Exciting News in Plastic!

From Plastic Soldier Review, there is exciting news from Mars today! While better-known to some plastic collectors and gamers for their "borrowing" of early Revell designs (a charitable term), Mars has recently begun sculpting and producing their own sets, some of which are very interesting. In recent months they have added new Imperialists, Swedes and Poles of the 17th century, some of which appear to be quite acceptable sculpts and very useful for filling out existing collections or starting new ones. Today they announced a venture into a new period, and one that is at the heart of this blog. Their newest announcement (no release date projected yet) is for Saxons of the late 17th, early 18th centuries, and the box art is presented above.

No individual figure quantities or details are available yet, but with a generous 56 figures, and several very useful poses offered, it is hoped that this set will find its way into several WSS or GNW collections. The uniform is very generic, except for the Grenadiers who are wearing the mitre cap, marking them as Germanic or British. There are several very useful command figures, musicians and sergeants, as well as what appears to be a pioneer with axe (which could easily prove useful in an artillery set). There are also three figures that will allow depiction of a three-rank deep firing line, depending on the quantities offered. All in all, this could prove to be a very useful set and offer a great deal of variety when mixed with existing StreletsR and Zvezda units.

As both this set and the Polish Haiduk offered earlier represent new periods for Mars, we can only hope that they will decide to add some cavalry to this venture, which remains our biggest shortcoming in this period. However, there was also a recent announcement and review of a set of "Hungarian" Hussars for the Catalan Wars period from GerMan that help address this shortfall. While there are some historical inaccuracies with the GerMan set, and their plastic is terrible (overly flexible and fragile), these are still very useful figures and could easily depict the earliest French Hussars. Keep your fingers crossed and light a candle, maybe we'll finally get some useful battle cavalry to supplement that offered by StreletsR and Zvezda's single set of Swedes. You can see PSR's full review of the Hussars here.

Until next time (hopefully without as long a delay!), enjoy the Holiday Season, ask Santa, Father Christmas, Peré Noel, or Kris Kringle for lots of new little toys, and be well my Friends.

Bill