thedrifter
12-19-06, 12:54 PM
The Dolls of War
Former boys and their soldier toys.
BY NED CRABB
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
On a chilly fall morning in Oklahoma in the late 1940s, I tramped around a field of clodded earth and dry, plowed-under corn stalks searching for my German colonel, an especially prized line officer in my beloved regiment of toy soldiers. His usual HQ was my coat pocket but I had unknowingly dropped him in the excitement of battle the day before when my fourth-grade buddies and I had divided into "Americans" and "Germans" and hurled dirt clods into trenches containing the other team's toy soldiers.
The colonel, whom I finally found undamaged in a trench, was a highly detailed wood-composition figure made by Elastolin of Germany, founded circa 1912, and one of untold thousands brought back to American kids by members of the U.S. occupation army. I had paid good allowance money for my Elastolin soldiers to a neighbor kid whose father had served in Berlin. The colonel shared the shelf in my room with brightly painted lead Britains figures, still the most famous of toy soldier brands, along with Mignot of France, and first produced in England in the 1890s and collected by Winston Churchill among others of the British upper class.
The delicate Britains and the German-made Elastolins never suffered the dirt-clod carnage in cow-pasture battles; that was endured by "dimestore soldiers" (now an official collecting category), crudely sculpted and painted figures of pot metal (cheap copper and lead alloy once used in plumbing fixtures) or plastic. We bought handfuls of them for 50 cents at Woolworth's. Today, half a century later, they go for sometimes astounding prices, depending on their rarity, at auctions, toy soldier shows and on Web sites. At an auction in New York state two weeks ago, one lot of 70 dimestore soldiers fetched about $2,000.
Cut to passage-of-time film sequence of swirling leaves and hourglass receding into a vortex and, shazam, I'm standing this past Nov. 5 at a large display booth at the East Coast Toy Soldier Show on the Fairleigh-Dickinson University campus in Hackensack, N.J. I'm holding an Elastolin German soldier of 1930s vintage in excellent condition--made of wood pulp or sawdust and glue, Elastolins can deteriorate over time without special care--and looking down at a set of eight circa-1950 Britains guardsmen in red coats and black fur busbies, just like the ones on my shelf so many years ago. On a display rack at the next dealer's booth I see big, clunky dimestore World War II infantrymen, nurses and medical corpsmen, most of them showing the scars of being played with by children now grown.
I'm shopping ahead for Christmas, for my wife, who loves 1930-40s Britains farm sets, and for myself. Like many men who are collectors, I was given my first set of Buckingham Palace guardsmen for Christmas. So, as the jolly season always makes me yearn for boxes of little men in red uniforms, I give myself a nostalgic treat each year.
As I wander the aisles filled with hundreds of men (and some women, mind you) buying, selling and bartering in this large hall, I do my usual schmoozing with the dealers, who are featuring little armies from ancient Egypt to the Iraq war and every century in between. Many of the dealers say, with a sad shake of the head, that little boys don't play with toy soldiers like we did in the good old days, preferring to do battle on a Sony PlayStation 3 or similar electronic whizbangery. That is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, but the toy-soldier industry is flourishing without the kids--growing exponentially since the 1940s and '50s, with outstanding new makes such as Imperial Productions of New Zealand, Trophy of Wales and King & Country of Hong Kong coming on line in the early 1970s through the '80s.
Never have there been so many little warriors, from Greek hoplites versus Persians to Crusaders battling Saracens to Santa Ana's colorful troopers blasting away at "Texians" to snow-covered American GIs capturing frozen German officers; never have the armed forces of Lilliput had so many catapults, cannons, mortars, rocket launchers, half-tracks, tanks, bombers and fighter planes; and never have they had such a range of castles, forts, redoubts, stones walls and bomb-ravaged buildings in which to set up defenses.
Carved wooden toy soldiers have been around for centuries, but what those of us in the hobby call "traditional toy soldiers" were first manufactured in the 19th century and evolved into familiar forms under the guiding geniuses of Mignot, starting in the mid-1800s, and Britains Ltd., beginning in the 1890s: These soldiers are smoothly sculpted (no creases in the uniform), painted with bright colors and covered with a high, shiny gloss, are static in pose (marching, standing at attention, firing a rifle) and, charmingly, have rosy cheeks. Just as popular, of course, are figures with matte (realistic) finishes, lifelike faces and uniforms with creases denoting movement that are sculpted in full-action poses, as if in battle.
