In MWAN issue 95's editorial Hal wondered why no one has ever produced a range of 25 30mm hard plastic figures. Well, although in general agreement that it would be a "good thing", I thought I ought to point out the one or two efforts that have been made along these lines. Some with rather more success than others.
A relatively large (and probably the most successful) supplier of 25mm hard plastic figure! is Games Workshop. Of course they all hide within the fantasy ranges produced by this company under misleading names such as Empire troops or Bretomians. The Empire troops are all classic Landsknechts, whilst the Bretonnians are Agincourt period medievals. Here's what's available:
Empire Soldiers: a good box of 16 figures which can be made up either as swordsman or halberdiers. There are a few metal accessories which allow a drummer, officer and standard bearer to be put together if desired. The figures are provided as kits - four leg types, four torsos, seven head variants, four variants of pairs of arms, four different halberd tops, 3 shield designs, and various bit: and bobs (feathers, water bottles and so on). This means that several boxes can be made up without producing an exact duplicate figure!
Empire Handgunners: another multipart figure box, with again 16 figures to be built up from a large variety of parts. The handgunners make up in an at the advance pose, with the handguns held either at the figure's side or across his chest. Similarly to the Empire soldiers box there are metal parts all make up a command figures stand.
Empire Crossbowmen: very similar to the handgunners set, but this time the crossbows are either held across the chest or leaning on the advancing figure's shoulder. Again a 16 figure box.
Bretonnian Archers: These are single figure mouldings in two variants of the classic firing pose. They come in a box of 8 figures, 4 of each pose.
Bretonnian Knights: consists of a plastic horse with a pair of lance wielding rider figures - one with the lance at the level the other AA it raised at salute Variety of figure is provided by using different shields and helms supplied with the figure.
The two Bretonnian figure types - foot and mounted - were originally in the Warhammer boxed set, but have also been released separately.
There are several other part metal/part plastic possibilities available from GW. If ordering by Mail Order it is possible to buy just the figure components required, and there are regular features of simple conversions made in GW publications. A couple of examples are Empire pikemen - a box of the Empire soldiers made up as Halberdiers provided with pikes from a metal figure, or mounted swordsman made by using the plastic horse and metal torso from a cavalry figure with the top half of the Empire soldiers. Unfortunately, once metal "bits" start creeping in the bargain price of the plastic figures starts creeping out !
I'm not sure if the Spencer Smith range of figures is still available in plastic - the only recent adverts for these figures I've seen have talked about metal figures. Unfortunately this is a range that I'm only familiar with via pictures in wargaming books such as Charles Grant's The War Game.
The only other source of 25mm plastic figures I can recall ever seeing was the RosPak range. This was produced by Heroics and Ros (the 6mm figure manufacturers) briefly in the early 1980s. I found adverts in Military Modelling from November 1981 until July 1982, and there was a comment in Swart Asquith's Observation Post column about the range being withdrawn a little later in that year, These were hard plastic figures, sold in bags of 20 foot or 12 mounted with typically 2 poses of figure in each bag. Bags retailed for £ O.99: 5 per foot figure and 8p per cavalry figure. At this time 25mm metal figures were going for around 20-35p for foot and 50-80p for cavalry, so the RosPacs were substantially cheaper than metal alternatives. I seem to remember seeing them once, in a shop near the Imperial War Museum in London, and they weren't bad at C. They didn't catch on though, although presumably the moulds still exist somewhere - who knows, maybe their time will come around again ! Here's a list of what was available.
Ancients: AGI: Greek City hoplites - 10 advancing & 10 at attention; AG2: Greek Light Infantry - 10 Thracian Peltasts & 10 Scythian Mercenary Archers; AG3: Greek Cavalry - 6 with Boeotian helmets & 6 with Thracian helmets; AG4: Macedonian Phalangiter - 10 advancing, & 10 standing; ARI: Roman 1st Century Legionaires - 9 at attention, 9 attacking, standard bearer, hornist, centurion (21 figures); AR2: Roman light Infantry - 10 Auxiliary infantry & 10 Western auxiliary archers; AR3: Roman cavalry - 6 each of two types; API: Persian Archers - 20 kneeling firing; AP2: Persian Spearmen; AP3 Persian Mede infantry; AP4: Persian Immortals.
There were also promises of Persian cavalry, Celts and Napoleonics to come, but I don't think these ever actually appeared.
There is one other place I can remember seeing large 25mm plastic figures - on the HaT miniatures Web site (WWW.HaT.com) there is a picture of "figures we'll never sell" or some similar title. Basically, the master figures for a new box were sent off to have moulds made from them and the mould maker got the scaling wrong - instead of coming out at about 22min they were about 28nim (about Wargame Foundry size !). Fortunately (!) the mistake was noticed, and these figures won't be in the shops. Bit of a shame really.
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© Copyright 1999 Hal Thinglum
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