70's Flashback 2

A second trip down memory lane with another photo from 1970 or thereabouts. These are Hinton Hunt Prussian grenadiers from my original collection marching through the snow on the trail of Napoleon, or perhaps running away from Napoleon – who knows? The abandoned Prussian field gun is a bit of a give away.

The snow was flour and the nice frozen pond effect was due to a clear plastic sheet being laid out on the table first (insisted upon by my mother to aid clearing up after the photo shoot).

The figures are:

PN16 Garde Grenadier Marching

It must have been snowing pretty hard as it seems to have settled on the men’s hats and shoulders as they march along.

Tell it to the Marines

One of my favourite films as a child was ‘Sands of Iwo Jima’ with John Wayne - from the days before we discovered WWII was actually fought in colour.

These Marines belong to a different era, one when Britannia ruled the waves and boarding parties took only the odd musket and cutlass with them – not an ipod in sight. The figures are:

BN114 Royal Marine Charging
BN116 Royal Marine Officer Marching

Nice little models in typical Hinton Hunt charging pose and a pleasure to paint. Ideal support for my Royal Navy Landing party.

Swedes, not turnips

Just in – about 300 Swedes all the way from the US of A. Don’t ask me because I don’t know why I took out a second mortgage and bought them. In total I have 9 x 24 infantry figure units plus 5 x 18 infantry ‘Jager’ units. No cavalry or artillery but I have Generals Klingspor and Alderkreutz, not that I have ever heard of them.

I must admit I was slightly disappointed when they arrived as none of the figures have turned out to be vintage HH – usually when I buy figures I find that there is a mixture of vintage, USA castings and knock-offs. These have slightly puzzled me as the castings are good quality but the very thick bases (about 3mm) are not like any Hinton Hunt I have seen before.

Anyway, they are great figures and are almost certainly taken from original Hinton Hunt moulds or models of:

SWN4 Swedish Private Charging
SWN7 Swedish Private Marching

This has put me in a bit of a quandary because I had already decided not to include any figures other than vintage HH in my army. However, I can’t bring myself to part with them so the current plan is to refurbish and rebase them for an instant army to fight my other HH’s. I won’t attempt to repaint them as there are just too many but they look like they have all been painted by the same person so have uniformity in appearance.

My biggest problem is that I have absolutely no reference material on the Swedish armies of the Napoleonic Wars.

Hinton Hornblower

This is a rather obscure find. They are figures from the Hinton Hunt range of Royal Naval Landing Party figures. The firing figures have a very typical Hinton Hunt pose clutching their ‘tree trunk’ muskets and shooting a bit high (perhaps at the rigging!).

The officer is a particularly nice figure in a suitably swashbuckling pose and was great fun to paint. They are:

BN123 Seaman Firing
BN120 Officer Charging

I also have a small group of Marines who will be joining them shortly for raiding missions against the French colonies!

The British are coming!

Over the time I have been collecting wargame figures I have only possessed a few British Napoleonic ones. At first I was interested in the foreign armies because I didn’t know much about them and they seemed quite exotic. Russians defending the great redoubt at Borodino, Austrians in their smart white uniforms and of course the Prussians arriving at Waterloo in the nick of time to save the day!

So it has been a pleasant surprise to find that I have accumulated a reasonable number of Hinton Hunt British figures. I guess these must be among the first of the figures released by Marcus Hinton and they are noticeably smaller than some of the other ranges and display some fine detail.

This picture shows (from left to right):
BN/7 Private (with separate musket)
BN/9 Private standing
BN/2 Sergeant charging
BN/5 Private charging

All these figures came from the same source via eBay and have been quite nicely painted. BN/7 is an interesting find – this figure would originally have been supplied with a separate musket that could then be glued to the figure enabling the creation of different poses. This figure is also useful for creating standard bearers (although the British range does already include these). All the figures pictured will (eventually) be stripped and re-painted by me. Click on the image for a closer look.

Thick n' thin

This is a picture of FN3 French Line Grenadier Firing. I picked up both of these figures from the same source but I suspect that only the one on the left is a genuine vintage Hinton Hunt figure. The figure has the HHF mark and FN3 code on the underside of the base which, as far as I know, was the case for all the figures made by Hinton Hunt Figures of Taplow.

The figure on the right was probably made later possibly from a mould made from an original figure. It lacks the same level of detail as the original and the metal is thicker in places – particularly on the shako plume. There are no markings at all under the base which suggests it is a later production or possible bootleg.

However, it may not be as simple as that as there is a fair bit of variation in quality even with the original Hinton Hunt figures. My Prussian Napoleonic army contained distinct variations within the same figure type (presumably there were several different production moulds in use at the same time) and not all castings were of great quality – however, the original figures did all have the HH codes under the base.

As I am a bit anal about having only vintage figures in my new HH army I probably won’t use any of the dubious figures unless I am short of numbers to make up units.

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.