There are many people who, knowing my professional career and the public activities I carry out, think that my great passion is ships and maritime history. Although this is partly true, I must confess that my great passion, what fills me the most and makes me enjoy is modeling, both naval modeling and military miniaturism and collecting scale figures and toy soldiers. Few things make me feel as happy as spending a cold winter afternoon in my small workshop, assembling, painting or restoring figures and soldiers.
I have been playing with soldiers and collecting soldiers since I was a child. It has been a passion, sometimes almost an obsession, throughout my entire life. As a child I began to enjoy the hobby with the Indians, cowboys and plastic soldiers of the various Spanish brands that existed in the 60s in our country. Spain, as a toy power, has been one of the world's largest producers of painted or decorated plastic figures, which is what was said at that time. The plastic soldiers are the heirs of the old tin soldiers, a precious toy but not available to everyone. They were considerably expensive; a luxury only available to rich children or families with a certain purchasing power.
The most expensive aspect in the production of toy soldiers was the matter of painting, without a doubt. There were attempts in the British market, without much success, to make machines that would paint the soldiers but they did not prosper. In Spain, the issue was resolved in a very ingenious way: the big brands sent batches of unpainted soldiers to families seeking additional income to help their households. Apart from the soldiers, they were provided with paints and instructions for painting the miniatures. It was a system that made it possible to maintain very competitive prices in the national and international toy market.
Little by little, the appearance of electronic toys, the change in consumer tastes and the enormous increase in the price of labor to paint toy soldiers caused interest in them to decrease significantly and little by little. Little by little they were disappearing from toy stores and kiosks. The toy soldiers became collector's items only available in specialized stores and model shops and at prices only within the reach of adults.
In my particular case, the circumstance occurred that in the last months of my childhood I painted and transformed my Indians and cowboys. I used my mother's nail polishes or my father's oil paints. Also the synthetic paints from his DIY workshop and then left them to dry on the radiators in my house, which frequently showed paint stains on their surface to the irritation of my parents. A few years earlier, when I was seven years old, I discovered the existence of plastic models. In Malaga, very close to my house, there was a model shop that I visited frequently to buy planes, ships, tanks and other models that I assembled with greater or lesser success and with which I used to play battling with my friends. I also discovered, within this world of modeling and miniaturism, the existence of some plastic kits (later also metal or resin) of World War II soldiers at 1/35 scale (about 54 mm high) and also at 1/ 72 (about 20 mm high) in which I found the continuation of my passion for toy soldiers.
From then until today, for about 50 years, I have collected figures and toy soldiers without interruption throughout my life. In my opinion, and that of many other collector and modeling friends, our hobby is a matter of good taste, a very minority activity where the aesthetics and beauty of those small sculptures that are toy soldiers or scale figures prevail. and military miniatures that, at least in my particular case, take me back to the happiest moments of my childhood, to the cold afternoons of November, December and Christmas that I spent recreating fictitious combats, and fortunately little bloody, between Indians, the 7th cavalry, cowboys or the famous blue helmets of Comansi. Beyond the memories or the sentimental education that has entered our lives in various ways, toy soldiers and military miniatures are a matter of good taste because in the midst of a society in which vulgarity and coarseness prevail (you just have to look at social networks and television programs) toy soldiers are a hobby that allows us, in a way, to admire a rare form of beauty, a bygone craft that for decades fed the imagination of millions of children Worldwide. It is also a really enriching hobby since collecting soldiers is a hobby that entails the acquisition of books and publications on uniformology, figure making and painting, military history, as well as watching historical films and documentaries that allow us to imagine our little figures in action. Similarly, collecting scale figures and military miniatures is an activity that transcends borders and allows us to meet other collectors from many foreign countries. In this sense, social networks have been important.
They say that adults change the toys we had as children for others of a different type. In my case it is not true (except for my car, of course). Toy soldiers and scale figures continue to be a very important part of my life. When I am with my hobby, with my figures and little soldiers, time stops and problems are forgotten. During those leisure hours in which I am classifying my soldiers, restoring some, painting figures or simply playing war while reconstructing historical battles on a board covered with hundreds of soldiers, I live in another dimension that makes me enjoy again with my soul. as a boy and problems of any kind are relegated to oblivion for at least a few hours. The funny thing is that there are people who see us lovers of toy soldiers and figures as weirdos. I have more than one friend (a few actually) who have had to give up the hobby due to pressure from their partners, something I will never understand. In my particular case, there was also a half-illiterate fart (yes, with a degree in psychology) who warned me to undo my collection because I collected little soldiers for having some defect in my childhood. Logically who I got rid of was the friendship of this lady.
I intend with this website, apart from how it is logical to show my collection and share knowledge and experiences with other collectors, to disseminate the hobby in all its aspects, many of which are not usually treated in other web portals of figures and soldiers. We will talk about soldier books, both technical books on painting and assembly and specific books of various brands, historical periods or types of soldiers. We will also review periodicals and catalogs explaining their importance and usefulness. We will recommend hundreds of books on uniformology, an essential discipline for the collector of figures and soldiers, and we will review a good many war or historical-themed movies that are always a source of inspiration for any collector. We will also have a section showing the work of great battle painters and another for box art, the illustrations of the boxes, some of which are truly precious. We will publish photographic reports on the reproduction of miniature battles, which is usually known as wargames or war games, and also on the activities of associations dedicated to recreating uniforms and historical battles. We will complete the tour with places of interest, battlefields, stores and collecting websites and some technical articles dedicated to how to restore and repair soldiers as well as some articles dedicated to relevant brands or some historical periods of interest to me.
I hope you like the web and enjoy during your visit
Fernando José García Echegoyen