October 26, 2010

Hong Kong
Airfix Afrikakorps Clones
With Helmets

Today I received a figure lot from the bay and it included a great surprise. Among many other figures it contained about 100 of Hong Kong clone figures of the good old Airfix Afrikakorps set. But these check out the picture below.



The pictures shows on the upper row some figures from the Airfix Afrikakorps set, the lower figures are their clones. Both look equal except for their headgear. The detail of the clones is not too bad, the details could be better, but these are cheap toys, the scale is like their origin's, more 1:76 then 1:72.

I've never seen these (clone) versions of the Airfix AK before, even when I played as a kid with toy soldiers in this scale and I had hundreds of them including AK clones. But mine weared all fieldhats.

Update:
A reader left a comment, that these minis are copies from the old ESCI hardplastic set of the Africakorps, and it seems that he is right. Check out this link to Plastic Soldier Review.

6 comments:

Paul´s Bods said...

Nice find...I have loads of Hong Kong airfix replicas...the 1/32nd scale Airfix british paras being the most copied in 1/72nd scale, but i have never seen DAK bods reproduced with helmets!!

Anonymous said...

I think that these may be clones of the ESCI hard plastic series which look a lot like the Airfix. ESCI did the same with the Airfix British Paras. Have a look at this link.

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=839

Paul, do you have any 1/76 clones of the British paras which you would be willing to swap/sell ? I'm interested in the "good" copies with berets.

Captain said...

@Anonymus
Yes, they look like the ESCI hardplastic AK figures, thanks for the info, I will add the link to the article.

Paul´s Bods said...

The bods shown here have the classic grenade thrower amongst them, a couple are definately Esci copies but not all....good research all the same Anonym :-)
(I do have a couple of them but I want to keep hold of them, sorry.)

Tarih1964 said...

They were my first plastic soldiers, in 1/72 scale!

Good to know that the demand is still there!

(I think,that's why they were copied!)

.-)

Anonymous said...

It can't be copies of the ESCI set since they don't have all those poses.