Saturday, November 15, 2014
US Troops
British Commonwealth Troops
Click on the links below to see a post on each of the different service branches of the British Commonwealth's Armed Forces.
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
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
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.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
German Infantry Part IV
Since Blogger only allows for the tags in a post to be so large, I have had to create yet another post with additional German Infantry figures...
DGN German Infantry - Part I
This is one of the weakest sets. The figures are under scale and the detail is not what it could be. For instance, the shape of the helmets is definitely not the distinctive German style. While they did try to add the ledge at the bottom, it did not turn out quite right. The bipod on the kneeling machine gunner is also quite large and the barrel a bit short.
DGN German Infantry - Part II
Here you can also see how some of the figures are quite short, particularly the grenade thrower. The mortar man also poses a bit of a challenge when it comes to getting him to stand straight and not fall over.
DGN German Infantry - Part III
These are the best poses when it comes to head gear I think. Only the sub mgs are a bit on the larger side. Other than that, these figures are fairly decent. This is another set for which I only have 11 poses.
Click here to see some pictures of painted German Infantry.
Click here to see a few more figures related to the painted sets.
Here you can see pictures of additional German Infantry figures.
Click here to see German Paratroops in action.
Click here to see German Waffen SS in action.
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