One of the very first sets we had as kids, Dad grabbed them at a newsagents at Kings Cross to keep us quiet on the - what used to be - four hour-odd journey from London to Retford, sometime around 1969 (I would have been 6-ish my brother a little younger), and we played with them on the little shelf that used to run under the windows between two sets of double seats. We took turns having either the guys with helmets or the guys with caps! And they were early;...no machine-gunners!
First version box in various guises, the middle one is the earliest of the three here, being the 50
¢ overprint of the very first version, the upper one is the next, keeping the yellow/green graphics but a bit of a design-mess with the additional black lettering and the lower one is a later variant with cleaner tided graphics.
A complete set on the runner, this is the later set, with one prone shooter cavity replaced with a scale-down of the 1:32nd scale machine-gunner, I think this happened around the time of the last 'Blue' boxes, or the first white 'corner art' boxes, so around 1974, our gunnerless set would have been bought about 1969/70.
A complete set of OBE's, depicting the earlier set, with minimal paint, and all hats painted red, either to denote a specific unit, or maybe for use as North Korean/Chicom's in a post-war war-gaming army - not the flag!?
Let's swap out a sniper, add a machine-gunner and inject them with a wishy-washy polymer in a paler colour, the same treatment the 1st Version Afrika Korps and 8th Army got. The Germans also got a cavity swap, briefly carrying a couple of the MP40 shooters, also from the 1:32nd scale sets, which would end-up replacing them altogether.
Fujimi had a stab in their small range of AFV kits, with a sweet little mostly fictional mountain gun, which was, at the same time very useful. If you recognise the second image, it's because it originally appeared in One Inch Warrior magazine as part of an overview of Japanese troops in small scale.
Marx made a slight larger set, of which these are the Marksmen reissues from Rado/Ri-Toys who inherited the moulds at some point in the mid-1980's. There are some poses not seen here, which seem to have been a separate tool, lost after a Canadian Marx issue. Originals and Canadian were hard polystyrene, later window-box mini-sets, and UK issue were polyethylene, all factory painted.
Although Montaplex would pirate the Airfix set eventually, their first effort for their paper-envelope issued Sobres (surprises), was these hideous monstrosities, copied from or utilising earlier hard-plastic figures from a named maker, whose identity escapes me, but it will appear here when I find the note!
Obove - strangely, my favourite pose, with colour variations on the left and OBE's on the right, recruited into the Union Forces of the American Civil War (ACW), a decidedly uncivil event, which the losers are still refusing to accept they lost!
Below - the hard 'styrene kit figures which accompanied the Jungle Outpost model kit. The kit was a straight scale-down of the earlier 1:32nd scale clip-together accessory, redone as a glueable model kit with extra scenic items taken from the slightly earlier Forward Command Post kit, and including a vacformed base.
1975 catalogue scan of the - then - still quite new 'white' or 'corner graphic' boxing, image via Kostas, a follower of the Blog, note the machine-gunner in the foreground, with the crawling guy as a No.2, all are quite accurate to their diminutive plastic models.
Atlantic, I bought my first two sets from the little Totto Lotto store in Neuhausen-ob-Eck, in around 1977, and they were quite the revelation, although disappointingly large, but I loved the medium machine-gun, with its Dalek-like air-cooled barrel, and rather casual-looking gunner.
Colour variations; during that mid-1970's cavity-swapping period, the cavity removed from the Japanese Infantry, was added to sets of 1st version WWII German infantry, as supplied to the Beachhead Assault Set. This would appear to have been an attempt by Airfix to right an oddity with the set.
He replaced one of the stretcher-bearers, probably the one who reappeared with a ginormous base? Who was moved to where one of the AT-Rifle loaders had been, It had always been a slightly odd anachronism that the set with one AT-gun had two loaders - the DAK having two guns, gunners and loaders, but the German Infantry having only the one gun and gunner?
To find these figures now, you need to be sorting not 1st version WWII sets, but WWI German Infantry sets, that’s where I find all mine!
A catalogue image from a late catalogue, I forget which one right now (1980?), but it's interesting for seeming to reference the 54mm Japanese soldier from the 8-figure 1940's set, as seen here;
Were they still hanging around in the art department in '79/80 to be so used, or is it just coincidence? To be fair that early figure is wearing shorts, but otherwise there's little choose between the two stances.
OBE's, or Other Bugger's Efforts, this is how we rolled back then, we have a nice set of realistically painted chaps at the top, and another recruit to the Federal Army middle-left, a few hands-face-weapon-&-webbing who are pretty innocuous, the yellow bunch is pretty leery, while I don't know what's happening with the gunmetal shirt brigade, far right, but I think in might be both literally and figuratively Far Right?
The metallic green chap on the bottom row might be a spaceman, or just another attempt, gloss featured a lot back then! The upper flag is quite good in an impressionist manner, but the lower one has clearly been paint-balling far too often!
Upper shot shows the degradation of the machine-tool over time, with plenty of flash on the base of the right-hand figures, and his Katana has become a horse-whip, but as Hollywood is always keen to show us how Japanese officers liked their horse-whipping, usually of female prisoners or internees (they treated them equally abysmally) that's not so much of a problem, just paint it dark-leather brown!
Lower shot is a rarity - he's been caught in the tool, on the way out, while still very soft and now has a crater in his chest!
Comparison with the Matchbox set. Did the matchbox set influence the addition of the MG gunner in the Airfix set? Dates are almost right, but I don't think so, if Airfix were thinking like that they would have carried the 2" Infantry Mortar across too, which was also in the existing 54mm set.
Montaplex 'sobre' (suprise) comparison shot.
One of the Montaplex sets they appeared in, was actually using them as North Korean or Chicom troops, from the first major UN conflict, and come with the British Para's (not used in Korea - too busy in a dozen brush-fire wars . . . and then Suez!) and a copy of Manurba's diminutive little novelty match-firer gun.
The new century sees Hornby Hobbies utilising old 1:32nd scale artwork to seriously confuse, there's no love of the product any more, they churn-out that impossibly inaccurate Sd.Kfz. 234 armoured car, while charging a premium for 'legacy' or nostalgia issues, whose mould were long-ago paid-for.
The cartoon artwork of the first version box, that's real nostalgia!
How a pre-MG set was presented in an AHM (Associated Hobby Manufacturers) catalogue in the mid-late 1960's, AHM were a wholesaler/importer co-op, carrying all sorts of stuff from Europe and Japan into the USA, including the indignity of Roco Minitanks sharing catalogues with the UPC clones!
Ephemera taken from my files, with a graphic splanation . . . no; SPLANATION (cheers Penny!) of the cavity change, and another of the One Inch Warrior magazine images in the original glorious Kodachrome!
Another bunch of OBE's, I don't know if we are supposed to be viewing them as Napoleonic Light Infantry/Rifles, or something slightly more esoteric? Black webbing suggests the former, colour/standard/flag suggests the latter?
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