Review Part II - BMC D-Day Soldiers

Now we come to the second part of this review:

The BMC D-Day Playset comes with plenty of soldiers representing three armies: USA in olive drab, Germany in gray,  and Great Britain in light tan. Figures are in the 54mm to 60mm range. I first came across these figures about 20 years ago when I bought the original D-Day Playset at Toys R Us.

Here are the troops by country:

24 American Infantrymen with Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Junior

22 Germans (with Rommel figure)

12 British including a Scot playing bagpipes

That is a total of 58 figures. Indeed, a good amount of men for a playset this size. Troops also have enough heavy weapons. The Germans have two mortar crews and a couple of machine-gun teams. US forces have a couple of heavy machine-guns, bazookas. flamethrowers, BARs and mortar men. Granted, the bazooka man is lying down dead. The British have a BAR gunner

US Soldiers: Machine Gunner, BAR gunner, grenade thrower

One thing about the current batch of soldiers is that the plastic is a bit stiff. I am surprised only one rifle was broken in transit.

There is a good assortment of poses. One glaring problem stands outs. The sculpting ranges from mediocre to poor

US GIs: bazooka man (dead?_, kneeling BAR gunner. kneeling rifleman

Rifleman, casualty, mortar and mortar man, officer

General Teddy Roosevelt Junior pointing with stick, machine-gun loader, flamethrower operator (prone)

Generic mortars for US and German crews

I have had or seen most Army Men since Ajax and Plasticraft. Only a few feet from where I sit are bags of Tim Mee M16 troops, Lido World War II type infantry and a bag of the BMC Iwo Jima Marines and Japanese. To be honest, the D-Day troops are some of the most awkward sculpts I have ever seen. Immediately noticeable are the ill-fitting helmets.

German rifleman, grenade thrower, kneeling with submachine gun

German mortar men

German casualty, General Rommel (resembles like the Matchbox figure - best sculpt in the set)

German casualty, machine gunner and loader

Some of the figures could be improved by a head-swap. There is a real mixed bag when it comes ot quality among these figures.

Jeff Imel, BMC’s current owner, told me he will continue to produce these figures. Having new molds made would be too expensive.  Perhaps there is someway the existing molds could be altered to mitigate the worst of the sculpting. 

British Infantry: 3 riflemen and Bren gunner. Note the short rifles.

Rifleman, officer with Thompson submachine gun, Scot with bagpipes. 

You can get the D-Day playset through Amazon.com or BMC Toys' website. If the set is temporarily out of stock, you can usually by components of it separately.

.....

Review BMC D-Day Playset - Part 1

Part I - Terrain, Boats and accessories

20 Years Later

I first saw the D-Day playset by BMC some 20 years ago. The set was sold at Toys R Us. I had also bought the Rough Riders set there. Both were a pretty good set, all in all. There were three pillbox bunkers with AAA guns, a bombed out Norman farmhouse, barbed wire fences and beach obstacle. The landing craft were excellent. My only complaint concerned the soldiers. The set included American, British and German figures. The sculpting was less than mediocre.

Jeff Imel, current owner of BMC, sent me his reissue of the D-Day set for review. The box art is new. Also new are stickers for the landing craft and pillboxes. Everything else is there, too: Dragon’s teeth and Czech hedgeghog beach obstacles, barbed wire fences, and rock piles are the obstacles. Three pillboxes, each sporting AAA guns, and a bombed out Norman house are the structures. The Higgins boats are excellent and sized right for 54mm to 60mm soldiers. And the soldiers themselves have not changed. There are also a dozen small sandbag piles.

1 Norman house
3 bunkers with AAA guns with stickers
2 Higgins boats with stickers
3 barbed witre sections over 12" long
12 Dragon’s teeth tank obstacles
12 Czech Hedhog obstacles
12 small Sand bag positions
3 rock piles
3 flags -US, British, German
American infantry
British Infantry
German infantry
4 mortars (2 each for US and German infantry)
Tray-type box

Includes 3 pillboxes with flak guns

The Good News

I first must admit a bias. I have had the Marx playsets as well as similar products by MPC, Tim Mee and Ideal going back to when I was a little boy. I am also an experienced model builder and figure painter going back many years. I got my “basic training” building the old Aurora monster models and painting ROCO minitanks and Airfix soldiers. I know what is good when it comes to scenery, terrain, vehicles, boats, heavy weapons and soldiers. Therefore, I am prone to err on the side of my experience. And yes, I can be fussy about authenticity and detail.

Set includes 2 Higgins Boats, and they are big

The whole tenor of World War II playsets is altered significantly by this set. Those of us who grew up with a mix of soldiers, offscale vehicles and an odd medley of terrain are in for a surprise. Everything in this set fits  scales ranging from 1/35 to 1/29 (50mm to 60mm). There are no undersized vehicles. Terrain pieces are also consistent. In place of the handful of undersized landing boats and vehicles, this set has two large, realistic landing craft. The little barbed wire fence sections common to the old Marx sets are not here. Instead, three long sections of barbed wire fencing cover at least three feet of play battlefield. There are three realistic pillbox bunkers with antiaircraft guns on the roof. And then there is the Norman farmhouse in full scale. The set also includes anti-tank and beach obstacles.

