"In any scale, what's the worst Napoleonic figure?" Topic

I'd have to say that Mike's Models 15mm French were probably the worst figures I ever encountered…

When you take price into account some of the "new" post-Perry Foundry Napoleonics should surely be nominated.

Actually, I just went to their website to provide a link so that anyone unfamiliar with these awful figs could have a good laugh, and they don't appear to be on sale any more!

elite miniatures horses look to me as oversized deers grts serge joe

You have to admit, he does have a point. Out of curiosity I checked their well illustrated site and the heads do seem somewhat odd and elongated……and like all the humans, they seem to all be transfixed by something a thousand feet above them.

I think the question is easiest if we stick to an individual truly awful figure, especially if in a decent range! There will be whole ranges that any of us might hate and others love. I hope this continues……

Now Perrys could never let us down, could they? Even those one piece Chasseurs a Cheval of the Guard, the ones with the sword extended, look fine in profile. But face on………

I've must have seen hundreds and now I can't think of one. I guess I just remember them all fondly. Sigh!

Brilliant a thread that finally and openly bashes people. So TMP.

It's not bashing people – it is light hearted fun bemoaning some of the monstrosities that we have all foolishly bought in the past. And it is good to know what bad looks like, so that good can be better appreciated

I'm with Von Loudon, although I appreciate we may be in the minority here.

There are no irridemiably bad models, even the "quirky" ones can be fixed with a good paint-job or conversion, and even the more ghastly ones are good for providing parts or modelling casualty vignettes.

Pretty much every Napoleonic range that has ever been produced in 1/72 plastic has found its way into my armies, and they all march on the field of glory equally as brother in arms.

Now Perrys could never let us down, could they?

Well, given the thread's Napoleonic focus (as opposed to badly cast figures in general), my nominee for Le Citron d'Or would have to be the Twins' French gunner crouching by the ammo box: he's got a cuff flap on one arm only, and a smooth sleeve on the other! Much as (or because) their craftsmanship is rightly admired otherwise, this really shouldn't have gotten to production stage…

Now that is what I wanted to see. When the brilliant guys get it wrong occasionally. Anyone can say this or that range is rubbish….the fun is to spot the "turkey" in a first class range. I must check this one on the website…but give everyone a reference to help! FN summat? Did you mean FN21?

The Perrys we rely on, but let's give them grief occasionally or they will end up like Brazil 20 years from now! They may be the best, but never let them think that……..

"There are no irredeemably bad models, even the "quirky" ones can be fixed with a good paint-job or conversion, and even the more ghastly ones are good for providing parts or modelling casualty vignettes."

I'm sorry – but this is just a fallacy – there are a lot of figures out there whose best end in life would be to be sent to Eureka Miniatures in Australia so they could be melted down and recast as ABs. Or if you prefer 28mm to the Perries for a similar end.

I've often wished that either of those makers would offer discounts for those who wished to "recycle" purchases they regretted…

I've melted figs down for musket balls in the past! Currently the worst seem to me to be Reiver GNW 28mm.

Out of curiosity I thought I'd check out just how bad Warrior figures might be. Never come across this range, especially as 25mm likely to be very small against most 28mm figures these days. I did finally find some pictures and am truly astonished that these are still in production. They have some nice stuff elsewhere in their range but………..these would take much painting to produce something reasonable!

Let us be grateful for what we do now have to work with, instead.

link

I'd have to disagree with some of the negative reports re: Airfix. Granted some Airfix Napoleonic figures weren't the best by any means (their French Line, for example), but others such as their British and a French Guard are still quite beautiful even by today's standards.

This post makes me think about when I got into gaming for the second time in the 90's. My first time gaming was in the mid 70's as a teen with Airfix plastic figures. Their WW1 Germans and Napoleonics seemed masterpieces of sculpture to me. I stopped gaming in the late 70's and went off to art school. In the 90's I returned to gaming. I found the plastic figures of my youth scorned. Real gamers only used lead. From my life drawing classes, we were constantly told the human figure is about 7 1/2 heads high. The lead figures came no where near this, seemed dwarfish and cartoony to me. The injection molded plastic figures came much closer to normal human proportions. I remember showing some of my new lead figures to a couple of friends who also went to art school. "The horses look like Pokey, the infantry look like a bunch of Fred Flintstone vitamins". Metal figures have gotten better, but still sometimes look at a figure and think "What the hell is up with this guy?".

Well said, Somua!

Well said, Somua!

The Airfix figures in every scale were usually exceptionally well animated. Most of the 1/32 figures are peerless even today.

The HO/OO Napoleonics were also generally very good as representations, but were badly let down in a couple of respects. One was peculiar pose choices (such as the French infantryman in a pose one can only describe as "charging listening to musket". Another was inaccuracy (the French again, who resemble only one Young Guard unit, but also the Highlanders in their attractive mini skirts). Finally, some of the sets were poorly engineered – several of the horses leaned or fell out of their bases and many came in a little puddle of flash.

The Hinchliffe 25mm Nappies were often very dodgy. For some reason many of the horsemen had one leg bigger than the other, notably the Prussian cuirassier. Several of the figures were so different in size to others in the range that they appeared to be a different scale.

I'd like to be generous to Airfix, as they started us all off and they were so cheap, but (and there were so many buts)

Scale varied so much. The Cuirassiers were midgets. The Hussars giants.

The poses were so daft. As above, a kettle drummer with every dozen hussars, a Frenchman carrying his mate in every box, the cuirassier hiding behind his dead horse but waving his sword!

The mouldings that aged so badly. Flash worsened. Paint was harder to adhere as time passed. Conversions were so difficult as plastic did not stick to plastic.

