Toy Soldier Collector Magazine

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Time To Play!

Nostalgia, what this hobby is built on, and new company All The King’s Men certainly hopes to tap into this with its daring new product line, Mike Blake investigates

Re-Live Your Childhood

This is how Ken Cliffe of All the King's Men (ATKM) Toy Soldiers puts it, and it’s a sentiment I’m sure will appeal to us all. ATKM is a relatively new miniatures company set up by a collector, Ken, for his fellow collectors.

Ken says that ‘As long as I can remember, I’ve been a collector of 54mm (1/32nd scale) toy soldiers. I remember painting them in the backyard as a kid on summer days in Canada, and lining them up in the garden to be lost among the bushes and flowers. If you’re a kid, or a kid at heart, whose passion is still little plastic or metal men, you’re among friends.’

ATKM offers 54mm (1/32nd scale) figures for collectors to display, and more daringly, for wargaming too. When the venture started out, the idea was to offer everything from original pieces to a painting service, and now Ken has taken another step, adding playsets to the mix.

The latest offering from All the King's Men are the new ‘Army in a Box’ playsets. Ken’s bold aim is to try to bridge the gap between toy soldier collectors and wargamers. He wants to show the former that they can do more than ogle their collection on the shelf, and the latter that they can play fun, complete games with ‘big’ figures. To this end he has sculpted a range of 54mm pewter metal toy soldier castings. These are packaged as both wargames play sets, complete with pre-printed colour flags, rules and scenarios, and individual sets of figures etc. ‘Army in a Box’ is intended as a tribute to the classic toy soldier tradition of ‘playsets’, with buildings, diorama accessories and dozens of 54mm soldiers all in one set and all based on one era of history. In fact, ATKM has taken that tradition one step further, bringing the playset fully into the 21st Century by providing wargame rules for using the forces too, including all the game tools you need to lead an army into battle. No more wondering what to do with your soldiers once you've set them up, now you have all you need to play a wargame!

Each playset consists of all the figures you need to field a fighting force too, of course. There are two ‘Army in a Box’ playsets for each historical battle, one for each side in the conflict.

Washington's Victory

The first Army in a Box offering is ‘Washington's Victory.’ In late 1776, George Washington led his ragtag Continental army across the Delaware River to attack a Hessian garrison in the New Jersey town of Trenton. This raid was the inspiration for the famous ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ painting. The Hessians, mercenaries employed by the British, met the Continentals in what became a seesaw battle that finally led to an American success.

‘Washington's Victory’ consists of two playsets, one for the Continentals and one for the Hessians. The Continental set includes General Washington, 28 infantrymen, including two officers and two colour bearers, eight riflemen skirmishers, including officer and colour bearer, six artillery crewmen, including officer and colour bearer, one three-pounder cannon, four falling casualties, three prone casualties, two hills, stone wall (made from foam-resin), house to capture in the village (made from foam-resin), copy of the ‘All The King's Men’ generic wargame rules, dice and playing pieces, full-color sheet of four flags to cut out and use, parchment history of the battle and special rules for re-fighting it.

In the Hessian Playset there is the Hessian Colonel von Rall, and all the equivalent pieces for the Hessian side as there are in the Continental set. That's over 50 miniatures, terrain pieces and a rulebook in each single set. Each set is an introductory low price of $159 US dollars, plus shipping. For orders of two or more sets at the same time you can also get a free log firing position, made from foam-resin.

At present both sets are available with metal figures only, but ken has plans to produce the figures in plastic too at some point in the future.

ATKM miniatures are also available separately at prices from $5 for a hill to $30 for 12 infantrymen, officer and colour bearer.

Collector’s Pieces Too

The figures are more than just nice wargames pieces though, they have a strikingly 18th Century feel about them and would make excellent collector’s pieces in their own right. Painted in matt connoisseur or toy solder gloss they would look good, and grace a display shelf alongside the other figures in a collection.

There are even three different heads for the officers and colour bearers, making 12 variations across the sets. Artillery crewmen in both sets have different heads too.

The playsets are all sold with unpainted pieces, but Ken will paint them if that’s what you’d prefer.

And There’s More…

Ken also does commissions for painted figures, including his new playsets as I’ve just mentioned, as well as plastic conversions to order. The ATKM website has details of new offerings that are available nowhere else, pictures of customers' collections and converted and painted figures for sale. Ken is a prolific and talented converter of plastic figures and has undertaken commissions from individual collectors as well as from museums. Once the figures have been converted and painted it is impossible to tell what the original was, so complete is the transformation – indeed transformed might be a better word than converted! He tackles any period, from Ancient to Modern, with all the stops along the way. A visit to his website and a look at the ‘Workbench’ page will show the amazing scope of his talents with modelling putty, craft knife and paint. For example a personal project for Ken are some 1830s Canadian Loyalists, responding to the uprisings in Upper and Lower Canada. There are also photos of some War of 1812 figures from a large order for Fort York, Toronto, Canada in a traditional toy soldier style which are for sale in the Forts gift shop.

Date Published Mon, 10/01/2007 - 12:54
Author: Mike Blake

Contact
All The King’s Men Toy Soldiers LLC
2456 Hewatt Road
Snellville
GA 30039
USA

Tel: +1 770 978 1645
www.allthekingsmentoysoldiers.com

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