Barbed Wire pictured with my Homecast figures, 54mm - 60mm

Dragon's teeth and Czech hedgehogs

Sandbags pictured with my homecast soldiers, 54mm troops

Yes, it is a playset, but for those of us in the toy soldier hobby, this one is for the big boys.

For those doing skirmish gaming with 54mm figures, the D-Day Playset is a great asset. It provides the kind of accessories that are needed for games. They make game set-up faster, too.

I cannot stress enough how much I like these large, realistic landing craft.

The Bad News

A few concerns. The house is difficult to assemble. The plastic is too hard and the snap-joiners are awkward. Putting it together, it flew apart like the old Lionel exploding boxcar. I prefer to cut off some of the snaps and use glue.

The soldiers use a stiff plastic. I am surprised that only one arrived with a broken rifle. Sculpting is poor. Some of the US and German figures could be salvaged with head-swaps from more proportional figures.

Pillbox pictures with my painted homecast 54mm - 60mm figures

Overall assessment

The D-Day Playset by BMC offers toy soldier collectors, modelers and wargames a variety of good accessories, scenery and equipment. These is raw material for diorama-makers and lots of goodies for skirmish gamers There is also consistency insofar as scale. Granted, these are toys, but they are some of the most realistic, scale toys in the plastic soldier hobby.

The two concerns do not diminish the D-Day playsets’s value to the toy soldier hobbyist. Get while the getting is good.

Stickers for landing craft

D-Day Pillbox Stickers

Some advice

For sci-fi fans: the barbed wire can be used a laser-barriers. Paint the upright posts black or dark metallic “gunmetal”. Paint the horizontal “wires” in day-glo colors. Shades of Forbidden Planet!  A ray-beam barrier to beat the band!

For troops debarking the landing craft, the Marx 54mm Marines have a lot of running poses. Most of the BMC poses for American and German troops are soldiers in place

You can use the landing craft, barbed wire and bunkers (without AAA guns) for landings against Japanese forces. BMC’s Iwo Jima Marines and Japanese are perfect for this. Even better, add these to the BMC Iwo Jima playset.


Tomorrow- Part II: Day Playset Soldiers

The Real Superman

Superman

Superman. The real Superman. This figure looks like George Reeves, the man who played Superman in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For those of us over a certain age, this is the real Superman.

"...Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, no... it's Superman!"

"Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound"

 He stands in that famous pose which was part of the opening of the Superman Show. At that point the announcer would say  "The never ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way."

George Reeves stood in his Superman costume with Old Glory as these words were read.

Superman was not one of the buff cut Schwarzenegger type strongmen. He was the older style strong man with thick torso, and these days the muscle-heads* would think him out of shape. Nonetheless, he was our Superman.

But on to another story. Back in 1957, the Louis Marx company manufactured  one of its playsets with a tin-litho structure. It was a toy skyscraper, complete with toy office furniture, workers and accessories. All the desks have ashtrays on them. From the outside, it looked like a multi-storied skyscraper. Inside were four floors.  The first floor had a bank, a drug store, a lobby and an elevator to the roof. Second was a floor with offices, then a floor with a gym, and lastly a stockroom.

Wow! Exciting! In the words of our mentor, “Yes, indeedy, boys and girls!”

It was a complete flop.

How could the folks at Marx not anticipate that? If you have lived anywhere that skyscrapers abound, you might be wondering why anyone would make a toy one. In the movie "Big", the adult toymakers came up with a skycraper toy. The main character told them it would not sell because it was not fun.

Anyone can see that.

Skyscraper photo courtesy of Mike Prendergast. Warhorse Miniatures

One item could have transformed a boring skyscraper into an exciting playset. One item. One figure. And here he stands before you: Superman. A skyscraper playset might be a dull day of play, but add this one figure and it becomes a Superman playset complete with the Daily Planet building. All you need is a toy Lex Luthor, a handful of plastic play Kryptonite and two or three old-style thugs to fill it out. Yet even without Luthor and his goons, Superman turns a dull toy into a fun toy.

Marx intended to make a Daily Planet / Superman playset. The company had everything in place: building, figures, accessories and Superman. Licensing fees were too high, so they scrubbed that idea. Rather than scrap the whole thing, they made it without Superman.

This figure of Superman is unique. Copies of him have been recast. Recast? Aside from a few sample figures, he was never cast in the first place. This is a toy figure for a playset that never happened. And had it not been for collectors, he might never have been cast again.

*******

The Warhorse Miniatures site is at https://warhorseminiatures.com/

Superman Figure aquired from James Wozniak at www.classicrecasts.com

*people like Jimmy Caruso.

** Louis Marx was notoriously cheap about licensing. He even disliked giving a few train sets to executives from railroad companies who allowed him to use their logos and liveries. One has to wonder if that cheap streak was behind his inability to secure licensing for Superman.
Louis Marx’s philosophy insofar as products was to make them cheap but make them sturdy. He was always looking to cut costs without sacrificing quality.