Charge!

Figures by Toy Soldiers of San Diego.

French Foreign Legion

French Foreign Legion figures by Conte Collectibles standing on a Classic Toy Soldiers Alamo wall with some reissue Marx Palm Trees in the background.

Jim Bowie at the Alamo

I'm kind of proud of this shot. Figures are by Conte Collectibles. The background is a piece of the Alamo from Classic Toy Soldiers.

Pirates!

I was visiting a friend and he showed me these neat but odd-looking pirate figures. I took a few quick snapshots on his front porch and posted a pic to the Yahoo Marx Playsets group. A member identified them as "copies of the original Fontanini pirates made by GPS Gavichi of Italy. GPS Gavichi were notorious for copying other companies products, apart from Fontanini they copied Marx and Elastolin." They are about 70mm in size.







The above guy with his pet monkey seems to be everybody's favorite. It's a pain trying to get the detail with the cheesy translucent plastic.

Giant Farm Woman

These are from a Marx farm playset, 1950's. I was looking through some of my old shots and was shocked by the giant farm woman.

Marx Frontiersman

Marx 45mm Frontiersman. This guy came with the early Ft. Apache and Alamo sets.

Custer's Last Stand

Some time ago, I got the Custer's Last Stand playset produced by Toy Soldiers of San Diego. TSSD is quickly becoming one of my favorite producers of toy soldiers. The quality of sculpting, poses and level of detail on the figures are fantastic. Very high quality, but at the same time, they retain an element of "toyness" where I'm not afraid to get them outside in the dirt, and wouldn't haven't a problem with a young child playing with them.

Another great thing about this playset, is you get so damn much stuff with it. The wonderfully sculpted foam hill, lots of cavalry figures and horses, and of course tons of Indians. When putting together a playset, Indians at Custer's Last Stand are like Mexicans at the Alamo: you can never have too many.

When I first got it I set it up on my dining room table. Not enough room for everything:





Last weekend I got these guys outside and got a few more shots: