70’s Flashback…

I think this picture was taken in 1970. It shows part of my original Hinton Hunt Figures Prussian Napoleonic army on manoeuvres somewhere in the snow. Actually it was taken on my parent’s dining room table. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to create a ‘snowscape’ with flour – perhaps I watched too many episodes of Blue Peter!

The figures are:
PN77 Prussian Cuirassier Trooper Charging (one-piece casting)
A4/AL4/H1/H2/PN36/PN38 Complete Prussian Gun, Limber & Team with 4 horses, limber rider and outrider.

I eventually painted 24 of the Cuirassiers. It was heavy going preparing the figures because most of them had massive amounts of flash metal and I only had one very blunt file! The buildings were ‘SuperQuick’ cardboard models made for model railways – they weren’t very super quick to make as I remember.

Chasseur a Cheval

Here we have two French Chasseur a Cheval of the line. They are two piece castings consisting of separate rider and horse models. This can make the rider figures hard to identify as they don't have any HH codes on them. These ones are:
FN319 French Chasseur a Cheval in Shako
FNH7 Horse

Hinton Hunt horse models are quite distinctive and seem to look rather more like large dogs than horses to me! This just adds more to the quirky appeal of the figure range. The horses came with acres of flash metal attached that had to be removed prior to painting – another HH trait!

Borodino anyone?

This is the first of my finished units. It consists of 22 Russian Grenadier marching figures with 2 charging officers. When I started wargaming the 24 figure infantry unit was standard so I am trying to keep to the same establishment where possible with my new army.

The figures are listed in the Hinton Hunt catalogue as:
RN17 Russian Grenadier Marching
RN11 Russian Officer Charging

The castings are original vintage HH figures that had never been painted before. I am pleased with the result although not completely happy with the shade of green I chose for the uniform. Despite having the complete set of Foundry colours I couldn’t find one that looked right.

These guys took me over four months to complete, mainly because I kept changing my mind on the style of basing. In the end I settled on plasticard bases with the figures mounted in threes. This method fits in with the retro look and also shows off the quirky HH figure bases which are square with rounded corners.

What's in the Box?

About a year ago I saw some Hinton Hunt Carabineers on Ebay and decided to buy them for old times sake. This was possibly a mistake as several purchases later I now have close on 400 vintage HH figures and the number is growing!

From a little twinge of nostalgia, my Hinton Hunt collecting has turned into a bit of an obsession. My aim now is to collect, strip and repaint enough original vintage HH figures to make two opposing wargame armies presented in the ‘Old School’ style – the way I started wargaming back in the 60’s.

This blog is the story of that attempt – so turn down your anorak hood and enjoy!

Take a look in the box (click on the image for a closer look)…

How it all started...

As children growing up in the sixties my brother and I played with toys soldiers, mostly the early Airfix or larger Britains and Timpo figures. The games were simple but great fun and we progressed from firing matchstick cannons to rolling dice to determine the outcome of our battles.

One day back in 1968 my brother returned from school with a copy of Miniature Warfare magazine. This magazine had the strap line “The magazine for those who wish to recreate the tactical ability and weapon capabilities of armies of a chosen period”. This was a revelation – playing with toy soldiers was not just a kids game it was a real hobby! On the back inside cover there was an advert for Hinton Hunt Figures “…the largest range of high quality 20mm war game figures in the world.” – well, we just had to get some.

The catalogue duly arrived but with our limited knowledge of military history we were somewhat overawed by its contents. In the Napoleonic lists were exotic troops we had never heard of like ‘Mameluks of the Guard’, ‘Pavlovski Grenadiers’ and ‘Tirolean Jagers’. Eventually we settled on buying some 20mm Prussians - because we knew they had something to do with the Battle of Waterloo!

Over the next few years that army grew to over 250 figures, each one painstakingly painted and prepared for action. Ironically though, those troops never took part in any tabletop battles as by the time they were ready ‘growing up’ had intervened. They were sold off for £30 - I wish I had kept them…