Heritage Models / Der Kriegspielers 'air power' and more...

I managed to pick up another old catalogue, this time from Walthers Inc of Milwaukee. It's a second edition version for 1975 and shows no 'taint' of fantasy or science fiction... that time was about to come!

And what a selection of goodies! They did offer trade discounts but, looking at the order form, it didn't extend to miniatures...

The 'air power' range described itself as;

'All metal precision cast actual scale model recognition aircraft super-detailed for use with mini armor, ships or as a separate collection of the aircraft of World War II'.

That ties in with the militaries use of GHQ 1/285 micro armour 'recognition' aspect. I wonder how lucrative the military contracts were back then!

The range at that time was as below... I don't know as yet if it was expanded but will start to collate and update on the Lost Minis WIKI later. I picked all of these up a few years back, along with some Heritage Napoleonettes (15mm), mainly so I could record them for posterity as usual. Can't see this gaming history disappear. The early packs (as per the listing below) only showed Der Kriegspielers however once they joined forces with Heritage Models that was changed along with the artwork. 

I certainly don't have any of the full colour cards as mention in the page above... would love to find a copy or two!

The rear of the blister pack;

The few blisters I have;

A few more bits from an old DK/HM catalogue;

I've now added everything to the WIKI;

https://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Air_Power

I don't have a complete list to hand, possibly in another catalogue somewhere so two of the above were later additions than the 1975 Walthers' catalogue  shows. They are lovely miniatures and I'd love to find out more about them so, if you know, please leave a comment! I can't find anything after around 1979 so possibly the range was dropped / sold on?

They also had a page of GHQ 20mm wargaming figures. I have a few examples of these and they are lovely figures, as you would expect from GHQ. There are some pics if you check the GHQ label on the right of the blog.

I also got a oldish (from 2001 which, at my age, cannot be described as old any more...) catalogue for TCS. It's full of wargames bits and bobs including a 25mm fantasy range of which I do have a couple of pieces somewhere - pieces I've never been able to identify! Very shiny metal. I must find out more.

Also, I found parts of the Hinchliffe Models Medieval Siege Tower cladding kit. I'd picked these up in a bits box of stuff about 10 years ago and had completely forgotten them. Unfortunately it's not a complete set and some pieces are duplicated. One day I'll find the rest!

Hope everyone is well. I'm suffering from my regular 'man-flu' which, as usual, hits my chest and so old man karaoke is currently off the cards. Most upsetting!

Take care.

David

Not strictly fantasy.......

Well, actually not fantasy at all....... I picked up a bunch of miscellaneous lead the other week off evil bay because it included some GHQ 'Guardsmen 25s' - never heard of or seen them before so I was intrigued. Very nice figures from the 80s possibly? Haven't researched them yet...Fusiliers and Scots Troopers...more info when I have it. New Hope Design were an English company I followed avidly in the 70s and 80s based up in Northumberland - lots of 54mm and a few 25mm....they imported/produced the incredible 1/285 US GHQ military models.

  

Postscript on this as I had an answer off GHQ in the US to my general query;

The Guardsmen were 20mm Napoleonic figures that GHQ produced a long time ago.  Unfortunately they are ancient history at this point (probably about 40 years old), and we don't have any information easily available to give you.  If you do a Google search for things like "GHQ Guardsmen 20", you will find that there are some people who have made scans of our old product listing for them, pictures of the packaging, etc.

So I did another search having found literally nothing on 'Guardsmen 25mm' - I came across this blog;

http://theoldmetaldetector.blogspot.co.uk/

Search on GHQ or check his labels. Brilliant pyramid of the hobby....you start at the top and it just gets better. Pics below with permission but check the site for more!

Also check out http://unfashionablyshiny.blogspot.co.uk/ for more old school goodness.

We are looking at February 1976 at the latest for these minis....Jeez, I was 14 at that point...just discovered Airfix magazine and possibly Military Modelling at some point later that year.....

Move on in the time machine.......................

I've also been working on some German AFVs for some while and have even started applying paint....then I decided to work on a resin French Char 2C...a real monster of a tank and worth chasing around t'internet for pics of the real thing. Black Tree Design for the Tiger Tank and SDKFZ 250... not sure of which version if truth be known but it's for an ongoing Ahnenerbe project so will have other bits added at some point. (Actually the 251/C courtesy of Deckarudo who also pointed out I'd mis-named the Char 2C as a 2B....doh!) The Tiger is all metal...not resin......The Char 2C was off Crouchie who sold his company to Warlord Games - they have a version of this so don't know if this was his original WIP? He only had a handful cast up. Nothing finished of course but ready for paint at some point in the not so distant future.....

Finally 4 gladiator types...well, 3 and a senator of some sort.....been in the paint queue for 4 years at least........still more work to do but thought this might give me the impetus to finish them!