Tamiya 1/35 Samurai Figures

Yup, but that was ages ago, something like 20 to 25 years. Totally messed them up, due to insufficient age and experience on my part.

My guess is they are a reissue. I bought a set a short while ago, and if I recall correctly (they're hidden deep in the stash) the copyright date was still 70s, maybe early 80s. I can't comment on their quality compares to current Tamiya figures, simply because I have none of those. However, I can say that the detail on these figures is absolutely superb. I get the impression these particular characters (they are not random Samurai) are something like cultural icons in Japan, and were treated accordingly. I should warn you though that to truly do them justice will require incredible skill at painting, in order to correctly reproduce the patterns on their clothes. I'm not easily intimidated, but these certainly do the job.

Rob

Rob van Riel wrote

I think Tamiya had two groups of samurai figures in the 70s/80s.

There was a bunch of boxes of figures beseiging a castle; they came in groups of four or five figures, or two or three figures and some form of seige gear (such as a wheeled sheild made of bundles of bamboo - I'm still wondering why I bought that pack instead of something interesting). The detail of the lacing on the armour is pretty good, but there are flat bits going from the bottom edge of the skirts of the armour; you don't really get the impression of seperate pieces you should get. Same thing with the ashiguru jingasa helmets, which are coolie-hat conical style - the jingasa are solid cones, resting on a head cut off at the forehead, so there was no opportunity to change the angle of the helmet.

Looking at the leaflet showing the box art for the range, it looks like there were a number of character figures, though the only one I recognize offhand is probably Takeda Shingen. The only attempt to make the range suitable for European distribution was to add '1/35 identical scale Japan history miniature model series' so all the explanations are all in Japanese.

There was also a more spirited collection, which I think represented the 47 Loyal Ronin, heroes of a famous revenge story. iirc, these had better poses, less armour, and an odder collection of weapons involving mallets and suchlike.

pegaso models do a couple of very nice samurai figures, in 54mm scale, and also try

for more, theyhave just released a cool -looking tom cruise 54 mm model in Samurai fatigues. do a search of both sites, and you should get some pretty neat models.

regards, sparky. U.K

I once had a box of Aoshima 1/35 figures. I managed to get the horse assembled and painted then came to a screeching halt whilst I tried to come up with a way to paint the humans. I didn't and sold them a couple of years ago. The box showed several other sets available at that time.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

These are the ones I was talking about. This is the first time I heard of the siege group.

Rob