How they made Tin Flat toy soldiers

The recent post featuring some Tin Flat toy soldiers drew some interest so continuing the theme I thought I'd throw in this short Italian clip from 1937 showing them being made in Austria.  I quite liked this one because it goes through the whole process from drawing the design to engraving the mould, casting, cleaning up, painting and displaying in dioramas.  For anyone who already casts lead toy soldiers, there won't be anything new here but it's always fun to see a piece of old film, and the music's quite jolly too!

Enjoy.

German East Afrika in 40mm

I spotted this rather nice collection of German Colonials at the London Toy Soldier Show in March but somehow the pics slipped below my radar and have just come up for air.  They are mostly Schneider semi-flat homecast figures but they've been converted to Schutztruppe etc. which I think is rather neat.  

In the foreground and left native figures provide the Maji Maji rebels, behind them the German Colonials in tropical uniform and squeezing in at the back right are the Schutztruppe Askaris

A closer look at the Askaris with some rather nice standard bearers line infantry and jaegers.

"Hey they gotta' band"  well sort of.

The natives work tirelessly in the cowrie shell fields.

There was also a clutch of scratch built buildings to go with the figures, this is the Colonial Government House and to the right of it is on of the native huts.

Lets face it the original figures are so crude and common that they're barely worth the metal they're cast from but with a bit of work and imagination there's a lot you can do with them, why did I never think of doing this before?

Authenticast 40mm semi flats - mystery solved!

Back in March I posted an entry about a couple of 40mm semi flat sets made by Authenticast and questioned whether they were sculpted by Holger Erikssson because they were similar to his style but didn't carry the distinctive HE monogram.   Here is a picture of one set to remind people:

I subsequently received a comment and a more detailed email from Hans Jacobson in Sweden telling me that "They are slightly modified figures from about 1910 first manufactured in Stockholm by "Gamla Santonska Tenngjureiet" (The Old Santesson Tin Foundry) originally moulded in slate moulds.  Later the slate moulds were bought by the owner of Autenticast Kurt Wennerberg.  Autenticast modified some of the figures and kept some of them as they were.  He made then new rubber moulds of them that could keep up to commercial use. I think." 

Hans also told me the original figures were made for the Morocco crises 1910-11 and very kindly sent the following picture of the other figures in the set.

I think the mounted figures are stunning particularly the rider firing from under the horse.

The name of Holger Eriksson has become so synonymous with the firm of Authenticast that it is easy to forget that he was just one of the sculptors, the main one certainly, employed by Curt Wennberg who set up the venture in The Irish Republic on behalf of Comet Metal Products of the USA in 1946.  Before that in 1937, Wennberg had set up a company called Treforest Mouldings (in Wales) who are best known for their 1:1200 scale waterline model ships (under the brand name Tremo) but are also on record as making 40mm toy soldiers.  While the ships turn up regularly (at horrendous prices) the soldiers have never been seen, so I am wondering if Wennberg originally made copies of the Santesson figures at Treforest before issuing them on a more commercial basis at Authenticast?

 

Hans also discovered the origin of the standard bearer, it is a Turkish Janissary from another set by Santesson depicting the 1713 Skirmish at Bender, an action from the Great Northern War which I had never heard of but which would make a great wargame scenario.  Finally Hans sent me a link to the Swedish Toy Soldier Club website which shows early Swedish 40mm semi flats as well as some 54mm figures by Holger Eriksson and another of the Authenticast sculptors, Lennart Norrke.  Here is the link http://carolinen.se/home.htm the site takes a bit of navigating but it is well worth it, from the menu list on the left hand side click on "Galleri" then on "Aldre tennfigurer" for the 40mm and "Rundmassiva figurer" for the HE/LN figures.  If you have an interest in old waterline model ships, 40mm semi flats or want some inspiration for Funny Little Wars armies you'll find plenty to interest you here.

Battleships belching Smoke and Flame by Heyde?

This rather nice little set of Battleships has left me with something of a quandary. 

I think they are meant to be Pre-dreadnoughts (though I am no expert in ship design) and show two ships of the Imperial German Navy battling it out with a sole Frenchy off the coast of Denmark, as denoted by the lighthouse sporting the Danish flag.  But what does this group represent?  I don't think it could be a Franco Prussian War encounter because the ships look much later and anyway the Imperial Navy wasn't founded until 1871, also I can't find any mention of an action between German and French Naval forces in the North Sea in WW1. 

Who made them?  Well Haffner and Spenkuch seem to have been the the main providers of semi flat battleships but I've looked through several books on early German leads and the examples I've found by these companies don't look anything like the above.   The nearest thing I could find in terms of sculpting and paint style is by Heyde, which is curious because this firm mostly made it's vehicles, vessels and accessories 3D in tinplate.

