U.S. Marines (1st Type), S16 / 1716 / 01716 - HO/OO

Still a favourite set of mine, if only because of the powerful force known as nostalgia! They don't stack-up next to the modern efforts of Pegasus, but there are so many out there they are useful for filling the ranks in large invasion forces!

Airfix never produced a specific set of 'US Infantry' so these doubled-up in the European theatres of many a war gamer, the uniforms being pretty rudimentary - in the sculpting - meant there was little or no danger of rivet counters banging-on about leggings or bayonet sheaths"

A complete set; usually I try to photograph an unpainted set, but I rather like this batch, they came in with a large 1970's war games collection back at the turn of the century and I love the apple-green helmets and the fact that the two dead guys follow the Star Trek rule...those who are about to die; dress in red!....the fat lady in the civilian set has a similar rule!

This is one of the easiest sets to sort without consulting PSR, ATF or Williamson (or these pages!) as it's a simple rule; two of each with boat and bazooka vignettes for a total of 46 pieces.

Colour variations, early sets come in various pallets of dark olive or olive green, later ones are in the paler herb greens or light-olive. When I get a set that is 'clean' but incomplete, the label on the right of the little self-seal bags reads "Incomplete 36 of 46" or something similar, and every few years I have a session with the spares bag, trying to colour match to complete the set.

You loose a lot of the colour difference when you use flash, so I thought I'd try scanning this time...as you can see, the scans are completely different depending on the colour of the background...so that worked! The flash image (top) has the second two in a different order so I've numbered them. between the three pictures you get some idea of the colour range available.

Due to it's age, this set has more variations in colour and shade that all others bar the Paratroopers and Infantry Combat Group, the 1st version Commandos coming a poor 4th! Early sets vary more, as they were still hand-dying the neutral granules at the point of production, later sets would have used pre-coloured granules, and there is better consistency, however, batches and variables like the operating heat still means that late sets (2nd type British Infantry for an example) do have variations, as do the later grey sets such as the Mountain Troops or German Para's.

More scans...this time the ones to the left of the crawling pose are later paler colours (to the eye), the ones to the right are the darker, yet they meld into a complete mix under the scan light.

The only way to get good colour matches is to sort on a bright sunlit day, on a desk facing a window but not in direct sunlight, and with two desk lamps facing across the desk from either side, both equipped with 'daylight' bulbs. The exercise makes you eyes hurt and can't be done by someone with colour blindness. To get a set as 'complete' as possible, you are trying to find figures that passed through the factory within hours or minutes of each other, 40 or 50 years ago! From a pile of figures with dozens of subtle colour differences.

On the left an example of lovely sculpting given the limitations of the still (then) quite new technology. On the right a common problem with this set.

As the plastic moves through the mould runners it is already cooling, it needs to cool in a few seconds, before the moulding is released, as a result where you have a large cavity (in relation to the other cavities in the same mould) there is a danger that the plastic will form an internal membrane where the two travelling blobs (slugs?) meet. In this case it coincides with a detail element as well, causing a weak-point to be created, which over time parts in play!

Another bugger's efforts, I like that he's consulted the old Osprey (or was it a Military Modelling magazine article?) for helmet markings.

A simple scheme of boots, weapons, helmets and flesh; with the exception of the Napoleonics, allied ground crew sets (all the cream sets really!) and the orange-brown 'neutral' sets, this was the intention behind Airfix's plastic colour system with these little figures.

Another 'fault' figure, this is the only on I have among all the loose figures (spread-out on the bed for this photo-session), although I do have a memory of removing this little rock from between the legs of a couple of figures when I was painting a batch back in 1977!

If you found this figure in a tin of mixed junk from a car-boot you'd easily think he was a HK pirate...bright green, flashy, lump of stuff...but he's Airfix all right. I'm not sure how it happened either, it looks to be a chunk of the mould missing, but if that was the case he'd turn-up more often, so I guess it might be extra-plastic (still molten) spilling (under pressure) from the mould as the two halves were parted? Yet the two I remember fixing had the same shape, which means it is a piece of missing mould, so they may just be the final production, showing the need for a new sculpt which followed soon after?