There are many Web sites for collectors of toy soldiers, one has only to make easy searches, but the following are some of the best: www.treefrogtreasures.com; www.arquebus.com and www.sierratoysoldier.com.
Primarily, the collector's joy is in the figures themselves, for the best of them are little jewels that are superbly sculpted, beautifully painted and with uniforms that are historically correct down to the tiniest details, including designations of rank and regiment. Most little men (and sometimes little women, such as WACS, WAVES and nurses of World War II and female troops of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars featured by some makers) are 54 mm--about 2.5 inches but up to three inches for some makes.
For instance, how about this fellow I just picked up at random from my chair-side table. He is a captain of Bavaria's First Dragoons, active 1806-11, a splendid gentleman in a white uniform with red cuffs and piping. He sports a white-and-blue sash around his waist, from which hangs a silver sword; gold-buttoned red lapels that cover his chest; a high red collar with three silver chevrons of rank on each side; white metal epaulets trimmed in red designed to deflect saber cuts; and shining black boots up to his knees.
My captain's dates put him squarely in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, the most popular overall period among collectors for two very good reasons: One, military uniforms had reached their most flamboyant and decorative in history, never to be equaled, and every nation in Europe plus dozens of principalities had a dog or two in the big fight, each with its own uniforms; and two, Napoleonic battles were vast, intensely strategic and tactical events involving huge armies of sometimes hundreds of thousands of men. Each of the major battles is a field of study unto itself, and a special delight for collectors.
Most collectors' interest in toy soldiers is enhanced by a love of reading history; as so much of history, whether one likes it or not, is an endless chronicle of conflict and war, toy soldiers seem a natural fit for an amateur historian. And just because such a reader has Dutch Lancers charging on horseback across a bookshelf or an Afrika Korps Panzer IV grinding across his desktop does not necessarily indicate right-wing tendencies politically. I have collector friends who are conservative heavy-breathers on the Iraq War and others who are liberals and firmly against George Bush and the Iraq conflict.
There are, as you might suspect, a number of eccentrics rambling about in the hobby; in Manhattan, most such characters will eventually pass through Steve Balkin's place on Madison Avenue, the Burlington Antique Toy Store. Appropriately, it's a rabbit hole that one gets to by passing through the charming and popular Crawford Doyle bookstore to a door in the back wall, then descending a narrow staircase, opening the door to the right and . . . voilą! You find a three-wall surround of toy-soldier-filled glass cabinets, a desk and some chairs to accommodate visitors to what has been famous in the toy world for 30 years as a hangout as well as a place of business.
Mr. Balkin often buys entire collections, which become available either through a collector's death or because a hobbyist wants to sell out, say, his Napoleonics to fund a new collection of World War I figures. Sometimes there's a gathering of potential buyers in the store even as Mr. Balkin unpacks the boxes of a collection he has purchased. One fellow is fond of bringing in a couple of bottles of good sherry to pass around the room, and everyone toasts the newly acquired little men. An elegant Park Avenue gent won't even look at anything except Mignot; his snobbery is shared by a man who looks as though he works on a loading dock. A man who seldom says anything to anyone wants only World Wars I and II medical corps figures, and another fellow, contrastingly boisterous and jolly, seeks signal corpsmen of both world wars. Occasionally, one wealthy collector will listen to a description of the toy soldiers over the phone, make an offer, then send the chauffeur over to pick them up.
The famous as well as the merely rich also drop into the rabbit hole now and then--New York society grandees and grande dames, plus the occasional movie star. Last year, one of Hollywood's Godzillas, a producer, came in with an assistant. Each time the producer made a choice of toys, he snapped his fingers and said "Visa!" or "Amex!" and the assistant whipped out the desired plastic from a leather folder.
Nevertheless, the Hollywood mogul, the Park Avenue banker, the schoolteacher, the bookstore clerk and the postal worker all have something in common: When they come into the store and lean toward the glass cabinets, they smile and say, "Beautiful. How much are these right here?"
Mr. Crabb is The Wall Street Journal's Letters editor.
