Monday, August 24, 2015

Pech Hermanos - Toy Soldiers

Pech Hermanos was a Spanish firm based out of Barcelona. Started by the Pech brothers, Jose and Manuel in 1945, they started out by recasting and cloning metal soldiers in 50mm. Towards the mid-50's they began casting figures in rubber and later on in plastic. This is also when they began to sculpt their own figures. These plastic sets are bigger in scale, in the 60mm range. They cover a wide variety or periods and nationalities, as well. In terms of WWII figures, they produced sets for most of the participating nations, each with about a dozen poses. And then they also produced complementary artilly sets and heavy weapons sets. They seem to have had a great, and very productive run while it lasted. The following linksshow more of their sets:
Pech Hermanos Collection Page 1
Pech Hermanos Collection Page 2
Pech Hermanos Collection Page 3
Pech Hermanos Collection Page 4
In the sixties, the business was dissolved, allegedly due to family difficulties, and some of the molds got sold to the firm Oliver, known today for their reproduction of the Pech Japanese. Other molds apparently ended up in the hands of BUM who still manufactures several of their WWII heavy weapons sets of the GIs, and some Spanish soldiers in parade poses. Today, the original Pech figures are a much sought after collector's item in Spain, fetching top Euro for a complete set. Unfortunately I only have one Pech Hermanos figure to show, along with several recasts from Oliver. Let's take a look.

Pech Hermanos Japanese Infantry
Pech Hermanos Japanese Infantry
This guy is part of an artillery crew -the officer in charge-, but it is basically sculpted in the same style as the rest of their Japanese infantry figures. He is also 60mm in scale. Note also the size and shape of the base and compare it to the bases of the Oliver guys below. As you can see, their soldeirs came factory painted.

Oliver Japanese Infantry (Pech Recasts)
Oliver Japanese Infantry (Pech Recasts) - Part I 
The first half of the set. Note how they have much larger bases and Oliver did a poor job embedding the smaller base within the larger one. On some cases, like the man on the right holding the binoculars, the inner base sticks out higher than the outer one. Overall, the figures show quite a bit of dynamism and action. I bet the originals were even nicer. Another thing to note is that Oliver apparently replaced the grenade thrown by the man on the left for some type of pole or stick. 

Oliver Japanese Infantry (Pech Recasts)
Oliver Japanese Infantry (Pech Recasts) - Part II
The rest of the set. Again, a good set of action poses. I also like the fact that even though the figures are large in size, they are not bulky. They have nice thin lines. 

Pech Hermanos US Infantry
Pech Hermanos US Infantry
This is a group of 7 figures that I was lucky to come across. If there are as many poses as there are for the Japanese, this means that I found about half of them. In general, I like the dynamism of the poses quite a bit. I am sure that at the time that they were released, they must have been very well received. I particularly like the officer, rallying his men to move forward. The only odd figure is the bazooka man who is standing up straight. Forget about offering a smaller target, he is not even bracing himself for the recoil by placing one foot in front of the other!