"Worst Figures You Ever Bought?" Topic

any 1/300 minis and almost all 15mm

The worst were some 25mm minis for an old Age of Conan line I bought about 30 years ago – don't recall who made them but they had huge flash lines, tough to paint – and even tougher to make look good

I still have one unit of them – alleged Stygian infantry but they look like some sort of High Elf hybrid

Hate to jump on the Peter Laing bandwagon--but I will. I had some 15mm Sudan figures that were atrocious. In the middle 70's Hinchcliffe produced their System 12 figures intended to compete for the relatively new 15mm market. They were god-awful. Archon miniatures did exclusively fantasy in the mid-late 70's were really crude, though I have a 60-year old's fondness for the idea of them now.

Back in the 80's I bought a GW/Citadel Nazgul on winged beast which was just horrible.

Opened the box, took one look at it and tossed it on a shelf. It's still there.

OG Seminoles I didn't like. OG Arab colonial cavalry I was not happy with. Mega miniatures anything pretty much.

Heritage miniatures Krot. Just a blob of lead with a pointy head. Why? He'll I don't know.

'alleged Stygian infantry but they look like some sort of High Elf hybrid'

Guessing could be Garrison… except for one detail. The GM High Elf should be defined as a Stygian hybrid as the Garrison figure came out around 1976-7… and predates the GM High Elves by several years. Strangely, I use them as High Elves…

Der Kriegspieler Nazgul.

The body of the beast was ok, but the wings were nothing more than flat and straight slabs with tabs on the end to fit into the body. But the slot in the body cavity was twice as large as the tab. So the wings never fit no matter how much epoxy and filler you used. My friend soldered them in but the solder ended up as part of the body because the cavity was so huge.

That piece is probably worth a lot of money now. I never saw one outside of mine. Not sure what happened to it. Probably sold it off at a flea market many years ago.

Some WWII miniatures I bought back in the 90s. Don't remember the company name but I remember vividly being flamed by the owner because I referred to them online as the worst I had ever seen. I still have the Panzer I around somewhere; it's a squashed blob with a dent in the top and what look like some sort of plumbing fixtures sticking out of what was supposed to be the turret. I got rid of the Russian cavalry because I feel that cavalrymen should have legs and that horses do not commonly run with their tails sticking straight up.

LT

In all fairness, it has been widely known for many years that the models in the Airfix 'British Paratroopers' set do not actually depict British Paratroopers.

On the other hand, what you do get is 33 WWII United States Marine Corps 'Paramarines', complete with the otherwise rarely-seen M50, for around a fiver. BARGAIN.

As for the quality of the figures – they were sculpted in 1965.
They look better now, fifty years later, than most 1960's sculpting looked brand new.

My worst figure purchase?
Over The Wire's "For A Few Cents More" expansion pack (For their "Wanted: Dead or Alive" gunfight rules.)
The original game came with a set of eight Western gunfighters – really nice figures. A good match to the early Foundry western miniatures in both size and sculpting style.

The figures that came with the expansion pack, though… just woeful.
A different sculptor, with a very different style. Ill-proportioned figures (hunchbacks, curved limbs rather than distinct joints) with ghastly faces (two eye-dents, nose-wedge, mouth-slash).
Strangely, they all sported cavalry-style flap-covered pistol-holsters. Only a couple actually had weapons drawn – crude 'big tube for cylinder, little tube for barrel' things bigger than their forearms.

I had the old tabletop miniatures Western gunfighters range (circa mid-70's?) so I painted these very disappointing figures up to match those – very much a 'B-team' project, never seen on the same table as their 'W:DoA' counterparts.

Trying to mix WGF Vikings and Saxons with my GB figures. They look like their skinny little brothers.

Knight Designs 6mm Mexican American War figs. It was a set of both armies. Complete crap.

I have a Der Kriegspieler Nazgul. Sits on my desk.

McEwan cavalry from the 70s or early 80s.
I had a cataphract and it was bad. My paint job back then did it no favors either.

I made up my mind to hate the entire Thermopolite range back then, but when they were painted up they looked kinda nice.

Hinchliffe and Minifigs back in the day were so poorly cast that a huge number had armpit watermelon tumors and the space between the musket and chest was often a solid mass.
I then took off a decade where I did no gaming, painting or buying.
I was pleasantly surprised when I came back that this was a non issue with most manufacturers.

My worst figures were some Jacobite Miniatures Napoleonics which I received as castoffs from someone else. The Prussian line were truly awful figures.

Editions Brokaw 15mm War of Spanish Succession were pretty crude. But except for Dixon's small 15mm WSS range were the only game in town back in the 80's.

Forgot about Peter Laimg 15mm. They were, in fact, the worst.

I bought some 15 mm French in Mexico figures back in the early 80s. I don't remember the range. The anatomy was terrible-- 25 mm bodies and heads with 15 mm extremities . I threw them away except for the plug heads which weren't too bad.I saved them for later 25 mm conversions. Scruby 20 and 25 mm were bad. His 30 mm were much better and had a certain charm. I think he carved his figures out of blocks of lead and that couldn't have been easy.

I remember drooling over all of the Peter Laing ads in Wargamer's Digest and all of those obscure ranges. Especially all of the colonials. I ordered some US cavalry and Indians and, yeah, they were not exactly great, but they matched my 12-year-old painting skills and I was darn proud of those guys.

I would have to list 3.

Tin Soldier Ancient Italians, while they had character, the looked more like hunched orcs to me. I couldn't bring myself to paint them.

An old 70s John Carter series of miniatures. The most bow-legged miniatures ever made.