More OBE's, this time there is one of mine...the guy wading with his rifle above his head and the dun-coloured pack is the last of my original figures - the rest are around, but long-ago paint-stripped. He's not from the '77 batch (they never got finished!), he's from about '74 (I was ten!).

The officer, two to the left of mine is particularly well-painted, the gloss green ones have unit details painted on the bases and are from another war gamers army...recognise any as your work?

Comparison with the set that replaced them, while all the poses in the new set had a match in the old set, the pose-count of the old set wasn't matched by the replacements (9 figures to the right). The new ones are immeasurably better sculpts though, and there's really nothing in the size.

The bazooka-man in the new set didn't get a No.2, but as the loader in the old set had spent ten years trying to force a mortar-bomb of nearly twice the calibre into the back of the bazooka the new guy was probably better-off doing his own loading!

The cause of the trouble. Matchbox only produced 7 sets, but they were a breath of fresh-air at the time. There had been no decent competition for Airfix since the start, and while Atlantic were around by 1977, they were hard to locate in the UK to start with, and the range was not that close to Airfix, apart from the Wild West range and there were scale-compatibility issues. The Matchbox on the other hand went mano'a'mano against the sacred-cows of Airfix's WWII oeuvre in the same 1:76th scale. And won...hands-down against these!

To illustrate the point above, lets look at the Atlantic offering...The box had exiting 'comic-book graphics which was an instant 'hook', and a comedy blurb on the back"...did they take part in D-Day? I always thought they were held for the pacific where they were developing a method for dealing with the Japanese that was very different to the slogging in Europe?

Blue-plastic figures are supposed to be the French, also from Atlantic, but they do appear mint in US Marine Corps boxes from time to time. You can see the influence of the 2nd version Airfix figures in these, but given the timeings, they would have been based on the 1:32 scale poses of Airfix's US Infantry - as were most of the offereings we'll be looking at here (Fujimi, Esci, Hong Kong...). They - the Atlantics - are a bit bigger, but a lot of the mismatch is down to the huge bases.

 French Box

 Nitto

 Aurora

 Fujimi

 1st Type boxes

 1975 - Thanks to Kostas

Floating - Just! Due to the two-part construction, it quickly fills with water, something that could be cured by 'glueing' with silicon-sealer...however, if the boat isn't full of water; water-tension pulls the paddlers out and they float-off face-down in the briny! Having the water in the boat actually keeps the figures in situ long enough for a quick photo-shoot.

Meccano magazine from May 1969 has the chaps acting as Bundeswher troops with a Roco-minitanks AFV in the battle-taxi/fire-support role.

Andrzej Kawecki's recycled PVC rubber, kiosk 'Miniatures' Set 2 US Marines compared to the Airfix set, there's a loss of size all round, but the level of copying vis-à-vis detail reproduced is not bad, and a rubber boat made of rubber is going to float a darn-sight better than the Airfix offering. Thanks to Konrad Lesiek for helping ID these.

Main artwork from the first version box, they all had a listing (not always 100% accurate) on the back, and this one shows how easy it is to sort out a set of these from loose figures; two-each of every pose, one-each of the bazooka-team and both halves of the rubber-boat remembering that the two paddlers are different poses and Bob's-your-Uncle!

One of the stranger piracies to come out of the hallowed hacking halls of Hong Kong was this crude copy of the US Marines grenade thrower, used as an AFV commander in one of the wackiest versions of several pseudo-Saladin armoured cars!

OBE's; Someone has gone to great lengths in a very small scale to convert the useless 'running-aimlessly-and-unarmed-guy' into a snow-trooper, no idea who's army he is supposed to be in, but with an M1 helmet: late war Italian 'Allies' or the later Korea? Very brittle now, sadly.

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