I always wondered why they did not cast them in hard plastic. Then, one day, my lads told me about some blokes called Perrys and their LOTR figures……….the rest is just history

I guess the odd "strange" pose in a box was not too bad a price to pay – and these days, those wounded figures come in handy as markers for casualties/routing etc – strange how the wargames world moves full circle.

As to hard plastic, having had most of my LotR Rohan horses and uruk hai spears break, I can appreciate why the "toy" world made them in soft plastic – most of mine have survived rough handling.

" What's the worst Napoleonic figure"? The one's in my army that just routed off the board on their first appearance!!!!

The Airfix French WWI figure taking a pigeon out of a basket took some beating, as useless. Mind you, the rest could easily swap heads with the Napoleonic line infantry and were great then. Poilu Chap on a bicycle never did fit in somehow, however much I converted him.

The point about different Airfix scales is well made. There appear also to have been several different sculptors, perhaps a different one per set, which may explain it. The French Guard were pantographed down from the same masters as the 1/32 range used. Whoever sculpted the French "line" had not been working in an adequately ventilated room.

That said, few contemporary ranges were any better from the point of view of size consistency. Hinchliffe resculpted a lot of their range in the 1970s with the result that half the figures of the same type were a different size. They then added a Peninsular range and a duplicative Waterloo range with the result that they had four mutually incompatible Napoleonic ranges, several of which were notably incomplete.

I thought the Prince August homecasts were not bad except for the rather shovel-like bayonets. The problem was that the ranges were all incomplete; there was no French line figure, no British light figure, and so on.

Possible contenders here auction

£2.00 GBP per figure! That's what really makes me laugh. Interesting that Foundry have removed these (and all the others like them) from their website and are selling them off on Ebay. But still at £12.00 GBP of course.

I wish them all the best.

I agree Lord Hill, and the horses in this set look like they need a good feed. Their legs are far too thin…

auction

Ha! Perhaps that's the "Peninsula look"? It's the heads/shakos that get me – check out the first colonel on the left. They look more suitable for Slaughterloo.

To be fair I think it's only the British Naps which are so comic – some of the other ranges look fine (although still absurdly priced when compared to what you could buy for less from the Perrys etc)

As Lord Hill has noticed, all Light Infantry are taken off the website now? Lots of Riflemen still but the redcoat light bobs are gone completely? Will we see a new improved range? Must admit, I thought the animations were quite good and imaginative on some of these……even the anatomy, well, we have seen far worse!

I agree with 4th Cuirassier on Airfix and Hinchliffe. I'm a big fan of both and it seems churlish to criticise, but the inconsistency in size is undeniably true. Some of the later Hinchliffe figures are excellent, and great value, but there are anomalies. The British heavy dragoon trumpeter looks like a small child compared to the remodelled trooper. As for Airfix, again great figures and contributed much to a happy childhood, but I could never get the US cavalry horses to stand up on the bases. And the British hussar kettle drummer, on a galloping horse if I remember rightly, also gets my vote as most useless figure ever.

I think you have to have some sort of handicapping system here…I mean, judging airfix figures which were sculpted in the late 1960's and comparing them to modern figures is somewhat pointless, anyway, yes, we all thought the crouching cuirassier was a waste of time, but was it actually a bad model?
My vote definitley goes to for quite a few stumpy, short weaponed no-necked Foundry Napoleonics when they really should know better, and also their awful, big-assed, nostril-flaring, heavy hooved horses…. These weren't produced when the hobby was in it's infancy, at least Peter Laing et all were pioneers in their own way, not churning out "heroic" dross for fan-bois and critics so immersed in a culture of emporers New clothes that they are incapable of recognising garbage when they see it.

I wonder if the current vogue for cartoon-style figure painting was driven by the cartoonish proportions of many figures, or whether the figures have been designed that way to suit a particular painting style?

Airfix kits of the 1960s were engineered to be paintable by the standards of the day. The aircraft and tanks have outsize rivets because by the time you had applied 1960s enamel paint with a brush they were back in scale.

What's the worst figure in any scale?

The Prince of Orange.

In ANY scale.

Hi

To add some variety to the mix, another oldie, but not such a goodie was/is 'spaghetti-legs Dubois' from the Tabletop 15mm range.

He can be seen in picture here (I hope deepfriedhappymice don't mind the link):

link

Many years ago (and long sold on) most of my 15mm Napoleonic cavalry were by Tabletop as they were pretty 'cute', easy to paint and looked like donkeys – what was not to like?

But the infantry (and you need to see them in the flesh to appreciate them…) just did not rock my boat.

Wonder if any of you are old enough to remember the Airfix Magazine series on how to produce Napoleonic figures….long before they released them in soft plastic! I still have the issues in my attic.

Mostly ACW conversions with sprue cylinders stuck onto saved off kepis. I remember Ney on foot as a Confederate Officer in a fore and aft hat, with a little work on the hat. The end results looked terrible, even as small B&W photos in the magazine……..

I think there is worse on sale, even now, in metal, but hesitate to put a name to what I see on line. Some folk like Hobbits, some like their soldiers staring skywards looking for Stukas, some do not mind legs on infantry that are bandy and as thin as an unfortunate soldier, with a serious chronic spinal injury.

Everyone to his own………

I meant shaved off………..
45 year son I still used that idea for my Gendarmes d'Elite from Perry Dragoons. Shave off the helmet but save the peak. Take off the Elite squadron bearskin and stick it on the original head. Bearskin with a peak. Two years ago that seemed like a good idea. Now we have Perry figures and Gringos' promised. (Bit worried no sign of the latter though)

I forgot TTG figures. I have a bunch of them.