Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Oliver - Toy Soldiers

This is an obscure brand for me. I am not sure if it is related to a company called Oliver Toys which manfactured farm toys. As far as I can tell, there are only a few figure sets out there allegedly manufactured by this company, but only a few: the Japanese figures shown in this post, French Foreign Legion, and some Galdiators. The figures are 60mm in size. The ones I have are clones of the originals, reissued by a dealer called ATS Toy Soldiers. As you can see, the scuplting and poses was fairly decent. If you have any more info about this firm I would love to hear from you!


Oliver 60mm Japanese Infantry - Part I
I had never heard about these figures until one day that I was browsing through eBay. They offer 11 good poses to complement your Imperial Army. Certainly they are a bit larger, but they should still fit in. I also saw them listed in a brown color. I like that the poses are quite dynamic, like the third guy from the left or the second one from the right, and are well proportioned. They also carry a nice variety of weapons.


Oliver 60mm Japanese Infantry - Part II
What reveals that they are unofficial recasts (i.e. clones) is that if you pay attention to the base of some of the figures you will see how the base of the original figure is contained within a larger base which indicates that a second mold was made using an original cast. If the molds are lost, I suppose that is a good solution. What I didn't quite like was that the eBay listing did not point that out, and on close inspection, the figures have other imperfections typical of clones.


Click here to see a post about Japanese Armor

3 comments:

  1. Clones or not, this is a great set. You rarely see a set of Japenese that aren't all charging or involved in a bonzai attack. I think the officer with binoculars is very appealing, right now I have a Japanese mountain gun that has no crew members and he would be the perfect leader.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree. The poses are nice and the sculpting is well proportioned. My gripe about them being clones is that they have quite a few imperfections caused by the lower quality casting process. For instance, that guy with binoculars, when you look at him from behind, the legs have lost all the detail and seem to have been shaved off with a knife. The originals must have been quite nice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hola: Yo tengo los originales que datan de los años 60 o 70; su fabricante es: PECH HERMANOS, fabricante Español de esa época. Posteriormente los fabricó OLIVER, también Español; con el paso del tiempo los moldes originales se vendieron y según mis informes los compró otra empresa Española: GOMARSA, quien hace años YA NO FABRICA SOLDADOS DE JUGUETE y según creo a CERRADO la Fábrica... Ahora vende estas figuras ATS, de USA. Saludos,

    ReplyDelete