The Marines have landed!

Just arrived to my quarantine bunker this morning - the relatively new BMC entry - the Iwo Jima Marine platoon.

Regular readers of this blog know that I haven't been a fan of BMC soldier figures.  The animation, detail, anatomy, and casting are usually pretty disappointing...Exhibit A, from their Alamo set:

Crazy-Chops McGoofy.

"I rest my case, your honor."

But wait, look at this.  The very prestigious and high-end miniature soldier company King and Country has had a hand in these new Marine castings.

And the results couldn't be more different for BMC.  These jarheads are pretty spectacular.

The animation and anatomy are superb, they actually seem to be in motion. Detail is outstanding and the casting is very clean.  Moulded in a pleasing, and appropriate, olive drab, these soft-plastic grunts are welcome reinforcements to the toy soldier table.

Sporting binoculars and packing a .45 the platoon leader directs his men off the beach.

Prone Browing automatic rifle-guy is reaching for another magazine to lay down covering fire as bazooka-guy makes his way closer to the enemy pillbox.

Bazooka-guy draws a bead.  This figure is unique to this group as it is a two-piece.  The bazooka is separate from the guy.  He's a great figure, but I do wish that they had cast a loader to go with him.

Satchmo McStealthy is unobserved as he makes his way ever closer to the enemy strongpoint.  He's thinking: "Did I bring enough grenades?"

This beautifully sculpted prone rifleman is covering the advance of...

Zippy the Zippo-man, using his flamethrower to  light up an enemy bunker...

do you smell burning plastic?

Running-guy is making quite a target of himself. He should really go into a crouch if he wants to make it off the beach.

Kneeling rifleman.  Classic. The is a really nice pose, the anatomy and animation are very believable; and riflemen are always a much-needed resource on the toy soldier table.

Radioman.  This one resonates with me as I was a radioman in the US Navy.  What I really like about this figure is that, unlike every other radioman figure I've ever seen, on this one the antenna is much more accurate in its length.  When you're calling for naval gunfire support, it won't do any good if they can't get your signal.

"...over."

Gordon the grenade hurler.  I love the posture of this one; he's really putting his all into this throw, and the movement of the rifle sling is fabulous.

Assault boat coxswain, or beachmaster.  It's always nice to have Navy representation.  This may just be a cheap ploy by BMC to get you to purchase their LCVP (Higgins boat) model.  If that's the case, they were successful as I just ordered two of them. this afternoon.

My favorite gyrene of the whole platoon; standing BAR-guy.  This is a very powerful sculpt, The posture of him bracing against the robust recoil of this weapon is very believable.

This set has  34 Marines in twelve different poses.  My on beef is with some of the redundancy; for instance, you get three radiomen, three platoon leaders, and three, beach masters, when, really, you only need one each.  I wish some of those duplicates could have been riflemen.  

Otherwise, I'm very happy with this offering, and I think BMC is to be commended for this watershed turnaround in the quality of their product.

These Devil-Dogs will be a force to be reckoned with when they hit the beach on my toy soldier table.

Gung-ho!

Soldier on!

Mannie