A great set, I particularly like the ram on the French ship but the secondary armament firing from a cupola half way up the mask seems a bit incongruous to me, is this correct? 

40mm semi-flats by Holger Eriksson for Authenticast - confirmed

Hidden in the bottom of the junk box I bought at the London Show last weekend were more of the 40mm semi-flat Authenticast figures that I recently blogged about, and here they are:

There are three of each pose shown above but sadly no box, I'm not usually bothered about boxes and frankly the whole concept of something being better or more valuable because it's mint and boxed just grinds my gears but in this case the absence of a box leaves me with more questions than answers.  With the previous sets of 7YW infantry and Arabs all the places in the boxes are filled so I know that they are the full set complete with individual portrait figures of standard bearers etc.  In the case of these new figures I'm left wondering if they are both from the same set or separate sets of WW2 British infantry and Sikhs, also were there any other poses?  However what I do know this time is that they were definitely sculpted by Holger Eriksson, apart from the unmistakable poses and chiseled finish they are marked HE under the base.  Semi flat figures are not every bodies cup of tea (not mine either really) but discovering these unexpectedly in a box of junk gave me a moment of pure serendipity.

More Authenticast semi-flats - Holger Eriksson?

This is the second set of Authenticast semi-flats that I've unearthed, the standard bearer looks like an Eriksson design to me but I'm not so sure about the two arabs.  There is no indication what these are supposed to be on the box so I am assuming them to be arabs but exactly where from and what period I couldn't say for certain.  The standard bearer has a very Ottoman look to him and I think he may have lost a bit off the top of the standard.

I'm not sure if it will show in the photo but the green standard above has a Union Jack engraved on it so i'm guessing tht this figure also did service as a sepoy at some other time in some other set.

The mounted figures are in scale with the foot but I think  the horses might be a tad small.  Eriksson is probably best known for fine sculpting of his horses and to me these don't cut the mustard on that score so either they were done by someone else or they are very early examples before he refined his skill.

Authenticast 40mm semi-flats - but are they by Holger Eriksson?

Back in about 1966, so when I was 10, my dad decided to build a new wall for the front garden of our house in Chiswick, West London.  In digging up the area to lay the footings he unearthed a Royal Horse Artillery cap badge, 2 live rounds of .303 ammunition and a white plastic toy soldier of a highlander standing at ease.  How this cache came to be there is anybodies guess.  Now if I'd found a couple of live rounds I would immediately hand them over to the police but for reasons best known to himself  my dad decided to store them in the cupboard under the stairs next to the gas meter! but the important thing is that I got the cap badge and the highlander. 

By that time I was already an avid collector of plastic toy soldiers and was well versed in the products of all the major UK manufacturers but I'd never seen anything like that highlander, he'd lost his base and rifle, he wore a quirky uniform almost Crimean but certainly pre WW1 and was very well detailed.  I always felt there was something special about him but it would be another ten years before I was able to confirm that he was made by Malleable Mouldings from a design by the sculptor Holger Eriksson for Authenticast, a firm in Galway, Eire (where my dad was from).  That was the start of an ongoing love affair I have had for the works of Eriksson, a most prodigious sculptor for Comet, Authenticast, Malleable Mouldings, SAE (Swedish Afrikan Engineers), Spencer Smith, Prince August and his own Connoisseur range.

In the never ending tidy up of my toy soldier room I unearthed this old box of Authenticast 40mm semi flat figures of British infantry from the 7 Years War.  On the base they are marked Eire and a number has been scratched on each one but there is not the distinctive HE found on the majority of Authenticast's 54mm figures, denoting that they were designed by Eriksson.  Of course HE wasn't the only sculptor for Authenticast and it may be that they simply didn't mark the smaller sized figures so perhaps we can only go by the general style, which I would say is very HE particularly the man advancing at the ready which has that "purposeful stride" so typical of Eriksson. 

Despite the fact that they were in production for a relatively short time Authenticast 54mm figures are fairly common but these smaler semi flats are much less so, I have one other set (which I'll post up in a day or so) and I recall seeing a box of Napoleonics at a Phillips Auction about 15 years ago and that's about it.  The other box that I have is identical except that it carries the original price: 2/11 (two shillings and eleven pence. which for those not conversant with British pre-decimal currency would now be fourteen and a half new pence)

The standard bearer has his head turned to look back at the rest of the troops, a small detail that adds to the charm of the set.  Were they the forerunners of the Prince August range?  It's possible I suppose, these are much thinner than the PA figures.