Old Freicorp – South American Wars Gauchos were so brittle that 3 of the horses arrived with only 1 leg intact. The other horses were completely broken.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of no longer wanted Mikes Models."

A few points:

1. Most of the Mike's Models range was rotund, dwarf-like, and crudely sculpted. The ancients were bad, the colonials poor, but the renaissance range, although proportioned similarly, was sculpted with some flair (by Bob Naismith, I believe), and has its fans even now; so much so that it's the only Mike's Models range still available from Essex Miniatures.

2. There's currently a small sub-culture of Peter Laing appreciators who actively seek out those miniature abominations and will pay good prices for them.

3. The long-time proprietor of Frei Korps 15, Cameron Robinson, had a relative in the printing industry, and so was able to obtain printers' metal cheap; hence the brittleness of his products.

QRF WWI range.

I can't really trash any one range, though some of them have been less than sterling. However, no matter what the range and how good one model is, now and then a clunker comes along. Even in the Surens (Willies) range which I do the most work in, occasionally….. One of the peasants in the late 17th century range is in the most impossible position ever and well…I never have success with 15mm so….

Steamingdave..
BOTH!
C

I had some 1/2400 scale fishing weights that had the names of various ironclads on the bag. Put them next to a Hallmark and they don't even vaguely look similar.

mikes models old guard grenadiers advancing….

I love Irregular for the diversity of their ranges and scales, they're usually the ones to have just the thing, specially some of the terrain pieces. And I love them for their 2mm and 42mm lines, real out-side-the-box stuff, but when their castings are off, they're really off.

Well I have been selling Abe buying miniatures since the 1970s. So one thing that needs to be done is to base the opinion on factors such as scale.
For example vehicles and aircraft, 15mm, 25mm and era.

The first miniature scale that comes to mind is 15mm. I remember being called into a superior officers office to look at detail on samurai miniatures which was superior to the detail on a first edition strip mini fig. The manufacturer was mikes models. Mikes models will be listed by some as the worst but that would be funny to some old gamers. My opinion of the worst 15mm may be Martian metals as runner up and Peter Laing as the worst in the 1970s.

There were the famous camels that were obviously converted from horses because they still had the hooves and horse's tails. Not fair to mention the manufacturer because I am sure the mistake was corrected 30 years ago.

But I had fun finishing some of these off earlier this year, trimming the tails and remodelling the feet. Especially looking up camel toes on the internet (NSFW) And then camel tails (Also NSFW)

Mick Yarrow Models 1/4800 WW2 ships – just truly dreadful, blobs of metal. Peter Laing were dreadful and I had some ECW that I think were by Amazon. Never seen them again – just dreadful.

Peter Laing were the ONLY 15mm when launched so could be said to be the best as well as the worst. True the early releases were soon outclassed but the medieval ranges were quite good, limited in scope but not bad when put up against some of the giants from 4 or 5 years later. They painted up well enough and I'm still quite happy with the few DBA armies of them I did many, many years ago.

Probably my greatest disappointment was the hallmark Armada ships. The masts were too thin and barely saw their first game out before at least one mast per vessel broke. Nicely cast and well detailed but useless for wargaming.

The best.. any AB WW2 20MM, Crooked Dice and Hasslefree characters,and Dark Sword fantasy.

The worst… various metal 20mm WW2 back when the quality of metal 20mm had yet to approach that of plastics.

To qualify as "worst" I think they've got to so ghastly that you couldn't bear to waste paint on them.
There are bad plastic sets, like the Airfix Paratroopers, that were nonetheless converted and used in many battles in the 70's before better plastics from Esci arrived.

In 1980, I bought some RAFM 15mm Napoleonic Austrians. Terrible at the proportions.

My biggest pet peeve is incorrect or no description on ebay. The photos make 20s look like 28s and surprise----!

Peter Laing, any range, any time.

T Corret – if you want to sell those PL Marburians I am interested (although not at "collectors' prices" – I will pay fair as we use them).

Let me know please. PM or marc dot flack at sayervincent dot co dot uk.

Thanks

Marc

Norman – the Brit paras are still bad – sorry. Probably because of the poses more than anything else. And the fact that their 1/32 are lauded as being fantastic paras, so they could have recut the mould. Instead, they keep re-releasing them.

I bought some Minifig orcs back in the '70s and they were well and truly awful. The awfulness was enhanced by the chainmail, bell bottom, clam diggers that they were garbed in.

Argh.

Laing 15mm are getting a bit of pasting…they were made in the late 60's?, early 70's?…at the time they weren't that bad.
If you want bad figures that are current (and downright weird), go to the plastic soldier review and check out anything made by MIR. (or some of the heroic 28mm WWII junk out there) ;-)

Lead figures are hard to criticize for me. I've done sculpting and casting and it is a peculiar talent. I myself have taken some pretty crude castings from Scruby and with a uniform guide, painted them into very nice troops.
Loved Grenedier stuff for years but stopped criticism of Andrew Churnac when another sculptor told me AC eyesight was failing and he had a hard time excepting it.
Worst miniatures ever, Fujimi 1/ 76 th German Gasmask Troops closely followed buy thier British 8th Army.. Hedious plastic blob mutants cavorting about on their elephantiatis inflicted tip-toes :)

I love old Heritage Dungeon Dwellers and Knights & Magik figures.
But some of the boxed DD sets I opened over the years contained some un-recognizable lumps of lead.
I only recently discovered that the orcs had feet, All of my orc figures from '79 had what I thought was a long Chainmail coat that went the whole way to the ground.

The worst 25mm miniatures were Castle Creations super heroes. they were badly sculpted and just resembled human-shaped blobs of lead.