Ellie
Former boys and their soldier toys.
BY NED CRABB
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
On a chilly fall morning in Oklahoma in the late 1940s, I tramped around a field of clodded earth and dry, plowed-under corn stalks searching for my German colonel, an especially prized line officer in my beloved regiment of toy soldiers. His usual HQ was my coat pocket but I had unknowingly dropped him in the excitement of battle the day before when my fourth-grade buddies and I had divided into "Americans" and "Germans" and hurled dirt clods into trenches containing the other team's toy soldiers.
The colonel, whom I finally found undamaged in a trench, was a highly detailed wood-composition figure made by Elastolin of Germany, founded circa 1912, and one of untold thousands brought back to American kids by members of the U.S. occupation army. I had paid good allowance money for my Elastolin soldiers to a neighbor kid whose father had served in Berlin. The colonel shared the shelf in my room with brightly painted lead Britains figures, still the most famous of toy soldier brands, along with Mignot of France, and first produced in England in the 1890s and collected by Winston Churchill among others of the British upper class.
The delicate Britains and the German-made Elastolins never suffered the dirt-clod carnage in cow-pasture battles; that was endured by "dimestore soldiers" (now an official collecting category), crudely sculpted and painted figures of pot metal (cheap copper and lead alloy once used in plumbing fixtures) or plastic. We bought handfuls of them for 50 cents at Woolworth's. Today, half a century later, they go for sometimes astounding prices, depending on their rarity, at auctions, toy soldier shows and on Web sites. At an auction in New York state two weeks ago, one lot of 70 dimestore soldiers fetched about $2,000.
Cut to passage-of-time film sequence of swirling leaves and hourglass receding into a vortex and, shazam, I'm standing this past Nov. 5 at a large display booth at the East Coast Toy Soldier Show on the Fairleigh-Dickinson University campus in Hackensack, N.J. I'm holding an Elastolin German soldier of 1930s vintage in excellent condition--made of wood pulp or sawdust and glue, Elastolins can deteriorate over time without special care--and looking down at a set of eight circa-1950 Britains guardsmen in red coats and black fur busbies, just like the ones on my shelf so many years ago. On a display rack at the next dealer's booth I see big, clunky dimestore World War II infantrymen, nurses and medical corpsmen, most of them showing the scars of being played with by children now grown.
I'm shopping ahead for Christmas, for my wife, who loves 1930-40s Britains farm sets, and for myself. Like many men who are collectors, I was given my first set of Buckingham Palace guardsmen for Christmas. So, as the jolly season always makes me yearn for boxes of little men in red uniforms, I give myself a nostalgic treat each year.
As I wander the aisles filled with hundreds of men (and some women, mind you) buying, selling and bartering in this large hall, I do my usual schmoozing with the dealers, who are featuring little armies from ancient Egypt to the Iraq war and every century in between. Many of the dealers say, with a sad shake of the head, that little boys don't play with toy soldiers like we did in the good old days, preferring to do battle on a Sony PlayStation 3 or similar electronic whizbangery. That is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, but the toy-soldier industry is flourishing without the kids--growing exponentially since the 1940s and '50s, with outstanding new makes such as Imperial Productions of New Zealand, Trophy of Wales and King & Country of Hong Kong coming on line in the early 1970s through the '80s.
Never have there been so many little warriors, from Greek hoplites versus Persians to Crusaders battling Saracens to Santa Ana's colorful troopers blasting away at "Texians" to snow-covered American GIs capturing frozen German officers; never have the armed forces of Lilliput had so many catapults, cannons, mortars, rocket launchers, half-tracks, tanks, bombers and fighter planes; and never have they had such a range of castles, forts, redoubts, stones walls and bomb-ravaged buildings in which to set up defenses.
Carved wooden toy soldiers have been around for centuries, but what those of us in the hobby call "traditional toy soldiers" were first manufactured in the 19th century and evolved into familiar forms under the guiding geniuses of Mignot, starting in the mid-1800s, and Britains Ltd., beginning in the 1890s: These soldiers are smoothly sculpted (no creases in the uniform), painted with bright colors and covered with a high, shiny gloss, are static in pose (marching, standing at attention, firing a rifle) and, charmingly, have rosy cheeks. Just as popular, of course, are figures with matte (realistic) finishes, lifelike faces and uniforms with creases denoting movement that are sculpted in full-action poses, as if in battle.
