BATTLE SCENE PRODUCTIONS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIN SOLDIERS

Tin soldiers are miniature figures representing soldiers from ancient times to the present day. They come in various sizes, usually between 30 mm and 75 mm measured between the base plate and the eyes to compensate for the height of the head-gear. Different types of tin soldiers are the so-called flats, paper-thin castings painted and shaded to look three-dimensional. Semi flats figures are a few millimeters thicker, and in the case of horse soldiers, often produced with a semi flat horse and a round rider. The most popular today are the round, solid, or hollow-cast figures.

One of the earliest collections of model soldiers ever discovered belonged to an ancient Chinese cavalry commander, by the name of Chang. This collection was found in the province of Wu Wei back in 1969. There is also another ancient toy soldier collection, which belonged to the Egyptian prince, Emsah, who lived approximately 4,000 years ago. "Wow! I won't mind having pieces like that in my collection".

Throughout the Mediterranean there have been discoveries of bronze model figures from Ancient Greece and flat tin figures of Romans, and Mexico, and Peru both have claims to be the sites of early manufacturers of toy soldiers.

Many of the miniature figures of the Middle Ages were probably used as religious tokens. They were created from a lead-tin alloy because of the ease of production. Most of the figures were were sold to pilgrims who had made a trek to a holy place. The soft metal miniatures would have been made and sold by local craftsmen.

Playing with toy soldiers was very popular among the children of noble households. There is an illustration in the medieval manuscript, The Hortus Deliciarum, which depicts two children manipulating foot knights on a table top, and, with the use of strings, making them engage in combat. The Hortus Deliciarum is a large compilation of texts from Biblical, traditional and theological sources to treat the history of the world from creation to its final consummation at the end of time. This compilation made by Herrad, abbess of Hohenbourg in Alsace between 1176-1196, also includes numerous illustrations of high quality that explain the text and entertain the reader.

Toy soldiers are used by children to play with, but can also be used by adults to fight war games as a pastime or for instructive purposes. Toy soldiers–old and new–as well as the expensive and detailed model soldiers that are produced by cottage industries in several countries, are popular collectors' items.

Boys have always been intrigued by war toys. When the Egyptian prince Emsah was buried almost four thousand years ago, he was accompanied in his grave by a unique collection of toy soldiers, which today shoulder by shoulder march steadfastly forward on their wooden bases in the museum in Cairo. Before the modern period, toys were a luxury reserved for the rich and powerful. The French queen Marie de'Medici gave her young son, the future King Louis XIII three hundred silver toy soldiers. The royal collection at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen has a collection of silver soldiers made by the silversmith Fabritius for King Frederick IV. French king Louis XIV had a similar army, which however was melted down during the economic crisis of 1715. Catherine the Great of Russia wrote in her autobiography that Tsar Peter III as a young boy had several hundred toy soldiers made of wood, lead, starch, and wax: "They were all paraded on festive occasions, and a special arrangement of springs which could be released by pulling a string, produced a sound as if they fired their guns." It comes as no surprise, then, that the French emperor Napoleon presented his son, the king of Rome, with a large number of toy soldiers. The finest were a set of 117 gold figures made by the goldsmith Claude Odinot.

Toy soldiers as they are known today appeared around the middle of the eighteenth century. Among the first producers of flat figures were the Hilpert family of Nuremberg, Germany. The figures were inspired by the colorful uniforms of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Prussian king Frederick the Great. It is probably figures of this type that inspired the Danish fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen's tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier."

The first literary reference to round and solid figures, rather than flat figures, was in the German poet Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and truth). Goethe describes a boy and a girl who are playing with some tin soldiers that are "round, solid, and meticulously made." The French producer Lucotte started his work before 1789 but no figures made before 1850 were known to still be in existence in the early twenty-first century. One of the greatest collections of these figures are preserved at Blenheim Castle in England, and belonged to the British wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill. He describes his army in his biography My Early Life: "I had almost 1500 of the same size, all British and organised in an infantry division and a cavalry brigade. I had 15 fieldpieces but lacked a train. My father's old friend, Sir Drummond Wolff, noticed this and created a fund, which to a certain extent remedied this."

The Lucotte Company was bought by the French toy firm Cuperlu, Blondel and Gerbeau, in 1825, which was bought in turn by Mignot in 1876. Mignot continued to exist into the twenty-first century. Besides soldiers, the company produced a number of interesting sets, including a picturesque group of firefighters and vehicles from the Paris Fire Brigade, circa 1900. The place of manufacturing the Lucotte soldiers have been for years in the center of Paris. As early as 1868, the shop is named “Au plat d’étain” (To the pewter plate). It will stay near the Saint-Sulpice church which is one of the oldest church in Paris.

The most productive toy soldier manufacturers were the German manufacturer Georg Heyde and the British toy maker William Britain. Heyde made 4.5 centimeter round, solid figures, with interchangeable heads so that each body could be used to represent the armies of a number of countries. Britain founded his company in 1893 and developed a special metal-saving way of casting hollow figures that became very popular. His first figure represented a British guardsman in red tunic and black bearskin hat, which was quickly followed by a multitude of soldiers from the British Indian army, from the Boer War, World War I, the Abyssinian war, and World War II, complete with guns, vehicles, and airplanes. Britain was still producing toy soldiers into the twenty-first century, but the figures became far too expensive to be used as toys and were mostly directed towards collectors. Toy soldiers today are almost exclusively unpainted plastic figures.

Between the world wars the German companies Elastolin and Lineol produced a large range of 75 millimeter resin figures, representing soldiers from many countries–although the majority of toys represented German soldiers and Nazi party leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering. Elastolin and Lineol, like Britain and other makers, also made an extensive line of farm people, animals, and equipment.