"What were the first figures that you painted?" Topic

Going way back down Memory Lane. With Christmas and nostalgia happening, I recalled the first miniatures that I painted many years ago. I could not recall the exact year that I painted those figures, but I recall what they were. Sometime in the late sixties I painted some 54mm AWI gun crew and the gun. I think it was a 6lbr or an 8lbr. I still have one of the crew figures, but the others are long gone. The manufacturer escapes me.
Some time in the early seventies I painted some electric football figures. I changed the Baltimore Colts figures into Miami Dolphins. And about that time frame I also painted many Airfix figures, having the WW I German and British sets, the French Foreign Legion, and US Marines.

What were the first figures that you painted?

Mike

Back in the 70's, Airfix Guards Band.

I bought a box set of old Heritage fantasy dungeon adventurers figures. That was back in 1981 and well the hobby just kind of took over.

Don't know whether this counts, but when I was in junior high back in the early-60's, a friend and I had 54mm green army men that we played with. He painted the helmets on his silver and I painted mine gold so we could tell them apart. My first serious attempt at painting was some 20mm Airfix ACW figures that I painted for a diorama I made while in high school. I got into miniatures wargaming using 15mm Heritage ACW and Napoleonic figures while in college in the early-70's and "the rest" as they say, "is history."

Minifigs Roman Hastati.
Long gone.

Citadel pre-slotta fantasy figures c1980 and some Peter Laing 15mm ECW figures about the same time.

Plastic 54mm stuff in the early 70s then Minifigs Lord of the Rings and WOTR stuff, about 74,

Tally Ho!

Painting highlights on Marx and MPC figures

First lead were some Hinchcleffe British and French Napoleonic figures

Hello all.

1975ish, Airfix soft plastic "HO-OO" Napoleonics….

Michael in Cloverdale.

Received for Christmas 1990, Johnny Reb 2 and a few packs of Old Glory 15mm ACW. Lots of great memories with those figures.

Apart from aircrew in plastic aircraft kits, first proper painted figures would have been Airfix WW2 figures – 1st issue Germans (with the squeeze bore gun) and British Combat Group. Late 60s?

Back in 1976, I was given Heritage Spanish Scutari by a friend to try to get me hooked, Almost 40 years later, I guess it worked!

Wargaming would be Citadel Imperial Space Marines when it came in a box of 30.

In the early 70s, after seeing my first Featherstone book in the library I promptly went home and painted up a bunch of green army men.

I thought they looked great, though I am sure now they didnīt really. Ah, those were indeed the days!

1972, maybe '73. Airfix WWI Germans, followed by French, US, British and horse artillery. Using good old Testors enamels.

Some 25mm WWII US GI's

Terry

25mm Connoisseur French Cuirassier

DM

Some skytrex micro tanks and the first Minifigs SF range for actual miniatures – I think my first figure may have been this one :

(not my actual figure!!)

In 1967 I bought a box of Airfix "Indians" and World War I Germans, and following instructions in Airfix magazine, I converted them and painted them up as Zulu and British.

15mm Martian Metals for Traveller. Still have them.

1966. Scruby 20mm French Guard Grenadier in reserve.

D&D 28mm figures , mostly Ral Partha, other than military models, still have every one

The first figures I painted came in the boxed game Battlesystem for AD&D. They were two armoured fighters although one had a mace and could have been a Cleric. I still have them. That was about 35 years ago. After that my first serious attempt at painting for wargaming were 25mm Ral Partha Saxons.

1st in the "Sort of" category: Marx US 54mm cavalryman. They were re-tarring our street and I used the tar to "paint" his boots. That would have been when I was in 3rd or 4th grade--8 or 9 years old.
1st in the "Real Painting" category: A year or so later, Monogram 54mm US infantry. I only had a few of the colors of Testor's enamel I needed and my mother mixed several together to make a pinkish flesh color for their skin.