There are many Web sites for collectors of toy soldiers, one has only to make easy searches, but the following are some of the best: www.treefrogtreasures.com; www.arquebus.com and www.sierratoysoldier.com.
Primarily, the collector's joy is in the figures themselves, for the best of them are little jewels that are superbly sculpted, beautifully painted and with uniforms that are historically correct down to the tiniest details, including designations of rank and regiment. Most little men (and sometimes little women, such as WACS, WAVES and nurses of World War II and female troops of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars featured by some makers) are 54 mm--about 2.5 inches but up to three inches for some makes.
For instance, how about this fellow I just picked up at random from my chair-side table. He is a captain of Bavaria's First Dragoons, active 1806-11, a splendid gentleman in a white uniform with red cuffs and piping. He sports a white-and-blue sash around his waist, from which hangs a silver sword; gold-buttoned red lapels that cover his chest; a high red collar with three silver chevrons of rank on each side; white metal epaulets trimmed in red designed to deflect saber cuts; and shining black boots up to his knees.
My captain's dates put him squarely in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, the most popular overall period among collectors for two very good reasons: One, military uniforms had reached their most flamboyant and decorative in history, never to be equaled, and every nation in Europe plus dozens of principalities had a dog or two in the big fight, each with its own uniforms; and two, Napoleonic battles were vast, intensely strategic and tactical events involving huge armies of sometimes hundreds of thousands of men. Each of the major battles is a field of study unto itself, and a special delight for collectors.
Most collectors' interest in toy soldiers is enhanced by a love of reading history; as so much of history, whether one likes it or not, is an endless chronicle of conflict and war, toy soldiers seem a natural fit for an amateur historian. And just because such a reader has Dutch Lancers charging on horseback across a bookshelf or an Afrika Korps Panzer IV grinding across his desktop does not necessarily indicate right-wing tendencies politically. I have collector friends who are conservative heavy-breathers on the Iraq War and others who are liberals and firmly against George Bush and the Iraq conflict.
There are, as you might suspect, a number of eccentrics rambling about in the hobby; in Manhattan, most such characters will eventually pass through Steve Balkin's place on Madison Avenue, the Burlington Antique Toy Store. Appropriately, it's a rabbit hole that one gets to by passing through the charming and popular Crawford Doyle bookstore to a door in the back wall, then descending a narrow staircase, opening the door to the right and . . . voilą! You find a three-wall surround of toy-soldier-filled glass cabinets, a desk and some chairs to accommodate visitors to what has been famous in the toy world for 30 years as a hangout as well as a place of business.
Mr. Balkin often buys entire collections, which become available either through a collector's death or because a hobbyist wants to sell out, say, his Napoleonics to fund a new collection of World War I figures. Sometimes there's a gathering of potential buyers in the store even as Mr. Balkin unpacks the boxes of a collection he has purchased. One fellow is fond of bringing in a couple of bottles of good sherry to pass around the room, and everyone toasts the newly acquired little men. An elegant Park Avenue gent won't even look at anything except Mignot; his snobbery is shared by a man who looks as though he works on a loading dock. A man who seldom says anything to anyone wants only World Wars I and II medical corps figures, and another fellow, contrastingly boisterous and jolly, seeks signal corpsmen of both world wars. Occasionally, one wealthy collector will listen to a description of the toy soldiers over the phone, make an offer, then send the chauffeur over to pick them up.
The famous as well as the merely rich also drop into the rabbit hole now and then--New York society grandees and grande dames, plus the occasional movie star. Last year, one of Hollywood's Godzillas, a producer, came in with an assistant. Each time the producer made a choice of toys, he snapped his fingers and said "Visa!" or "Amex!" and the assistant whipped out the desired plastic from a leather folder.
Nevertheless, the Hollywood mogul, the Park Avenue banker, the schoolteacher, the bookstore clerk and the postal worker all have something in common: When they come into the store and lean toward the glass cabinets, they smile and say, "Beautiful. How much are these right here?"
Mr. Crabb is The Wall Street Journal's Letters editor.
Ellie