Early Toy Soldier Newsreels

Continuing my romp through the YouTube archives, here are a few more finds that I think are worth more than just one look.  It always surprises me that however much you trawl through YouTube every now and again something new surfaces, which has probably been buried away there for years.

Model Soldier Club 1939
Now this is a bit of archive footage I haven't seen before, it's an early meeting of the British Model Soldier Society.  Among the luminaries I spotted Otto Gottstein (in the opening shot, sitting at the far end of the table smoking a cigarette, next to a chap with a pipe) he was President of the Society at the time and a great patron of the hobby.  Also I think I see a young Deryck Guyler (at about 22 seconds in) who was a keen member of the BMSS before going on to be one of the founding members of the Society of Ancients.  The clip includes a rather nice selection of model knights produced by Richard Courtenay.

Model Soldiers 1953
I have Detlef Heerbrand to thank for finding this clip and posting it on facebook (which I finally got around to joining this month - a sure sign that it's days are numbered).  It features Bill Carman who was Vice Chaiman of the BMSS at the time and was one of the first to manufacture model soldiers for the collector.  His figures are a bit basic by modern standards but I've always been a big fan of them so I was particularly pleased when this surfaced.

Toy Soldiers 1949
Archive footage shot inside the Britains factory showing the hand casting of hollowcast figures, through to cleaning the castings, painting and packing them.

Toy Soldiers 1965
This piece of footage has been doing the rounds for a while but given that it's dated 1965 it's interesting that the commentary points out the hollow cast figures shown are made strictly for adults as collectors items. Britains ceased hollow casting in 1966, the story that this was because of lead paint and child safety fears is an urban myth, the truth is they just weren't selling enough.  The second half of the film shows an injection moulding machine being loaded up with plastic pellets and states that production of plastics was in full swing for the juvenile toy market.

Model Soldier sale 1968
This newsreel covered the very first specialist auction of Toy Soldiers (in fact the first specialist auction of any toys), held by Knight, Frank and Rutley who were founded in 1896 as Valuers, Surveyors and Auctioneers, they are a well known Estate Agents (Realtors).  I didn't recognise any of the faces amongst the crowd here but the toy soldiers needed no introduction.

Rose Model Soldiers catalogue 1957

I never really got the bug for painting the white metal Military Models that proliferated during the mid 1970's, I dabbled of course but never really developed the skill or patience for all that shadowing and highlighting which became the fashion so beloved of the international modelling magazines. Some people painted them sumptuously in oils others went for the ultimate in authenticity by using vegetable dyes, for me, that path would ultimately have led to madness so I stuck to my tins of Humbrol gloss enamels and did them in Old Toy Soldier style.  Probably my favourite manufacturer of this time was Rose Models sculpted by Russell Gammage so I was delighted to discover this:

I recently bought up a selection of old magazines and while flicking through them what should fall out but this rather quaint Rose Models Soldiers catalogue from 1957.  It is an A4 sheet folded into A5 and printed on one of those old Roneo reprographic machines that we used in school before the advent of the photocopier, the sort that you fitted a carbon sheet to and turned the handle.  The smell of solvent filled the room so you felt high as a kite by about page 15, then the paper feed went askew but you didn't notice until about page 60 so every sheet had to be amended by hand where it had misprinted.  They were great days.

It's not a great document in the scheme of things but it gave me a moments amusement so I thought I would share it for anyone with a memory of Rose.  I never realised they'd been in business since the 1950's (never gave it a thought really) so I was interested to see the prices - 5 shillings (25p in today's worthless coinage) for an unpainted foot figure, in the late 1950's that would have bought you at least 5 pints of beer, today that would make the castings £17.50 each (all figures based on London beer prices).

There is no mention of Gammage's smaller scale wargame figures so I guess they didn't come out until some years later.  Since publishing this post Rob (Xaltotun of Python) has kindly directed me to a post on the Old Metal Detector blog showing that the first two Rose wargaming figures were listed in the 1956 catalogue and I subsequently noticed that what I have here is a supplement to that list.

Posts to this blog have been rather sparse of late because we recently suffered a burglary, thankfully little was taken (causing Mrs C. to observe that our electrical goods are so big and obsolete as to be not worth nicking) but the haul included my camera, and as my web/blog philosophy is to be big on images while short on text this loss has had a very limiting effect on me.  Even greater disruption has been caused by the subsequent fallout - dealing with Police and Insurers (both very helpful) changing locks, adding locks, raising the height of fences and installing an alarm system (the latter a neat piece of kit based on wireless technology which will even send me a text if the miscreant should return for a second round!).  Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as the insurance claim is settled, in the meantime I am reduced to the use of my scanner and whatever stock photos I can dig up.