Clairet was a French firm which apparently was in production in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. The firm was named after its sculptor François Clairet. They manufactured not only toy soldiers like cowboys, indians, knights, etc., but also many different kinds of animals, many of which François Clairet modeled after the ones in the Parisian Zoo. The initial models were cast in lead, but they later switched to hard plastic. Apparently some of their figures were also issued later by Marx and Wendal. One interesting bit that I read in a discussion forum is that the Clairet figures suffer from a 'bacterial disease' which eats the plastic and makes it leak oils that 'infect' other figures. Not sure if this is true, but that's the first time I hear something like this... I don't really have many Clairet guys, just a few figures from a set that I came across by pure chance. Let's take a look...
Clairet US Infantry
These GIs are a bit unusual. The poses are decent, although the level of detail is a bit on the low-end of the spectrum, mainly because they only come with weapons and uniforms, but nothing else in terms of extra gear. Considering however that they were probably sculpted 60+ years ago, I think we can say that they were fairly well done for their time.
