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Saturday, October 18, 2014

Action Casting - Toy Soldiers

Action Casting is a small US firm founded by the son of John Stengel, the Marx-Man, a popular toy soldier dealer in the US. Action Casting is 100% a home operation from sculpting to casting. The sculpting happens to be very good in my opinion, while the casting could still use some improvement so that pockets of air can be avoided in the final product. For now, I have seen two sets from this firm. The German Paras shown below, and a set of Vietcong troops. The sculpting on the Vietcong troops is also quite good. According to Action Casting's proprietor, he plans to release additional poses of German infantry, something I am looking forward to. I really hope Action Casting can get its manufacturing process up to a competitive level as I seriously think that the sculptor has very good skills and a good sense for how to pose figures. 

Action Casting German Paratroops
Action Casting German Paratroops
These are some nice and interesting figures. In particular, I like the man throwing the grenade. It is nice how he is leaning back while his lower legs lean slightly forward. The level of detail on these figures is also quite good, with quite a bit of gear on the figures accurately represented. If you pay attention you can see some of the casting imperfections, but I hope that once they are primed, painted and they get their protective coating, those will be less obvious.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Burger King - Toy Soldiers

Burger King is not really a toy soldier manufacturer, but apparently they partnered with Pixar in the mid 90's to release a set of toy soldiers modeled after the Toy Story GIs as part of a marketing campaign in which they also released a few other Toy Story characters. The figures are closer to 65mm in size and the number of poses is a bit limited. I was not aware of them until I found one on a batch of mixed figures. Luckily the base was stamped with the Burger King branch which allowed me to track down the rest of the figures. 

Burger King GIs
Burger King GIs
Here's a bit of an unusual set. It is modeled after the Toy Story GIs, released in 1995. They are about 65mm tall. If there were a few more poses, it would make a good unit. Given their limited number of poses, they will have to be combined with some 70 mm GIs to give them some support. The sculpting is actually fairly decent, including the level of detail. It is the limited number of poses which makes this set a bit underwhelming.