Saturday 21 August 2021

Flash Gordon - home casting kits from the 1930's...

 

This is via a good hobby friend, Andrew Campbell. 

'Random old  school, and I mean *really* old school, miniatures discovery of the day. 

Apparently there was a company called the Home Foundry Manufacturing Company back in the 30s, possibly through the 40s or later, which sold home casting kits for miniatures. 

Most were historical (for casting toy soldiers), but at least one set dipped into the sci fi realm - a Flash Gordon home casting kit. Who knew that home casting of sci fi figures went back that far?'







My Google skills have only brought up modern casting foundries so have, so far, turned up no more information... over to you please readers!

Thanks to 'Joss Sticks on Jupiter' we have a link to painted ones!


The Flash Gordon serial debuted in 1936 so there were probably quite a lot of 'toys' out there at some point. IMDB has some more info on the serial here and, of course, YouTube has countless clips etc but you can see the entire first series here; 



Miniature wise there have been (and are) a lot of proxy types. My favourite current proxy ones are those from Hydra Miniatures. There is a game from the Pinnacle Entertainment Group that includes a few minis here (sculpted by the great David Sonderquist of Bronze Age Minis who has the best John Carter series in his SciFi section). There are the (currently unavailable I think?) Jim Bowen sculpts from Monolith Designs. Brigade Games have a few as well. If you do 15mm gaming there are some nice Hawkmen and sled riders from The Scene. Paper ones for the RPG from DriveThruRPG. Let me know if I've missed any please...

54mm 'Toy Soldier' types are about as well...