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What was your first set of 1/72 figures?

Posted by Peter on 15 May 2008, 21:01

I was wandering what the first set was of everyone? For me personal, it all started with the WWII Japanese Infantery set of Airfix. I had them just for playing. The ones with the caps fought against those with the helmets. I stoud up with them and went to sleep with them.
The first sets I ever painted were the zulu and british infantery sets of esci. I started them painting because I was sick, and wanted to do something else as reading or watching TV.
Maybe a little story of that time:I asked my wife to buy some more sets of the zulus. At the shop she didn't want to surch for them, so she asked. The people at the shop told her that they didn't had them, but they had lots of "Smurfen". :laughing: !!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was surtenly a miss understanding. I bought them myself later.
So I'm interested what the sets are of the other contributers of this forum.

Greetings Peter
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Peter  Belgium

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Posted by Martin on 15 May 2008, 21:31

Hi Peter,

I think it was also an Airfix set.............Yes, it was the set British combat group. Later they changed this set in British infantry WW2.
And my second set was also Airfix: German infantry WW2 (The old version with strange flamethrower and small guns. And some dead Jerries.
Worked well with my first two tanks: Panther and Sherman.
Besides: what others brands were there in the late sixties /early seventies?
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Posted by klausH on 16 May 2008, 07:23

Hi,

it was arround 1967 when I bought my first two Airfix sets french and german infantry WW1.
2 German Marks (1 EURO) each, I think :cry:

Regards,
Klaus
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Posted by Sander on 16 May 2008, 08:32

my neighbour (who is a army Colonel rtd) gave me a big box containing Matchbox and Airfix WW2 figures that's how it started...
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Posted by Siegfried on 16 May 2008, 09:32

mine was the Revell Prussian infantry 1813-1815 in well, 2002 I think. A thin but great set with fine poses.

Cheers,

Christiaan
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Posted by Susofrick on 16 May 2008, 15:03

Some of the early Airfix sets. Don't remember if it was the Germans (1st version) or the cowboys or wagon train, but it was probably one of those. My kid brother had guards band and 8th army (1st version). As Martin said, who else were there late 60s, early 70s? Last set I bought (last that my mom permitted) was Airfix Waterloo British Infantry in -75. 1st set I bought when I really started collecting was ESCI WW2 British soldiers in -84. (and at that time I was to old for mom to interfer). :-D
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Posted by dykio on 16 May 2008, 19:31

Hi Peter,

I also started of with airfix (the 7th cavalry). It was somewere back in the seventies so there wasn't that much choice in the toy-shop but i can remember that i also had a box of space-figures (astronauts)including something like a moon-car... But i think they did go to the moon eventually because i have no idea where they are ....

Later

Dykio
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dykio  Netherlands
 
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Posted by Martin on 17 May 2008, 16:24

Hi Dykio,
Yes,
Who didn't start with Airfix in that time.... There was nothing else available.
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Martin  Netherlands
 
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Posted by Peter on 17 May 2008, 22:06

Hi to all.

Martin wrote:Besides: what others brands were there in the late sixties /early seventies?


In the sixties you had only one, and that was Airfix. In the middle of the seventies Atlantic and Matchtbox (1/76!) started they're range. All the others started later, as far as I know.

Greetings Peter
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Peter  Belgium

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Posted by Martin on 19 May 2008, 21:13

So let's make a small tribute to:

Airfix,

"the mother of all figures 1:72" :notworthy:

Without them, the hobby wouldn't be so popular.
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Posted by Susofrick on 20 May 2008, 07:40

Well, I don't know if there even would be a hobby without Airfix. Not as it is today anyway.
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Posted by smokinprice on 31 May 2008, 04:11

I believe, if memory serves me right, they were Airfix British Redcoats that I still have after 25 or so years. Amazing.
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Posted by Peter on 31 May 2008, 18:39

Hi folks, it seems to be that only the older ones are reacting on this topic, because most of us started with airfix. I also have all my figures, okay most off them at the attick, but I still have them (even some sets difficult to get so as The High Chapparral).

Greetings Peter
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Posted by Roland_Kupski on 31 May 2008, 19:36

the answer is: Most of 1/72 collectors are around 40*- They have started with Airfix, paused during the 20s and 30s, and started again with Italeri in the 1990+. Now they have money, internet and know how.

So this is the reason, why our Hobby booms.

