I predict an upcoming market for Mountain Men & Blackfoot Indian figures. (1 Viewer)

Bid_kahuna

Bid_kahuna

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I don't like Leonardo DiCaprio movies as a general rule, but the trailer for "The Revenant" looks amazing. It's the story of Hugh Glass, the mountain man who was mauled by a grizzly, left for dead and traveled hundreds of miles alone through the wilderness. Richard Harris played him in the early 70s movie "Man in the Wilderness".


I can see a company like TSSD or Paragon cleaning up financially if they were to release a few sets of Mountain Men and Blackfeet or Crow Indians in the next few months. Nobody has ever released a true set of either Mountain Men or 1830s style Plains/mountain Indians. Their look is quite different from the Davy Crockett/Alamo pioneer types of Marx, Barszo and Conte and the 1860s-70s plains Indians of many companies.
 
Maybe but you can't build regiments of Mountain Men, Earps, or Clantons.
 
Mountain men and of course indians are quite popular in the figure kit world.
Mark
 
Thanks for info about the movie, I have seen older version and not gone miss new one.

About figures I would buy them, but anyway don't think they could sell so well...
 
Even the 1/72 world has its share of character-type mountain men and trapper figures. I would love to see large scale plastic firms jump in. I'm always eager for the hobby to offer more frontier types: longhunters, mountain men, RevWar and 1812 era riflemen, etc.
 
That's a really beautiful diorama!

I agree that most collectors wouldn't buy as many Mountain Men sets as they would Napoleonics or WW2 or ACW or Alamo. If only our hobby had a larger base we could get more specialized and character-oriented sets. I have to say that my own interests lie more with things like Mountain Men than massed ranks of troops. Maybe I should switch over to the model figure side of things, but I've just been a plastics guy too long and I like setting them up on the card table for a good battle now and then.

The new Russian makers are doing 54mm character sets, but they are kind of pricy and I don't think they would be that interested in doing American fur trade figures. Oh well... I can hope. Maybe this movie will spark something.
 
Bid_kahuna said:
That's a really beautiful diorama!

I agree that most collectors wouldn't buy as many Mountain Men sets as they would Napoleonics or WW2 or ACW or Alamo. If only our hobby had a larger base we could get more specialized and character-oriented sets. I have to say that my own interests lie more with things like Mountain Men than massed ranks of troops. Maybe I should switch over to the model figure side of things, but I've just been a plastics guy too long and I like setting them up on the card table for a good battle now and then.

The new Russian makers are doing 54mm character sets, but they are kind of pricy and I don't think they would be that interested in doing American fur trade figures. Oh well... I can hope. Maybe this movie will spark something.
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I had a small scale manufacturer tell me that they don't do a lot of personality figures as most will buy only one of them when they will buy multiples of marching,standing firing,kneeling firing,etc..Makes sense but I still like personality figures.
Mark
 
Personally, I prefer "adaptable" figures to "personality" figures. There are only so many gritty, grizzled sergeants in each army, or so many guys with the same torn pants, etc. I think that the regular production plastics should concentrate on the everyday soldier, then the special figures could come from pattern printing (as cost come down) or limited production resin figures. That way you can have the dashing Union officer leading a mass of troops, not 30 dashing officers leading a couple dozen troops. The limited production figure would be more expensive than the average plastic, but you would only need one or two of each. I think it is very unfortunate that TSSD's try at providing new figures in resin met such a mixed reception - it could be the path to the future!

