Some new acquisitions to the collection

On my work we have a 'Secret Santa' arrangement each December, where we secretly draw a name from a box and secretly gives this person a gift for Christmas. Last Christmas one of my colleagues and 'not so Secret Santa' told me that he didn't pick my name from the box this year, but he wanted to give me something anyway. He just had to find it first. So last weekend while we were working together he handed me a reasonable full plastic bag, which contained several smaller bags:

I took a brief look at them and could tell that there were many plastic soldiers in 54mm-ish scale, mostly WW2 knock-offs from Matchbox. When I got home I finally got a chance to take a closer look at them.

In the first bag I checked there were 100 German soldiers. It was a mix of Airfix infantry, Matchbox infantry and Matchbox German Africa Corps. It was a clear majority of Matchbox soldiers. What I really like with these knock-off sets is the number of officers. Where the original set have only one, this German lot have 12 + 5 "Rommels" (Useful for any high ranking officers though):

The second bag contained 66 British 8th Army figures in a mix of Airfix and Matchbox knock-offs, and again mainly Matchbox poses. 8 officers:

It seems inevitable that all lots of plastic soldiers also contains a detachment of American WW2 Infantry or 'Army Men'. This lot contained 70 of them, and they were all Matchbox. Looks like I got some 'Snowball-fighter' replacements.

There were also some 31 Japanese soldiers in one bag. Some few of them are Airfix copies, but the rest of them I'm really not sure. Perhaps Atlantic??

All of them togheter:

Being knock-offs they're usually not 'true 54mm scale', as they are often smaller. These are some 50mm+ and lines up pretty well to those Army Men I've already painted and used for wargaming.

All the different plastic soldiers in this collection are made to the same size:

They have some flash and mold lines, but that can easily be trimmed away. Those of them who have small wobbly bases I plan to equip with larger 3D-printed bases.

Adding these soldiers to the collection of the cheap plastic soldiers I've acquired earlier I now have a big stockpile of figures for future figure and painting conversions and wargames.

Mark Man of Tin Blog recently published a couple of very interesting postes regarding using pound store plastic soldiers to make wargaming inexpensive and achievable. There are some really interesting point of views in the comment section of those blogger posts as well. Please pay them a visit.

I belong to those who like to wargame on a budget using whatever available. I don't care if my miniatures are not made to a specific brand or rules, as I'm happy converting them to those wargames and scenarios I want to play (usually free rules found online. Check my rules menu in the menu to the right). So these new acquisitions makes it possible for further conversions and new scenarios.

Norway 1940 is mentioned....
- I don't want to rule it out.

In these bags there were also some accessories for my Army Men. They can get useful:

There were also some few other figures in the lot. Airfix Cowboy and Indians knock-offs, and an Airfix British paratrooper which is copied to the unrecognisable:

And some few 1:76 Airfix originals; RAF Ground personell, Washingtons army, German Gebirgsjägers, 8th Army and some very few French Napoleonic artillery crew. There were also some 1:72 scale American WW2 infantry which were knock-offs of the Airfix 1:32 scale originals:

And there were even 3 small (smaller than 28mm) metal miniatures. Looks like they are from 'The  Lord of the rings':

So thank you so very much for the gift not-so-secret-Santa Jørgen. These will provides hours of fun, converting them, painting them and deploy them in future wargames.

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