I started with Airfix WW1 Germans, 1974.
But I had a friend who still uses the first Atlantics: wow!! But he lived in Cologne, big city wiht lot of toy shops. Later he gave me his whole collection - so I was the only one with Atlantics in my school.
Ha!

I paused hobby, then I started again with Flat Tin figures for years, when i suddenly saw British 95er Revell in a Toy shop. An then the first Häts came on market. So i was back in Business.
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Posted by Benno on 01 Jun 2008, 01:38

No Airfix here, but a box of Napoleonic French infantry from Italeri! (in 2003/2004?)
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Posted by efb on 01 Jun 2008, 01:57

Image

These were the first...I got the Germans to go along with them...some Marines, paratroopers (all WWII) and some modern Soviets.

That was it for five or six years, then for whatever reason...me and Daddy had just watched ZULU for about the 50th time...my Moma brought home a box of Zulus and Brits for that conflict...and the buying started all over again.
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Posted by Omnidiscombobulated on 01 Jun 2008, 03:13

I got my first Airfix figures on my 7th birthday (zoo animals). From then on, I collected every set that came out, and they were far and away my favourite toys. How excited I used to be whenever I went into the local toy shop in the nearest town (Woodbridge, Suffolk, England) and found a new set on the shelves.

My favourite dream as a kid was that I went into a toy shop and found lots of boxes of exciting new figures on the shelves - figures for all my favourite films and books and everything that my imagination could conjure up.

I started painting them in my early teens, and collected everything available on into my mid-to-late teens, until I left home to attend university. When I left England to live in the Far East (Taiwan's been my home for the last two decades), I left everything in my bedroom in my parents' house. When my parents passed away, my brother packed up my stuff and stored it in his attic - which is where all my old Airfix figures are lying now.

In the ensuing years, I had no idea about the developments in the hobby. I'd heard that Airfix had gone bankrupt, which made me very sad, and sometimes wondered if anyone else was still making 1/72-scale figures. I still occasionally had those lovely old childhood dreams about finding lots of exciting new sets of figures in a toy shop, and sometimes mused about the possibility of setting up a small manufacturing operation to produce them myself in China - though I was always too busy with work to do anything about it.

It wasn't until early last year that I discovered, to my tremendous delight, that the hobby had entered a new golden age, and my childhood dream of hundreds of colourful and very well made sets had actually come true. I was idly browsing the Internet, and I decided to Google Airfix to see if those old figures had become collectors' items and might be worth a bit of money now, and that perhaps it would be nice to pick up a box or few to relive those glorious childhood memories. What a wonderful surprise I got when I clicked onto Plastic Soldier Review and found the pictures of the hundreds of different sets made by so many different manufacturers.

I spent hours looking through the PSR site, and of course I immediately wanted to buy lots and lots of the figures. I found a seller in Taiwan, and started buying dozens of sets from him. The ones he couldn't supply I ordered from the US and elsewhere. In no time at all, I had at least 500 boxes stacked up around me in my study, and was like a kid enjoying a never-ending Christmas.

My wife didn't quite know what to make of my indulgence in this boyish hobby, but I guess she realizes that it's a lot better than many other ways in which I might be spending my free time and money. I show her the most outstanding of the new figures, explaining a bit of the history they represent, and she tries her best to show an interest in them, so I can't complain.

So thank you, Airfix, not only for the countless hours of joy you gave me as a child, but for sowing the seeds of this most satisfying hobby to enjoy now in my middle years!
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Posted by Peter on 02 Jun 2008, 19:22

Omnidiscombobulated that was quiet a story. I recognize a lot in your words. By me it went a little bit the same way, like I said when I posted this question.
Konrad, I'm sure you're right about us the middle age people.
Efb, I think those sets were the first sets so well detailed.

Greetings Peter
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Posted by rubenvanginkel on 03 Jun 2008, 09:02

I'm a greenhorn in this hobby. My first set were Winter Russians WW2, Italeri. Since then I bought a lot, not that I've painted them all in the process, but I bought numerous sets.
Now I'm working on a German army, with SS-troops (Italeri German Elite Infantry), normal german grenadiers and a SdKfz 251 halftrack. It's great fun! As a side-project, I paint the Vikings from Zvesda.

Cheers,
Ruben
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Posted by Martin on 03 Jun 2008, 22:12

Hi Ruben,

You a Greenhorn (your words) we Greyhorns (or a little bit grey somewhere) :joker:
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