Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Vintage Fellowship of the Ring

When I started miniature gaming in 1975, I was a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings. Between middle school and high school, I probably read that and The Hobbit at least 10 times.  So, the first figures that I bought were fantasy, focusing on the Lord of the Rings.  These are one of the very first figure sets that I bought:


Its been a LONG time since I bought these, so my recollection as to who made them is rather poor. I want to say these are Hinchliffe figures. They may be Heritage, but I tend to doubt it, and I am pretty sure they are not Minifigs. 

Its pretty obvious who is who when it comes to the various characters, except for the Hobbits. Sam is pretty obvious because he is carrying a lot of baggage. The question is which is Frodo and which is either Merry or Pippin. I decided the Hobbit carrying the staff is Frodo and the one carrying the sword is Merry. You can argue that the Hobbit with the brandished sword is Frodo holding the short sword Sting. However, Merry had a big dagger that he found during their encounter with the Barrow-wights and used it later to stab the Lord of the Nazgul at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. I think the Hobbit with the walking staff is Frodo. For much of the trilogy, Frodo and Sam are trudging along, trying to make it to Mordor, so it would make sense for him to have a walking staff. His left hand rests on the pommel of a short sword anyway, which can be considered Sting.

The figures are pretty crude in terms of sculpting, but that's not unusual for miniatures from the 70s. My paint job didn't do anything for them either. Back in the day, I did almost no shading or highlighting. Outlining the fingers in black was the extent of things. Note my fancy base, too! Back in those days, my bases consisted of rectangles cut from masonite board painted green.

Often, I have thought about repainting them, but they are a reminder of my very early work.

2 comments:

  1. They have a certain charm, don't they?

    I also have a few orcs that came out around 1978 when Ralph Bakshi's LotR movie came out. I want to say Heritage made them, but again, I am not sure. They were pretty terrible, even for 70s figures.

    If hindsight is 20/20, I would have recorded the information about each packet of figures that I bought.

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