Grelber

Mid 70s. Hinchliffe Byzantines

Minifigs 15mm ACW eventually upgrading by trading them for bunches of unpainted Stone Mountain figs. Then traded them for Old Glory figs.

mid 70's as well. Minifigs 25mm Teutonic knights

Nice – I used to recruit figures like that for my Mordor army

Airfix 20mm Desert Rats and Afrika Korps (the original sets, not the second editions)

Airfix – probably WWII but not sure what

I recall for some reason that it was Airfix Luftwaffe Personnel sometime around 1977

I found them at Woolworth's and had a model kit of a HE-111. Had to have some men for the kit, but of course did merely a primitive job on them.

link

Airfix Ancient Britons that I converted and painted as Gauls.

When I got my Davy Crockett at the Alamo Marx play set, I couldn't help but paint up the Mexican Army. I guess the first real wargame figures I painted up were the Hard Plastic 25mm Segom Napoleonic figures from France.

Mid 60's Airfix ACW and WWII, followed by my first metal figures about 1974/75 which were 25mm Garrison Greeks. I still have them.

Late 60s Airfix napoleonics painted as Mexican War era. Their Romans with arms cut off and reattached with pins. Fun times. They're all in cigar boxes in the garage.

1970 – Airfix AWI, but as Russians for SYW.

Around 1971 or so I painted Airfix 30 British Nap. Line Infantry. Those were what got me started.

Mid-60s, 1965 or 66. I was building plastic aircraft and tank kits and painting them, reading Military Modelling magazine. You couldn't get Airfix Mag or the other British 'zines in Cincinnati back then. I painted up some Airfix infantry, US Marines and Japanese, the original sets. Wargamed with 'em too, using primitive rules that someone brought to the short-lived Military Miniatures club at my junior high school.

It was a promising start, but my glands developed, my teen years were dominated by (unfulfilled desires for) sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and I threw out all traces of my childish enthusiasm for war toys. Too bad, I dumped a complete set of the William Green Aircraft of the Second World War handbooks, and some volumes of the Blandford and MacMillan Navies of the Second World War series. Wish I had 'em now.

Then I rediscovered wargaming in college, around 1972 and all was lost.

Mid-to-late 60s. Airfix HO-OO Napoleonic Highlanders. Unprimed and with oil paints. Kept chipping off.

Airfix Guards Colour Party and Band. I remember using these and Hornby railway figures to do Trooping The Colour on my bedroom table.

In the Sixties, as a kid, I painted up my Marx Fort Apache cowboys and Injuns and also my Revolutionary War Soldiers (the sets you bought from comic book ads). Fort Apache was mainly straightforward except I tried to cut off some hat brims and paint some soldiers as buckskinned Davy Crocketts. And my Revolution soldiers were mainly painted in wild fantasy colors based only on my imagination. (But they were pretty flimsy figures to begin with).

Oh, and I also painted up some sets of Electric Football players! (Bears and Packers!)

Hello all.

1975ish, Airfix soft plastic "HO-OO" Napoleonics….

Michael in Cloverdale.

ditto

John

Archive Conan, @1975. Still have him

1967-1968 Airfix WW II Germans and Russians.

Martian Metals spellcasters for use with the microgame Wizard. I recently refurbished one of them to lead a warband in Frostgrave. The sculpting is not quite up to modern standards, but they were cool figures with lots of personality.

15mm Minifigs Tuaregs/Bedouin for French Foreign Legion. May have been 15mm Minifigs War of the Roses.

My first serious unit was a unit of 15mm Essex ACW zoaves.

Revell plastic infantry sets back in the 60s

first miniatures i ever painted were from the 'Battlemasters' boardgame. followed shortly there after by ones from the 'Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel' boardgame

For the "Outlander" (who is visiting me in Germany), it was the Der Kreigspieler AWI 25mm Hessians advancing (with horrible straps). Next a Custom Cast POzKfw IVD.

For me, it was Der K 20mm Russian Naps (later sold to George Nafzinger), some GHQ Shermans (first generation, too!) and some Grenadier 15 and 25mm ACW.

Tom Dye

Probably Airfix Napoleonics, but I don't remember.