More on Accurate Figures

Bill Nevins has allowed me to post his additional comments on Accurate figures that he posted on Custon Conversions Forum. Bill has great knowledge on the different colors that were run of the Accurate Figures.

MY TAKE: For me, the Accurate figures were the best thing to hit the toy soldier market since Marx went under. I can remember how excitied I was to get them. Till this day, I think that they are the best “post Marx” figures ever made. Accurate seemed to kick off the new Golden Age of Plastic. It was the first really new set of sculpts that compared to the best of Marx or the old Airfix. They still rank as my favorite “new” figures. How about you?

I can tell you for a fact, that John Stengle ran them in the most beautiful light blue ever seen. For whatever reason, he only did the British in that color. He did the Militia in an equally nice red-brown color that he thought would look great in the Alamo set ups. He was right.
I have known John forever and have spent many, many hours at his home
both buying stuff and just hanging out with him. In fact, I cleaned him out of all of his Accurate colors sometime in 2005. These were the richest, most vibrant colors ever used to produce the Accurate line. If you have them, hold onto them because there are no more and John has no plans to ever repeat the run.

Originally, the first sets of Accurate were gray for the Militia and a blue-gray for the British. These came in the first run from England. Bill Murphy (then of Excalibur Hobbies) realized the potential of matching the figures to the existing Marx Rev War line and had them run in red (British) and blue (Americans). In Europe, they paint their plastic figures, so color is not as important as it is in America, where natural plastic is king. Murphy was correct and the figures really took off.
Later a third run was done in a light tan color to symbolize the French. This may have been done by ATS, but I’m not 100% sure of that. It may have been Excalibur who did that, also. Later pure white was added.

Jamie Delson then picked up the line and ran the figures in a rainbow of colors including green, brown, and all kinds of reverse and second series mixtures. Some of his colors are not as rich as the Stengle or Murphy runs and are easily identifiable by their lack of pigment. Some are better than others. The green is good, but the light Marx blue is almost see through, compared to John Stengle’s effort. I believe you can still buy all of Delson’s colors from him at his Toy Soldier Company. He does run sales on them once in a while, so shop around.

The company was then sold to Revell who went back to gray and only sold them in boxes of 10, I believe. This lasted a very short time and eventually Imex bought the molds.

Imex issued the figures in a stiffer plastic in an almost orange color that was supposed to be red. If you compare Murphy’s red to the Imex red you’ll see how poor the color quality of Imex really is. The color and the stiff plastic remind me of the very first multi colored Mexican Marx re-issues.

And finally, John Stengle told me that the missing British pose (biting the cartridge) resulted from the original mold cracking and having to be replaced. I never knew about the pose Stad was talking about in his new comments.

OK, that’s the Accurate story as I know it. Anyone have anything else to add?