1983 [Modern - Cold War] Modern Russians, 9 01760 - HO/OO

Modern Russians

As noted elsewhere (WWII Russian small scale post) these were kindly donated to the Blog by Chris Smith, a connoisseur of ex-soviet toy figures and while they don't really confirm any Cold War 'unifomology', they equally don't really belong anywhere else!

Chris reports that they came from Hungary, so are more likely than not to be of Hungarian origin rather than Russian, and their appearance is best described as general infantry or Army Men!

I think the mounted one is my favourite here, a party-trusted, attached, commissar threatening to sword anyone running the wrong way!

1964; [WWII] Russian Infantry, S17 / 01717 / 01717-4 - HO/OO

Still needs proper text etc...

OBE's; A least one is doing service as a souave or 1914 Frenchman? Another red rule (see 1st type US Marines and Civilians), this time it seems to be; Soviet Commissars or political officers have bright-red jackets! And what's happening with the silver guy? Fighting Giant astronauts or aliens on Planet zb445227-b in sector 5, quadrant six, outer rim, I'll be betting!

Montaplex piracies, there was the usual figure set, but these two poses were also included in this seperate bagged truck from the 'vehicle' range. The truck's artwork is trying to be a Canadian Military Pattern (CMP), but the model itself is looking suspiciously like a post-war, early variant of Mercedes Unimog, probably pirated from Roco, Roskopf or EKO (themselves copies of the other two!) I would imagine.

 Clearly copies; they are a good milimeter-and-a-half or two milimeters shorter, their feet in the mud and the detail sparse. The shot is not helped by the poor-quality Airfix figure on the left, a shrinkage figure, I didn't notice his blobby chest when taking the photograph!

 1980 Catalogue Image

In the mid-'70's userpers appeared, they looked so cool in the box but were a major disapointment once they were out of the box! In the above image the earlier box is the lower one, the H&F panel being added quite soon after these sets came out.

Thanks to Kostas for the 1975 catalogue scans this collage is created from. The first appearance of the the white 'corner' boxes, I think

Blog-reader Chris Smith - who some of you may know as a bit of an expert on this ex-soviet stuff - sent these to the Blog as a donation, just before Christmas (2018) which was very kind; thank you Chris.

They were obtained from Hungary and may well be from there rather than the 'Russian' that all this stuff tends to get labelled with. The figures however don't really conform to any recognisable East-Bloc or Warsaw Pact force, and are best described as generic 'army men'.

However the officer/commissar on horseback with sword and the heavy machine-gun (more of a light anti-tank gun!) are clear references to soviet types, so this is where they belong for comparison purposes! The MG/Gun seems based on a known, larger (30mm) Russian flat though, however these are semi-flat and - as you can see - around the 1:76th-1:72nd mark.

1969; [WWII] Russian Infantry, Patt.1735 / 51453-8-1735 / 51453-8 / 51553-7 / 51553 - 1:32 (54mm)

Breakdown of a complete set's contents, 29 figure box

A mint set needs to contain one of each of the figures above, with the equivalent number (where hard to discern) for each pose as given to be properly 'Mint'; otherwise it's just a 'made-up' set  in both meanings of the word!

The three colours of Airfix I know of, the grey ran for the longest time; from day one, in the late 1960's and with the odd faint shade variation between production-runs remained unchanged until 1980'ish, when the 14-figure boxes contained the orange ones I think. The Khaki examples are a more recent re-issue/CTS thing I've - so far - paid scant attention to.

Some Hong Kong copies; mostly generic junk, but the lighter-brown ones (top six and left of mixed shots) seem to be the Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) shots, although of poor quality they match the small-scale versions for colour.

Best copy on the left, poorest on the right. As mentioned above Rado seem to have manufactured their larger scale copies in the same colours (per nation/subject) as their small scale ones, which means you should find these in silver, green, blue and the orange (below) I think, as well as this chocolate brown (the commonest - in both scales), which has been dutifully followed by the bottom-feeding sub-pirate!

Ri-Toy's standing firing in orange, the kneeling firing compared with Airfix's original and another kneeling figure, who has the look of a good-quality copy, sent in by Chris Smith and seen over on the 'Home Blog' the other day (2019), but he's not as well detailed.