Tuesday 10 March 2020

The Romanians are coming!

Plans are afoot for a wargame set in the Crimea during WW2 using 54mm plastic toy soldiers, it's a way off yet but it will still need a bit of preparation.  Fortunately the game will require little in the way of air and armour units, but it will require some Romanian infantry and I can't think of any firm that made such troops, therefore some sort of bodge is called for.

 Taking the Osprey book as my source for uniforms I trawled through the mountain of junk figures I keep for such purposes and came up with several bags of these Hugonnet figures.  I bought them for a few francs a bag in a supermarket, on a booze cruise to Calais forty years ago, and they have been languishing in the back of a cupboard ever since waiting for me to come up with a use for them.  I've included the header card from the bag which shows the Hugonnet/Feral logo quite nicely in the bottom right corner.

The Romanian uniform comprised a full length jacket and short gaiters, so we're okay on that score, Mountain Rifle Regiments wore a large floppy beret, so that's good too.  Only problem is with the regular infantry units who wore a variety of helmets including the French "Adrian" and Dutch models, I have some metal heads in Adrian helmets so could do a few quick swops for a bit of variation but the current helmets are fairly indistinct so I may just leave them as they are.

Here are all the poses, Hugonnet were notorious for making piracies of other firms figures, mostly Starlux but also Cofalu and Cherilea.  The first three figures in the top row are copies of Starlux and the rest are all copies of Cofalu modern French army toy soldiers.

Moulded in green and tan these are very much the French equivalent of "Army Men" cheap toys in plastic, colour coded to provide two distinct armies.  They are crude, anatomically challenged and badly moulded, many carrying the deformity of being injected into an overheated mould.  But for all that I have a certain fondness for them, the poses are very dynamic and I've always felt they had potential, I just never figured out what that might be.  Well, we'll see.....

16 comments:

  1. As a non-collector living in the boonies on the edge of civilization, I am frequently surprised at how many manufacturers and ranges there are that I have never heard of, let alone seen. Sometime the internet is a good thing.

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    1. After nearly sixty years of collecting and living in the heart of London I still come across new figures that I've never seen before, almost every day. It never ceases to amaze me how large this field of collecting is.

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    2. Interesting figures. I found this Year an interesting source of (images of ) unusual foreign plastic figures (but often hugely overpriced re their vintage-ness, rarity and overseas Shipping etc.) is Etsy. If you type in Toy Soldiers, there are some unusual Greek, Eastern European etc. examples.

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    3. Thanks for the tip Mark, I'll take a look. Sorry to hear you can't make Woking, I'd been looking forward to meeting you and seeing Alan again but these are difficult times and there's always next year. Best wishes, Brian

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  2. Looking forward to seeing the conversions.

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  3. I’m sure your lot will add tone to the mountain troops I am currently bodging!

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  4. Un proiect extrem de ambițios, dacă reușești să sugerezi casca olandeză (dutch hemet) și moletierele (puttee) 80% din misiune este realizată. Măcar cu această ocazie sper să găsești fotografiile unde românii erau cu căciulile din blană de oaie. Succes!

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    1. Vă mulțumesc pentru informațiile de pe pălărie piele de oaie, am găsit imaginile.

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  5. I've seen 'army men' painted really well on another blog (name which one alludes me at present!) and have no doubt you'll do the same.

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    1. I guess they won't look any worse than they already do!

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  6. Go for it Brian! They'll be fine.

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  7. That's why you should never get rid of anything, you never know when it will come in handy! At least that's what I tell my wife! I love the header card, a blend of Tarzan/Rambo with a flag that would appeal to children in the UK, France, America, etc. Good luck with the project Brian, I look forward to seeing the finished product!

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    1. Absolutely right, first rule of converting - never throw anything away!

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