I found a copy of the catalog from the Toy Soldier in Maine, dated 1977-78, from which I had ordered the Leicester miniatures. It was not my choice of ships that was odd. The only U.S. battleships they produced were Idaho (that�s what they called it, really New Mexico class) and the Alaska class battle/super heavy cruisers. No North Carolina, no South Dakota, no Iowa! And the Nagato was the only IJN battleship. The full list is reproduced below; as you can see it was really oriented to British/German ships (same as the current C in C line). I did miss one type of Japanese cruiser, the Alaska, a U.S. destroyer and the U.S. escort carriers.
It might have been possible to modify/combine Alaskas into a passable South Dakota or North Carolina. Since I didn�t get one, I�ll have to either scratch build it or hope C in C decide to do a Pacific range. I have decided that the extra Nagato can be converted into a Kongo class without too much trouble; add a new stack and move the rear super-firing turret to the forward side of the float plane area, extending that area toward the stern over the original turret location. Both models need the superstructure built up a bit in order to fully capture the effect of those "pagoda" bridges.
| Left Column, from the top: Richelieu, Strasbourg, Rodney, Huron (Tribal Class DD), New Mexico, Baltimore, Cleveland, Yarnall and Fletcher (Fletcher class DDs). | Right Column form top: Mogami, Aoba, Nagato, Ushio (Fubuki class DD), Beitzen ( Maasz class DD), Prinz Eugen, Lutzow, Koln, Pola, Navagatori class DDs |
Below is an image of the original catalog page (from The Toy Soldierof Bath, ME) Circa 1977!
As far as I can tell, these miniatures are no longer produced.
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