A company has surfaced that is doing plastic figures from the United Kingdom. The company is called Open Fire. They are doing the figures in 1/32 Scale Resin or Hard plastic figures. The figures are pre painted. They have done a variety of figures including Robin Hood and Little John. Their latest offering is four different CIA Special Activities Division Operators equipped for night ops. The figures are not cheap their latest release of CIA Special Activities Division Operators is 21 pounds ($35.07) each.
The company has plans for many new figures, so check them out
Great stuff but those prices!!Maybe a company like Armies in Plastic can work out a deal to run some clone sets like AIP’s Modern Iraq/Afghan sets.One can dream.
Brian
I agree great stuff, but the price is too much for me. I feel Open Fire is geared for the collector metal market. they are trying to make their product in the UK and save money. I wish them well.
Yes, they’re pretty expensive. Fortunately, since they’re not in my traditional collecting periods, I don’t have to worry about acquiring them.
But what I am thinking about, now that Indy 2014 has concluded, is reading some comments from Ed Borris about the show. How was dealer attendance? How about customer attendance? How was the buying? Who was there? Were dealers happy? Any other observations? We want to hear it all! I really missed going this year.
Well, I roomed with Ed at Indy and we had a very good show, sold a Conte 1864 playset and a TSSD Romans vs. Barbarians. Picked up a bunch of Marx 7th Cavalry at dirt cheap prices. As to new; Barzso had new Medieval village buildings and sold all he had during room trading. One well known seller/vendor hopes to have two new sets of bagged figures and a new playset to debut at OTSN, he had prototypes of figures and accessories at the show. Austin Miniatures had two new hard foam WW2 Japanese beach emplacements to go with their US Marines, the two pieces are available now for one hundred each. They are hoping the Marines will also be debuted at OTSN.
Anything you can tell about what time period the two bags of figures and playset are going to be?
BOBBYGMOORE
Thanks, Mike, for the report. I’m hoping Barry Knight quickly posts photos of the show on the Indy website, like he usually does. I’ve checked every few hours, but none are up yet. I’m especially interested in seeing the new Barzso medieval buildings. Ron hasn’t posted them on his own site yet. “Bunches of Marx 7th Cavalry figures at dirt cheap prices”? I would have liked to have made that acquisition myself.
Well, Ed Borris finds them, makes the deal and we split the cost, we room and sell together [ and buy]. He’s good at getting ” bargains” , must be his honest face. He also saw these prototypes. The time periods for these figures, and this is subject to change, might be Persians and something to do with the Viet Nam War. Toy Soldiers of San Diego is shooting for new WW2 German” Elite” troops and Alamo Mexican Cavalry for OTSN. They have information on their web site.
And speaking of web sites, Steve Weston has posted that AIP might be coming out more new ” camel” sets, and that he might have more information from them in a couple of days.
Mike K
Sounds interesting. I assume the playset will have something to do with the bags of figures? What poses were the figure prototypes?
Anyone know if this dealer will be at the Texas show?
Thanks for sharing the info.
BOBBYGMOORE
Mike
Thanks for the update, we will wait and see what comes out from this new company. Either period will be accepted. Something for me to look for at Hackensack this year.
Ed is a good searcher of figures from what I have heard in the past.
I just looked at TSSD’s site and they are offering Caesar and a Roman emperor no specific on height or who made them, with other figures to follow.
Okay, I see mike has answered most of the questions. Here are my impressions of the crowd. I thought the room trading crowd was slow, virtually no one on Friday , but on Saturday it picked up a little but nothing like it used to be two or three years ago. I thought the attendance at the show was pretty good, much larger then last year, but their spending budget seemed to be low. I didn’t see anyone walking around with plasyset boxes under their arms like I have in the past, but lots of small purchases. The show was good enough to encourage me to go back again next year.
Oh dealers, most of the usual suspects were there, Keller, Eber, Barzso, Saine, Stengel, Ford, Ploughman to name a few. Most comments I heard were their sales were low especially during the room trading period, looked to me like the sales went up for most dealers at the show itself.
What does Admin. think of all this? And at first, I couldn’t remember who “Ford” was, but then I remembered “Allan Ford”, usually accompanied by his wife. I’m really hoping to see every one of those dealer names at our annual Michigan Joseph Saine sponsored auction/show in August. Most of the time, we also get Bill Murphy, or at least his son, Matt Murphy. We usually get Keller and Stengel and the Fords, and last year got Eber as well. Michigan hasn’t yet been graced by Barzso (or by Ed Borris or Mike Kutnick), and I don’t think we usually get Calvin Ploughman. But we usually have a pretty good mix of local collectors, along with Rick Berry’s Michigan Toy Soldier Co. I can recall one show where we actually had Barry Knight. We usually have Steve Connell, Bill Skinner, Jack Eagan, Glenn Smith, Paul Cirroco and Fred and Jane Bauer, too. Did anyone see Fred and Jane at Indy this year?
Don
No problem in mention the Michigan show. Yes it is Allan Ford sounds like a nice line up of dealers.
I forgot to mention we usually also have Will Bierwalters (spelling?) at our Michigan Show, as well as Ray Breamer, Bob Parker, Tom Jantz, Doug Plutschuck, and Dan Poole. We used to have Roman Romonoff, but Roman’s now deceased. And of course, Joseph Saine himself is bouncing all over the show. It seems we also always have a few dealers from such places as New Hampshire (representing King & Country), as well as Kentucky and Tennessee. A lot of these guys come in specifically for Joseph Saine’s big auction on Saturday afternoon and evening, but then set up for the Sunday Show as well. On some occasions, our Michigan Show rivals Indiana in dealer and collector participation. Every once in a while we have a bit of a bust in terms of participation, but since Joseph Saine has been conjoining the show with his auction, we’ve had much more consistent turnout from dealer and collector alike.
Fred and Jane were there, I only saw them at the show not during room trading. We also had Rich Egan, Jim Clouse Eric Kuper something or other, Bill something or other the old navy guy and Steve Connel.
I believe the 2014 list of dealers/sellers might be posted be posted on The Indy Toy Show Soldier site linked through Playset Magazine.
A little off topic, sorry, but Ed and I will be at the Kane County Toy Show in St. Charles, Ill. next Sunday. If you’re in the area stop by and say hello.
Mike
Have a great time and let us know about the show.
Or better yet, buy a lot of things after you have said hello. Kill two birds with one stone.