A Nostalgia Fix, from Airfix

I know, a painfully pitiful title, but please, I implore you, show me a little mercy. I am referring, of course, to the re-release by Airfix of their 1:32nd scale WW2 soldiers, in plastic

I remember, quite clearly and with some fondness, playing with the original plastic sets for hour upon hour as a child, lining them up against each other on the living or bedroom carpet or, when the weather was suitable, setting them up in the flower beds and hurling small handfuls of earth at them to simulate explosions. I wouldn't dream of doing that with them now of course, but I would think seriously about buying some and painting them if I wanted a small force of larger scale figures for a skirmish wargame. Talking of painting, the original figures were made of fairly soft plastic, polyurethane I believe, and if you've ever tried painting that you'll know how painstaking, and quite frankly not really all that worthwhile, an undertaking that could be. These new figures are made from sterner stuff, namely hard polystyrene plastic which takes the paint a lot more easily. Being harder, and therefore more brittle, however, you will have to be more careful not to damage any of the more delicate parts of the castings

As a child I had several sets including British Paratroopers, German Infantry, Australian Infantry, Afrika Korps, British Commandos, British 8th Army, British Infantry, Russian Infantry and American Infantry. All of these are available, along with 4 other sets, these being German Mountain Troops, American Paratroopers, German Paratroopers, and a British Infantry Support Set

This set contains 75 unpainted pieces. There are no details on the site about what the GMT set contains

The back of the GI and AK boxes showing the poses available and the painting guide, should you need one

The German Mountain Troops and British Infantry Support Set retail at £10.99 per box, the rest at £5.99 per box, each box containing 14 figures in a variety of poses, as you can see from the images above, and in my opinion, all the poses you really need for a 54mm scale WW2 skirmish game with soldiers depicted running, advancing, kneeling, firing, throwing grenades and officers directing or shouting orders

Good to see all these old favourites being made available to a new, and perhaps not so new, generation. I wonder if there are any more in the pipeline?