In the begining.

This mounted trumpeter of the Household Cavalry was given to me in 1960, it may not have been the very first toy soldier I ever owned but it is certainly the one that has remained in my posession the longest. It was made in England by Wendal, it is aluminium and is 54mm scale. Aluminium figures were very popular in post-war France but never realy caught on elsewhere, the only exceptions I can think of are Krolyn of Denmark who made copies of Elastolin as well as some original designs in this material and Wendal who made copies of Quiralux figures. Quiralux were the market leaders in manufacturing aluminium toy soldiers in France.

Aluminium figures are made by slush casting a process whereby the master model is pressed into compacted damp sand, then removed and the molten aluminium is poured into the resulting cavity. To make a two part mould the sand is packed into two steel trays which are then "sandwiched" around the master model. When I was at school we used to do slush casting in metalwork lessons, no health and safety worries back then! The limitations of this casting process means that aluminium toy soldiers tend to be less animated and detailed as those made in other mediums, the material is also very brittle and I have yet to find a way of repairing a broken item.

PZG Napoleonic infantryman

This is the last of the collectable figures I picked up at last week's PW show, not a large haul considering the amount of esoteric stuff there to be had but the truth is that before very long I started to suffer from toy soldier overload and became incapable of rational thought. I had taken a shopping list to the show, mostly items I wanted for conversions to supplement the armies I'm building for the "Funny Little Wars" project but immediately abandoned that and bought us stuff tht was totally off list.

This figure was made in Poland, I presume by PZG (Polski Zwiacek Gluchych), the Polish Union for the Deaf, who ran workhops manufacturing all manner of things to raise money for deaf people. The organisation still exists today but no longer makes toy soldiers, this example is 54mm plastic. Collector Jim Lloyd is probably the leading exponent of PZG figures in Western Europe and has a website well worth looking at here.

Conte ACW

These are two new(ish) figures of personalities from the American Civil War made in the USA recently by Conte (I say made in the USA because the commisioning company is American but on the base it clearly states that they were actually made in China, as most things are these days). I bought these with the intention of converting them to officers circa 1905 for my Funny Little Wars Russian wargames army. They are a tad large to go with the rest of the figures they are supposed to lead, being about 60mm scale but we might get away with it.

Garde du Corps by the WHW

This figure of a Prussion Garde du Corps at attention was made for the WinterHilfsWerk (WHW) or Winter Relief Charity in germany in the late 1930's or early 1940's. The WHW made all sorts of items for sale to raise funds for the needy, including a few sets of toy soldiers. I've recently finished reading a novel (based on a true story) called "Alone in Berlin" in which the author, Hans Fallada is fairly scathing about the WHW suggesting that it was in fact just a front to line the pockets of senior Nazi party officials - well, he lived through those harrowing times and thankfully I did not so I'm inclined towards his opinion.

This figure is about 40mm size in plastic and semi flat, all of the WHW production is about this size or smaller, which perhaps reflects the limited capacity of the injection moulding machines of the time. Today these figures are sought after by a small number of toy soldier collectors but a much larger number of Nazi memorabilia collectors, this double whamy of demand tends to have a disproportionate effect in their price.

Unknown machine gunner

For a prone laying pose this figure is nicely animated, it's 54mm scale in plastic, I don't know who made it but it was sold by a Belgian dealer at the PW show so I think it's safe to say it's either Belgian or French, on balance the style of it suggests the latter to me.

Since writing this post the figure has been shown on the French Plastique Soldat 1/32 forum and the consensus of opinion is that it was made in France by Colorado.