My friend Arlin Tawzer sent me an email and some photos about some interesting 1/72nd scale US Army medical sets for use in the Korean War.
It may surprise you that there were figures for the Korean War way before IMEX came out with their sets. They were three plastic play sets, tied to the television show M*A*S*H, and made in Hong Kong by Zee Toys in 1976. The play sets included figures and small buildings or terrain pieces, and everything was made of polythene plastic. They were sold as “peg toys” on blister cards. They’ve become somewhat “holy grails” these days.
The first set was the “Latrine set”. It included a latrine with detachable roof, four oil barrels and four figures. The guy holding a bedpan or some other type of pan looks similar to an old 1/35 scale Monogram figure, while the rest look unique. The bedpan soldier looks to be wearing the M42 HBT fatigues common to Korea and late WWII. All the other soldiers appear to wear the M43 fatigues, with the jackets going past their rear ends, which is close to accurate. They all also wear the M1923 cartridge belts. One of the poses looks similar to the stretcher bearer, but his arms are slightly different, and have no ring hands.
The last set is the “Field Hospital set”. It had a great 2-piece medical tent with detachable roof, operating table,, wounded man, doctor, nurse, intravenous bottle and operating lamp.
The detail was typical Hong Hong-esque, meaning not real sharp. The tent, latrine and flags came with the stickers already applied. There were also a series of die cast, 1/87 scale vehicles meant to complement these sets. The card claimed these figures were 1/87, but they actually are really close to 1/72 scale, though maybe close to 1/76. You can see it is close in size to the IMEX Korean War American.
The second set is the “Helicopter landing pad set.” It came with a helicopter pad with a wind sock, a sandbag bunker with flagpole, stretcher, two stretcher bearers and a wounded man.
