65mm Mountain Gun

Strelets French Foreign Legion Artillery.  15 troops and 3 small guns.

The gun is the 65mm Schneider-Ducrest Canon de 65 M Modele 1906 mountain gun.

The set comes with three of these two sprues.

It fits together perfectly without glue.

The wheel on this one is a little wonky but a little bending and it will be fine.

The gun is similar to the US Army pack howitzer.

These guns were used by the French, WWII Germans, Israel and North Vietnam.

A gun with a lot of potential uses!

Upside down.
 

Renault FT

The famous Renault FT tank.

Set the design for most tanks to come, fully rotating turret, engine in the back, and low tracks.

Two man crew one machine gun or small, usually 37mm, cannon.

Developed by the French in World War One but used in both World Wars.

US Army had hundreds of them in World War One and kept in service until 1932 or so.

The big wheels are just for the toy, the real ones ran on the tracks.

Strelets WWI French with Gas Mask

Crouching WWI French soldier from Strelets, in gas mask, late war.

At the ready.

Advancing with rifle.

HaT WWI French officer on the left and Strelets WWI officer on the right, with gas mask. As you can see the Strelets are thicker but not bad looking.

HaT WWI US Army in green and Strelets WWI French with gas mask in blue. Very similar in size, some of the bulk of the Strelets figures is due to the gas mask and long coat.

WWI French II

Strelets WWI French with gas masks. Standing rifleman.

1/72nd scale soft plastic figures, grenade thrower.

Crouching, crawling guy, seems like he is looking over the edge of a berm.

Kneeling rifleman. Figures had a tiny bit of flash but not bad, not too much.

Prone crawling guy with grenade. A nice figure. I got one box of these guys to make a single platoon. I have some of the HaT, Airfix, and Revell WWI French. My collection only has French troops because they supported the US Army troops in the First World War.

Strelets WWI French with Gas Mask

Strelets new 1/72nd scale soft plastic WWI French with gas masks.

The box art is not great, not unlike most Strelets boxes. The cover would be better if it were photos of the actual figures or drawings of the actual troops.

Figures are molded in light blue, and they have only a tiny amount of flash. Prone guy is a nice pose.

Advancing the light machine gun, with gas mask.

Figures are the typical Strelets chunky style which is okay for WWI.

Pegasus French

A sneak preview for the Pegasus WWI 1/7nd scale French Infantry set. This is a preproduction sprue of these figures. The final color has yet to be determined but will more likely be some kind of olive drab type color. Not unlike the Atlantic WWII French that were out twenty years ago.

This sprue is the Pegasus WWII French Infantry set. The WWII set is also a preproduction set and will probably be in an olive drab type color. As you can see the weapons are without bayonets and are much shorter, the MAS 36 rifle in most cases.

These will be two separate sets but most of the WWI figures will also work for WWII as there was a lot of older kit still in use in 1940. This is particularly true of the reserve and rear echelon troops. This plastic is glueable with CA type glues, and I suspect the same will be true of the production versions. Use a good quality CA glue, I use Zap-A-Gap. Stale glue often will not work on this plastic.

Pegasus is still waiting for the color selection, the box art and production to begin, but the figures are done, that's that hard part and the part that takes the longest. It will still probably be months before these are at your local hobby shop. Larry Pegasus gave these two sprues for me to review, certainly they will reinforce my Vichy French in North Africa or my FFL in French Indochina.

These are excellent figures and I am sure the WWI sets will enter my collection to fight alongside my Imex WWI Doughboys. I will have full photos of these troops in the next few days.

Pegasus WWI French

The Pegasus World War One late war, French infantry are about a year late. I spoke to my good friend Larry of Pegasus and he is trying to get them out by the end of the year. There will be two identical sprues of troops. He has meticulously researched them and they look great. The figures are intended to be soft plastic with a slightly harder plastic weapons / arms sprues. His intent is to make the long rifles with bayonets straighter so they look better than soft plastic ones often do. The figures will have a variety of different gas mask cases and slightly different kit. These will be a great set.

The French 1940 set are for the French Army that fought against the Germans in 1939 / 1940. They will be much like the WWI set with separate arms / weapons. The weapons will be a harder plastic. Another good set from Pegasus.

These sets have been delayed for many reasons. One is that it just takes a long time to make a good plastic set. The masters were wrong a couple times and so they had to go back to the sculptor to make corrections. The research was difficult. The WWI and WWII uniforms are similar, and much of the WWI kit was used in WWII. That made it harder to figure out who was who.

The work is not done by Pegasus employees. It is done by contract and so they work is not always done quickly. Sometimes the work is delayed by other work, unrelated to the hobby stuff. This set is nearly done, all they are doing is making sure the mold works properly. It is difficult to get the plastic to flow into small spaces, like the weapons sprue.