Friday, May 8, 2009

Biggie-sized! - a few old lead Giants (and other big folk)

I've been diggin' through some old minis lately. That exercise along with and a recent suggestion by Jay at Spell Card of using a Papo Dwarf King mini as a surrogate Fire Giant got me thinking it was time to post some old late-'70s/early-'80s lead giants and other biggie-sized minis, from Grenadier, Ral Partha, etc.

So let's begin with a group shot taken at last year's Lumberjack-Con:

Can't recall without peeking, but I believe that lineup is from left-to-right a Grenadier(?) Frost Giant, a Ral Partha Firbolg, and a Ral Partha Fire Giant.

* EDIT *
Turns out I wasn't too far off on the makers of these guys. Upon checking them at home, here's the real deal:
* END EDIT *

Here's a real nice paint job (IMO) by Herb the bitter that I saw over at CoolMiniOrNot.com of that Firbolg mini:

Very, very cool!

Next up, some recent Mall Cop applicants:

Ok, now I really need a cheat-sheet. Forgive me for any misinformation here, but I think in the shot above the polite fellow on the left is a Ral Partha Ogre, a Ral Partha Bear-rider Dwarf is the homey in the center, and on the right requesting a high-five we have a Grenadier Ape...err something. I will check these when I get home and edit things as needed here to provide better information on these figs.

* EDIT *

More corrections here, after checking them at home:
  • The Ogre on the left is indeed an Ogre, but he is more correctly an Ogre Berserker by Grenadier (1988).
  • The Bear-rider in the middle is actually a Dwarf Ursine Cavalry with Axe from Grenadier (1989) which was (as Jeff Rients from Jeff's Gameblog pondered...or possibly teased?...hehe... in the comments of this post) part of their Fantasy Warriors sets. I know I only have one of them, but I also know where I can get more, so a tabletop skirmish with a legion of bear-riders may be in my future.
  • The ape on the right is a total unknown for me at this point. The bottom of the fig is basically unreadable. I think it says '77 and #122, but that's all I can make out. I could swear I just saw this fig on some old lead minis site, but I can't find it now. Ah well. If anyone knows what it is, please shout out so I can get back to sleeping at night, ok? Thanks.
* END EDIT *

For purposes of scale, here's a couple pics of the Fire Giant and the Frost(?) *EDIT* Hill Giant hangin' out with my (apparent) recent favorite posers from the Reaper Legendary Encounter Pre-painted Plastics line:
Most of these are all 2nd-hand figs, painted (if at all) by some other gamers of days past, which I either inherited from my old PnP buddies, or snagged at different times in the past from various shops' used-RPG sections and other forgotten backroom bins. "One man's trash..."

I may just leave them as they are, as sometimes those old-school paint jobs ...good, bad or just plain horrible... can better set that "back in '81" mood, standing proud atop the kitchen table in all of their Testors glory. But I'm thinking I'd like to try to clean them up and do some re-paints, if I ever find the time. I have tons of old minis in that "someday I'm gonna paint" pile, so these will have to get in line. I have a sneaky feeling, however, that a couple of these whoppers just might "take cuts."

2 comments:

Jeff Rients said...

Great stuff! Wouldn't it be cool to have a legion of dwarven bear-riders for a tabletop skirmish?

xredmenacex said...

In case you never figured out what that ape mini is: http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Image:Archive-dadventure-722.jpg