Conversions Of Old Plastic Toy Soldiers

The Lone Star flame thrower and Crescent Indian were in my recent cheap box purchase at ACOTS. I already have some other old battered Lone Star but this reminded me to do something with such figures. I have a special love of the Lone Star desert set although as a child I never had the grey version of the Germans. The particular flame thrower lacked the nozzle so I decided to convert the figure. I wasn't content to just do a restoration as I had a certain image in my head. Why not change the head?

The Lone Star WW2 are of similar proportions to Matchbox WW2 and AIP so the interchange of heads seems only natural. Once I started that I ran into a problem; this particular lone Star figure had got brittle; the feet and stand broke off! I welded them back on by heating a scissor blade over a gas jet and heating the legs and feet to quickly weld together. It must be done quickly while still hot enough and held just long enough to not melt too much plastic. Unfortunately some of the length of the boot legs were lost but I'll just call him Stumpy. This fellow will be a Bordurian (although their uniforms are very similar to WW1 and 2 German ones).

A section of lolly pop stick was cut and it was the same thickness as the original muzzle. The hand was drilled with hand drill and copper wire Araldited in. The lolly pop section was glued over this. A Green Stuff flame reminiscent of the original plastic flame was shaped over the wire. The head was also drilled and wired to the body with Araldite although hot welding would have been an alternative. I also added a putty respirator case.

The Matchbox figure got the lone Star head. Araldite is thick enough to partially fill gaps but I also added some Green Stuff. smoothed in with a knife edge. He looks pretty cool.

                                            The Crescent Indians have really nice heads but one of them lost his (after I cut it off). I'm thinking of keeping it to add to a modern or WW2 infantry body of suitable scale match.

The replacement orc head is from Eureka Miniatures. The skull was drilled to receive a spear head and the eyes were also drilled out as they were fairly ill defined. The knives on both figures were cut away from hands. (Interestingly both have knives on their belts as well). Plastic swords are the replacements. The figure retaining his head will be a Chaos warrior but he could be various ancient or fantasy warriors. I decided to remove the legging fringes on both figures although there is no reason they could not be left on fantasy figures. I also removed the loin cloths which only covered the front anyway. American Indians generally had leggings and the loin cloths at front and rear covered the rest which means the Indians in this case would have had bare bums! Anyway my orc and Chaos friends now have trousers,

                                                  The panted figures will be posted later,