Hi guys
As a kid growing up in the 70-80s I imagine like many of you, I grew up on Airfix, Esci and matchbox figures, I was lucky enough to have every WWII figure set at one time or another, losing my collection in a fire in the 90s, until now I have avoided the nostalgia bite because I have over the years bought many of these subjects (European theatre) and have them in my stash, I generally use metal figures and only use plastics when I’m doing heavy conversions e.g my Gebirgsjager or winter Fallschirmjäger armies, however, recently I have seen some Pacific war projects using Airfix and matchbox figures that have given me that nostalgic kick, mostly because I haven’t owned these Pacific war sets since being a kid as I have concentrated on the European theatre.
As I have had the Pacific war on my to do list for a while now I’m taking the opportunity to start it and combine it with a Nostalgic project, the nostalgic project will be to paint at least 1 of each pose of each WWII set from these 3 companies, starting with Japanese and Aussies, I recently purchased the Airfix and Esci/Italeri Japanese sets, if anyone has a set of 1 of each pose of the Matchbox Japanese and Australian available for trade (I have the Airfix Australians on their way) PM me.
The Airfix Japanese were one of the first sets I owned, I loved these figs as a kid, I was maybe 5-6 years old, I had those and the US marines (I have the marines in my stash somewhere) later I had the Esci and matchbox Japanese and Australians, these 2 sets still have very good moulds, the Italeri figs have almost no flash and thankfully are cast in firm plastic, the Airfix figs are in their usual softer plastic, I remember many of the Airfix figures getting brittle as a kid, I’m hoping they fixed the plastic and this is not still an issue, I’m going to try and give them the best paint job I can, looking forward to this project.
I’ll be adding metal and resin figs to the Pacific project, I will also be doing my usual mix of 3D printed and built model kits for the vehicles.
Nice project mate, great choice of figures. My first set of Japanese figures was the Hong Kong copies of the 1:35 set but scaled down to 1/76 or 1/72. In 85 I bought the Matchbox set and was in love with Japanese figures ever since. I still have about half of that original Matchbox set and was able to get a full set a few years ago. We are spoilt for choice looking at the amount of plastic Japanese available thanks to mainly Strelets.
ReplyDelete