British Soldiers WW II
Kit # F72145 Review by Doug Chaltry - 172tankmodeler(at)comcast(dot)net
A common complaint that I have with many small scale figures, in particular resin and metal figures commonly used for wargaming, is their poor proportions. Their legs tend to be very short, with overly-large heads and equipment. CMK typically does not suffer from those sorts of errors, but in the case of this set, I think they've gone a bit too far off the other end of the spectrum.

These figures are tall. Very tall. Taking into account that the neck will be recessed into the top of the torso, two of these guys will be about 26mm tall, and the third, 27mm tall, when assembled. That's a bit extreme, even for this scale (approximately 6'2" in 1/72nd, even taller in 1/76th). If we had other acceptable options for marching British soldiers in which these three could simply represent the tall guys in a unit, that would be OK. But these are pretty much the only game in town for nicely detailed 1/72nd scale figures.

And that is very unfortunate, because this is an otherwise very nice set. Although I'm not completely happy with the shape of the helmets (too deep), the sculpting and casting are otherwise great. Kit is accurately replicated (though where are the spades and picks?), and I have seen many photos of columns of troops and tanks proceeding down village roads in both France and Italy for which these figures would be perfect. Not just for British troops, but also Polish, New Zealanders, and other Commonwealth troops.

Well, since it's common for modelers to accompany their tank models with soldiers that are obviously too short and stumpy, perhaps nobody will notice if we use soldiers that are instead too tall and gangly...

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Article Last Updated: 10 December 2008