Tiny toys made to delight adults

Press, 25 February 1986, Page 14

Tiny toys made to delight adults

ColkctitM with Myrtle Duff

After watching the horrors of the conflict between American and Japanese Forces at Iwo Jima shown recently on television, I decided never to give to any children toys which might encourage them to think of war as a colourful and exciting experience.

This resolve was severely tested the next day. Browsing in a toy shop, I found myself face to face with a boxed row of tiny, red-coated, toy soldiers. They were so attractive it would have been easy to succumb to their charms, but for a large American tourist standing nearby. Sensing my indecision, he called to the shop assistant “If this lady is not buying these I want them. I’m a collector, and these are Britains.”

He was not asserting a deep admiration for the

Similar pieces were soon being produced in France, Denmark, Italy, Belgium and Spain. But they were expensive.

In 1893 the Britain family invented hollow casting, a process by which an alloy of tin, lead, and antimony forms a skin around the outside of a moulded figure, which expands on cooling enabling a skilled worker to remove it easily. It is then left to solidify into a firm but hollow shape.

The workers at the Britain factory were said to have been able to pro-

intended to re-paint the boxful he had just purchased, or whether Ihe had a source of little figures in their naked lead or plastic. When Britains discontinued production of the metal soldiers in 1966, unpainted castings were sold. The balance of the hollow-cast, painted figures were available only to overseas markets. Future collectors were limited to what they could gather from a total production of a thousand million figures since the firm was founded.