Gary B.
Waverly, NE
 
Bid_kahuna said:
I can see a company like TSSD or Paragon cleaning up financially if they were to release a few sets of Mountain Men and Blackfeet or Crow Indians in the next few months. .
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I beg to differ, regardless of the popularity of the upcoming movie. No company can put out a set so quickly, i.e. 'in the next few months.' It just can't be done. Also, the market for these figures just isn't there. You can use hundreds of figures (even the same pose) in any Napoleonic or CW set-up, but who needs several dozen of the same trader pose offering trinkets to some Indians? A producer needs to sell thousands and thousands of figures to break even. The market just isn't there for this type of thing.
Another thing, a well-known producer told me once when I made a suggestion, "there must be conflict" for any set. There really is no conflict, regardless of how cool these would be.
So, I don't see much of a market for these (although I would hope that I am wrong--I'd buy them)
 
Bdyh said:
...who needs several dozen of the same trader pose offering trinkets to some Indians? A producer needs to sell thousands and thousands of figures to break even. The market just isn't there for this type of thing.
Another thing, a well-known producer told me once when I made a suggestion, "there must be conflict" for any set. There really is no conflict, regardless of how cool these would be.
So, I don't see much of a market for these (although I would hope that I am wrong--I'd buy them)
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I agree that nobody would buy dozens of sets of Mountain Men and Indians, but then, I never buy more than one or two sets of anything in 54mm or 60mm. I suppose if everyone collecting toy soldiers were like me the hobby would die soon. 1/72 sets may warrant an investment of up to 4 or 5 boxes for me, but the larger scale figures are too expensive and take up too much room for me to get more than a couple of sets apiece. I know there are many guys who get dozens of sets and have huge armies, but I never knew any personally.

I would rather have many different small collections of figures than a couple of very large collections, myself. I don't often have the time or energy to do a gigantic battle like the ones I had when I was a kid. Today my soldiers mainly are used just for admiring and setting up a few at a time. As I said before, I wish this hobby had a larger base so more obscure and less regimented periods could be covered. Marx had trappers, Atlantic did a Kit Carson set... But times have changed.

But as far as no conflict in the Mountain Man era? Nonsense. It wasn't all sitting under trees peacefully exchanging trade goods. Read about the Arikara War and episodes from the lives of many famous Mountain Men. The Blackfeet were constantly engaged in small scale warfare with American trappers. Plus there was bitter rivalry between the fur companies themselves. Mountain Man literature and film is full of violent scenes. Sure, there was nothing to come remotely close to Gettysburg or Waterloo or even Little Big Horn, but to say there was not any conflict is wrong.

Personally, I am really looking forward to affordable 3d printers capable of producing products of the quality of toy soldiers like the ones we can buy today. The day is coming soon, I believe. Then you could just buy or make the designs of whatever set you needed and print off as many as you could afford to buy plastic for. We would no longer be limited to all the companies just cranking out their own versions of ACW, Napoleonics, and WW2 over and over with the occasional Wild West and Ancient or Medieval set squeaking through.
 
Mountain men conflict... I can't imagine somebody (like TSSD) releasing 16 different mountain men poses in a set. Repeating the same pose on a diorama I think would not work.

For Napoleonic you can set 30 identical figures standing firing, 30 kneeling firing, another 60 marching to the battle field. Looks good.

Again, I would like a mountain set very much, and I would buy it for sure if only quality is good.

But I would not predict commercial success for it. Don't believe so many people would be interested buy this.
 
I think when the movie comes out you will see a surge in interest of them but it will die down.Model kits do very well with mountain men but that's because a lot of painters enjoy painting them. Dioramists would like them too.If I was a company that was going to produce them I would probably do 100 at a time which isn't very cost effective but some companies like TGM for example do 100 run figures.I guess it would depend really on how much customer demand there is.
Mark
 
marco55 said:
I think when the movie comes out you will see a surge in interest of them but it will die down.Model kits do very well with mountain men but that's because a lot of painters enjoy painting them. Dioramists would like them too.If I was a company that was going to produce them I would probably do 100 at a time which isn't very cost effective but some companies like TGM for example do 100 run figures.I guess it would depend really on how much customer demand there is.
Mark
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Mark you mean a set of a few figures produced in quantity of 100, not 100 different figures/poses?
Janusz
 
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