One of the things I’ve become increasingly aware of since I started setting out some Western Desert dioramas is that there is a great dearth of figures representing any country other than the main protagonists. Germans are a plenty, British and American aren’t ill served, but that’s really about it. Actually it’s probably not really even true to say the main protagonists as if you exclude the likes of Miniart, Masterbox and Zvezda the Russian offerings are also thin on the ground, and if you want Japanese you can count the available figure sets on one hand, thumb excluded. French sets can probably be counted on the thumbs.
So I guess it’s no real surprise that the millions of Italians who fought in the war get next to no representation. New Zealand I guess can count itself lucky as most British figure sets will work equally well for New Zealand, as well as Canada and some Australian troops - if they’re in the desert, forget it if you want a set in Burma armed with Owens or SMLE Jungle Carbines.
At least Masterbox and Miniart have come to the rescue of fans of Russian dioramas, and to a lesser degree Japanese, but we need a champion of the smaller participants of the war. Indian troops, Gurkhas, Moroccans in French services to name some of the more extreme. But also more French, more Italian, and more Japanese. Unless I’m mistaken huge parts of the war took place with participants from those countires involved.
We have no Poles, no Finns, no Algerians, no Turks. Some of those I know we can find in resin, but even in that medium we are lacking so many. I’d actually quite like a set of Maori figures, ones that actually look like Maori with the proper physical attributes ( the noses, the legs, and the propensity towards big guns that went auto ).
If it’s too much to ask for full figure sets could we at least have some weapon and eqipment sets ? Some Owens and SMLE Jungle Carbines to enable the conversion of british figures to Aussies in Burma. Some shotguns for the Marines in the islands, Steyr-Mannlichers to turn German figures into Hungarians, Italian helmets, equipment, and weapons so I can resculpt some Germans.
Actually while I’m on that point I’d be happy to also see a few equipment and weapon sets that contained some of the less common weapons. There’s Stens, MP40s, Thompsons, and Brens a plenty, but no Reislings, bugger all M3 Sub-Machine Guns, no MP18, MP28, or MP35s except in a few obscure kits. We also need more of the “end of days” guns seen turned out during the Russian sieges like Stalingrad, as well as those that came out of Germany and wound up in the hands of German Volkstrum in the final months like the VG1-5.
Then there are the guns found in the hands of troops serving beside, or opposed to, the larger nations. We need Hungarian 39M sub-machine guns, French Mas 38s, Finish Suomi M31s, Romanian Oritas. All these were used by rear unit german troops as well as by units of non-Germans in german service. That’s just a few and doesn’t include the various rifles and handguns.
And don’t get me started on why there is still no plastic kit of the Vickers Mk I machine gun, not to mention the Lewis ( unless you want to track down the hard to find Tamiya LRDG truck just to get one ), the Japanese Type 03, and the Breda M1937 ( though Masterbox do have one of these in the pipeline ).
I seem to have gone off into a bit of a rant there somewhere along the way, but if you’re like me and get a bit tired of various Panther versions following various Tiger versions following yet more various Panther versions with no sign of something a little different to the norm on the horizon then I’m sure you will understand.
