Good quality figures will continue to sell, although 1/72 may be becoming more of a 'niche' as we all grow older:no_mouth:

As I see it there remains a strong demand for military miniatures, both hardware ('planes, tanks, ships etc in model form) and model soldiers. However, the scales that predominate these days are 28mm and 15/18mm, often in metal but also in plastic. These figures are notably more expensive than 1/72 figures, but those who collect them continue with the mantra of '1/72 plastics are toys'....yawn, yawn, yawn:sleeping:

Well, anyone who thinks that 1/72 plastics are toys needs to get themselves down to the National Army Museum in London UK when the 'Waterloo in 20mm' diorama is being displayed; as planned, 100,000+ 1/72scale figures in its complete iteration, and most of these are plastic.

The war in Ukraine is having a profound effect on production this year; let us hope that this unhappy situation can be resolved and peace returns.

The production profile year on year since 1958 is on the PSR features page and is at:
http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/ShowFeature.aspx?id=27

I've been around for long long time, :smile: since Airfix and Atlantic, at least from the 70s, and these last years have been a very renaissance for the hobby! never been like this before! so many sets and so much different! I guess the market has come to a sort of an end, the hobby have been explored in every direction... and that's good. I mean, it's clear now that's it's a real niche market, for very peculiar hobbyists, not 28mm, not fantasy or sci-fi... just for historic wargamers or very realistic dioramers... so production have to follow these directions, very precise and targeted, with the outcome that production will be fewer, much fewer and and better, much better, for the next future! so this is good... i think

Well I would prefer big players be in the market: Revell, Italeri, Zvezda and Hat.

I like a lot Redbox and Strelets, but I think having more forms in the market is healthy and if they are big players - even more.

I know that Zvezda made the 1/72 figures because their founder loved that scale. But what is about Revell, Pegasus, Italeri, Waterloo 1815. What happened to them?

Is the market so a all that only our Ukrainian intusiasts are in the game?

Sorry made several mistakes when I wrote:

The question was: is the market so small that only our Ukrainian entusiasts are interested in it?

What happened in the past years that all big players went out of the market?

well, i think that revell and italeri were never in the market and never out.. they are still there, it's just that they move very very sloooowly, they stand and watch what's happening, then they make a new set.. one on every 20 or 30 years. Zvezda and Hat made the renaissance of the hobby (with strelets, caesar, orion, red box etc.), it's just that that wave has come to an end.. waterloo just rode that wave, a wave just a little too big for the small tuscan manufacturer, but he did something really worthy and hope he still keep doing!

of course i keep faith that strelets, orion, red box, alliance and everyone is still riding the wave, will still keep riding for a long long time! and never give up! :muscle:

and for the market, it seems obvious that is a nearly exclusive club for anglosaxon gentlemen, british, americans, some australian, some other few europeans, germans... people with cold winters that love to stay home playing with toy soldiers :joy:
so, if winters still stay cold and dollars and pounds keep running out the pocket of middle-aged-a-little-overweight anglosaxon gentlemen the hobby will not perish! :laughing:

Well said, Giorgio! I would like to add that 72 scale remains quite popular among the Eastern Slavs - in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.

Another very active manufacturer that I haven’t heard mentioned here yet is Linear A. While they focus primarily on ancients, they are expanding into the Napoleonics here soon, and their quality is outstanding. I feel like this point has been made already, but as long as we’ll researched and quality figures are being produced people will buy. And I can tell you that me and many of my friends (early 20s) are all very much into the hobby.

Reallllly love Linear-A, and Linear-B... i mean, they did Etruscans, Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, Denisovans!! and Minoans, Roman civil life, hellenistic armies and many other exotic subjects! actually I think it's my favourite Manufacturer!!! (even if I think that there's the hand of Strelets behind their minis!):heart_eyes:

Dear Giorgio,

we don't make sets for Linear-B any longer.
What you describe as a "hand of Strelets", is in reality a hand of a same sculptor, who is in trenches now. At the moment the area that he's in is relatively calm. How long that will be the case nobody knows, hence all future projects are pretty vague.

Best regards,

Strelets

:scream: :fearful: oh my god, hope the best for that guy!
hope the best for you all!
please somebody stop this madness! let's there be war and battles only on the game table!
not for real!!!
It's too easy for us, that we live only few hours of driving from Ukraine (Italy), to forget that the war is still going on!
I quite can't believe my words... war!
simply unconceivable!
please stay safe, I pray this will stop as soon as possible! :pray:

Strelets, I am sorry to hear that your brilliant sculptor, and that you yourself, are in the way of danger. That is a cold bucket of reality thrown on all of us enthusiasts, and another really good reason to hate Vlad Putin. I hope that he roasts in hell.

Yevgen Chernov:
Great topic. How lucky we are to be living through this amazing hobby from the beginning and thru till now. The 1960's John Wayne Fort Apache and Beau Geste movies helped hooked me as a kid. Hopefully some new CGI games or YouTubes will encourage the new generations to want to buy these and experience that wonderful "feel" of the figures in their hands.

Minuteman:
Thanks for the PSR link. Incredible!

Plastic Soldier Review:
Your PSR and plus Wikipedia are the two absolute greatest resources on the internet. I appreciate both so much. Thank you!

Strelets:
Thank you for the greatest forum for our hobby. The Strelets Team shows such strength, courage, determination and fighting spirit. I am absolutely in awe and humbled.

Other Forum Members:
Very interesting opinions. So enjoyable to read them. This Forum brings enjoyment and friendship around the world.

I think it is wrong and highly misleading to claim that HaT, Waterloo 1815, Italeri, Zvezda have stopped production. They certainly have not. They have more or less stopped releasing new sets, but their sets are plentiful to be found all over the internet and they are regularily back in stock. I use figures for wargaming, one of the few using 20mm and for that purpose those manufaturers are very useful, since you can easily build British, French, Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies with their output. The same would go for people building dioramas I would think.

So tha they produce few new sets is something mostly the collectors have a gripe with, but for other groups they still do the use, and as a matter of fact, a manufacturer like Italeri that keep core sets for the hobby in print for decades is very important for new people entering the hobby, wargamers and the like.