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Wednesday, December 3, 2008

New Figure Sets

I belong to several groups for army men and it seems the same in every scale.

People don't understand the economic realities of this hobby. It can take a major company three to six years to design and produce a set of figures. The research alone can take years. Try and find out what kinds of buttons a French soldier wore on his trench coat in 1916. How many pockets on the shirt of a North Korean soldier in 1952? You can't sculpt the figures until you can answer those questions. And what if your sculptor is not reliable, or can't sculpt the human figure well, or does not know how to make figures that will come easily out of the mold?

The cost to produce a set is thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars or more depending on where they are made, who makes them, number of poses, etc. If you make a dollar profit on each set, you have to sell thousands of sets to recoup your investment. I have read people who write long passionate letters who beg for a particular set saying they have always wanted it and would buy as many as three sets if someone made them. So the company makes three dollars profit, on an investment of ten or twenty thousand dollars.

Typically the only sets that get made are the ones that have wide appeal, like the Alamo, World War Two US and Germans, American Civil War and Romans. We don't get sets on the War of Jenkins Ear because no one ever heard of that war. Then there are several basic ideas on what people want from a set. Some want to make dioramas and want figures that are seated, drinking, shoeing a horse, reading a book or a map. Others want to play wargames and want 27 different standing firing figures, while others who play wargames want 27 different marching poses, and still others want a variety of everything.

Generally companies only make plastic figures that will sell in large numbers and those sets have to appeal to a broad audience, so in some ways we will all be both disappointed and pleased with each set; it is too expensive to try and please everyone. Sets linked to important historical events, like the Alamo, sets linked to major blockbuster movies, like the 300 Spartans, sets linked to eras that have proven perennially popular, like the American Civil War are the sets most likely to see the light of day.

6 comments:

alexstorti said...

Great post (and great blog :)

I always appreciate every manufacturer's effort.

We are living in the Golden Age of 1:72 (and the same could be said about others scales and materials, I think).

Greetings from Lombardy,
Alex Storti

Snickering Corpses said...

Hey, you forgot the wargamers who want 27 *identical* marching and/or firing figures for their 17th-18th century units. :)

On a different note, have you seen the new Caesar WW2 Partisans in Western Europe set? I'm looking forward to picking up that one. I have their existing Underground set.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

Thank you for the kind words Alexstorti. This is the Golden Age. I remember waiting a year to buy one or two new Airfix sets. Now we get one or two sets every week!

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

Hey Snickering, you want 27 identical poses, buy 14 boxes!

The new Caesar sets are very nice, I plan on getting them all. I suggested the Liberator pistol the one guy has in the existing underground set. I saw a preproduction German MT Troop and he was great!

FIXED BAYONET METAL SOLDIERS said...

Thats why my sets are in metal. New set arrived yesterday by the way Riflemen,Connaught rangers and Terence Hill in March or Die film where he picks up the machine gun and sprays the arabs.I did it in the size of AIP. New ones should be German SS plus Napoleonic volunteers plus maybe the Gene hackman figure in above film.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

I have both metal and plastic in my collection. Plastic are great for the mass of figures, but metal is almost always needed for the specialized character or heavy weapons set.