Hi, I’m new to this forum and wanted to know if I can post some pics of a small metal toy soldier found in my yard. It looks like 1950s era or so, and looks to be a rifleman charging forward. I don’t see any maker mark but it’s still not cleaned up very well. It has a small oval base supporting it, and doesn’t look like many of the stands I’ve seen on other toy soldiers. Is there a specific for, spot to show this? Thanks
ID metal toy soldier (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter FLOOD
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Go for Broke
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That looks like a Timpo WWII USA soldier. I don't know if you can research pass threads on this Forum, but Johnny Bach restored a bunch of these.
Thanks. Based on your comment I searched online and found a couple of these for sale that were in good shape, and you are correct about the brand and troop type. Thanks. This was a backyard find at my house, which was built back in ‘49 so I figured the vintage of the old soldier was likely from the fifties or sixties.
Hazebrouck
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Give it a clean with some soapy water and a toothbrush and see if any of the original paint remains. Nice find.
I found a good likeness of this toy soldier on Ebay UK, described as the Timpo WW2 infantryman. I cleaned mine up and there is still some reddish coloration to the boots and the green base. My find has a broken bayonet, and I notice that the base of mine is similar, but slightly different than the one shown for sale. My base is smaller and more oval while the one I also included from Ebay is longer and looks more egg shaped. I'm thinking that perhaps the age of each of them might be different, and the manufacturer modified the base design? Or, if this is not a Timpo, it's a brand that had a very similar design. I found this toy near a retaining wall in my yard. I happen to be the third owner of the home, but met the original family that designed and built in back in '49, and they had a couple of children, including a son. So, I can imagine he played with his toy soldiers along this little retaining wall, and one day, dropped this one in the grass, where it was covered up, and I just happened to find it 65 or so years later. Kind of an interesting background on the toy. It was once someone's gem.
Hazebrouck
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Flood,
That other figure looks to have been restored. I think they have mounted the original figure on a larger base so that the figure is more stable.
You could have a go restoring your figure. The bayonet would not be difficult to replace. Several years ago a fellow forum member kindly sent me a figure that had also been found in a yard and I gave it a second life-
https://forum.treefrogtreasures.com/showthread.php?54892-Lafayette-You-Are-Here&highlight=lafayette
Scott
That other figure looks to have been restored. I think they have mounted the original figure on a larger base so that the figure is more stable.
You could have a go restoring your figure. The bayonet would not be difficult to replace. Several years ago a fellow forum member kindly sent me a figure that had also been found in a yard and I gave it a second life-
https://forum.treefrogtreasures.com/showthread.php?54892-Lafayette-You-Are-Here&highlight=lafayette
Scott
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What a find! He is your soldier, and of course you should do whatever you like with him, but before you restore him consider what he represents in his current form. First off, I admit that I am a hopeless sentimentalist.
One of my neighbors once gave me a couple of Grey Iron doughboys she had found in the dirt under her porch. I’m a Britains guy, but I love these two battered toys. Back in the 30s or 40s some kid was playing with them when his mother called him in to dinner. They didn’t make it into his pocket, and so they lay there for decades. I don’t know who the kid was, but I have his soldiers and he was definitely my kind of dude! Your soldier has the same story.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem called The Dumb Soldier about this (apparently universal) phenomenon. The narrator finds and old toy soldier he left in the garden years before. Here are a couple of stanzas:
He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.
Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows,
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.
One of my neighbors once gave me a couple of Grey Iron doughboys she had found in the dirt under her porch. I’m a Britains guy, but I love these two battered toys. Back in the 30s or 40s some kid was playing with them when his mother called him in to dinner. They didn’t make it into his pocket, and so they lay there for decades. I don’t know who the kid was, but I have his soldiers and he was definitely my kind of dude! Your soldier has the same story.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem called The Dumb Soldier about this (apparently universal) phenomenon. The narrator finds and old toy soldier he left in the garden years before. Here are a couple of stanzas:
He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.
Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows,
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.