"Miniature Figurines 30mm Napoleonic Range" Topic

"Over on his Glorious Little Soldiers blog, Andy Copestake has posted some pictures of his recently completed Miniature Figurines 30mm range Chasseurs a Cheval of the French Imperial Guard. From the various comments it is clear not too many people know Minifigs ever made these, and Andy himself says he has never seen any horses (his chasseurs are on Stadden or Willie mounts) or a listing anywhere for this range…."

From here
link

Amicalement
Armand

From the various comments it is clear not too many people know Minifigs ever made these,

As someone who's entry to the hobby was very much facilitated by Minifigs I have to say "I wasn't aware of these 30mm figures".

Thanks for the link Tango01 !

Me too – interesting comment on the blog that Dave Ryan may be looking at re-releasing these

A votre service mes amis!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Never heard of them either, but I can report that the Hinchliffe / Calder Craft 30mm diorama figures – limited to Waterloo guns with crews, plus an odd Spanish set – are precisely compatible heightwise with modern 28mm.

Oh, I remember them! When Minifigs gave up, three Americans bought up the line and marketed them under another name. I think it was "Fusilier" though not the present firm. Wally Simon, Mark Wellington and one whose name escapes me were the owners.
The last time I saw those molds, they were quite literally in Wally's Basement, by which I do NOT mean an HMGS flea market. They'd been out of production for some time when Wally died. The molds needed work--I never could buy the promised ADC figure--and I think they needed a new spin caster. More money than sales would justify, anyway.
I'd be thrilled to hear the master figures survived, and to place an order if they did.

I have the master molds for many (but not all) of them in storage. Before I left for Germany, I had made new molds for French Cuirassier and horses. I'll root around in my boxes of stuff here and see if I can find some examples of how they turned out.

Tom
Ex-GFI

They look nice, especially the running British rifleman.

FOUND two examples in my stash! Will photograph, post somewhere and post the link in a continued thread as this one is about to fall off the main pages.

v/r
Tom

Glad you like them too my friend!.

Amicalement
Armand

I'm not sure of who Mark Wellington is, but I do know that Fusilier was Wally Simon, Fred Haub and Bob Wiltrout. The molds are currently at a friends house in VA as is their casting machine, but I think that Bob has the masters in his possession currently. (At least he did when I visited him 2 years ago. I have asked about them during my last visit about 10 days ago.)

The casting machine was owned by SHW (Simon, Haub, Wiltrout) and they also joined with Coggins and Condray about the machine as well as a few other gentlemen.

First time for me too? Wonder what the story is behind these? I thought Redoubt, Blue Moon and AB were the only ones doing odd figure sizes to boost sales. Minifigs had them all beat. But it failed, wonder why? Maybe because they are after all Minifigs and they are an odd size?

I will admit that I was incorrect about Mr. Wellington. It was Mark Wellington, Wally Simon and Bob Wiltrout. Fred Haub was only involved in the casting of minis, but not with Fusiliers. I just spoke with Bob to get a better understanding.

The 30s "failed" because of the new scales. It was back in the early 80s or late 70s when 15mm and 25mm became big. Most people were changing over from the traditional 30s to the other scales. A group of games in the DC area were still playing Napoleonic 30s and bought the molds, masters and rights to produce the Minifig 30mm Napoleonic range (sorry, but no other ranges) They became Fusilier miniatures.

25mm became all the rage. Now with 28mm amd 28mm heroic, what was old has now become fashionable again.