Saturday 20 October 2007

The old ads are the best

This is the advert that started it all for me – from the inside back cover of the July 1968 issue of Miniature Warfare. The advert proudly boasts that Hinton Hunt offer “the largest range of high quality 20mm war game figures in the world” – heck!

I was intrigued by the drawings of the mounted figures although I had no idea who they were supposed to represent. I just knew I wanted models like that and strangely enough, I now have both of them. The chap on the left turns out to be Marshal Davout and the one on the right is Marshal Murat. They don’t come much more dashing and exciting than Murat although apparently he was a pretty poor general – great taste in uniforms though.

I did eventually get to the Hinton Hunt model soldier boutique in Camden Passage in about 1974 but was disappointed to find it only stocked 54mm figures. For some bizarre reason I bought a 54mm Caledonian Warrior.

Click on the image to zoom in and read the text.

2 comments:

Don said...

I remember this ad well in the 1970's. It is the one that started me collecting Hinton Hunt ACW 20 mm figures. I used to send mail orders to Mr. Hinton which would take months to arrive. Invariably he would include a handwritten note that I owed him a little more money due to the exchange rate (I live in the U.S.)

Stryker said...

Don

Even ordering within the UK wasn’t that much better – hardly the cutting edge of mail order at any rate. However, it was always really exciting to receive the package of soldiers. ACW was my first period of interest (because of the availability of Airfix figures) but I never bought any Hinton Hunt stuff.

Thanks for dropping by on my blog…

Ian