Well Marx playsets used to be cheap stuff for kids also.
The point that I was trying to make is that the current owners of Britains have bought into the nonsense that the 'Blazers and slacks' brigade of metal collectors spout.
The sales rep seemed to feel contempt for the plastic range. The usual attitude of plastics are for kids - adult collectors go for metal .
I think this is in part a reaction against people outside the hobby who look at it as playing with toy soldiers. If you have figures that are unsuitable (in fact dangerous) for a child to play with then you cannot be a big kid but a mature collector.
Marx. Britains, Crescent were cheap toy for kids but the people who set up these companies actually LIKED toys, or like Roy Selwyn Smith, Ally Gee and Norman Tooth liked figures and saw plastic as an exciting new material with unlimited possibilities....
The new Britains company sees Britains 40 year plastic production as a strange abberation until they got back to metal (the 'real' thing)
You really don't get that feeling in the toy trade any more I think.
Final point in the U.K up to the mid 80s you could get toy soldiers everywhere, not just toy shops but news agents, chemists, etc.
Now you don't see Britains plastics anywhere. Toyway has now gone out of business.
If kids can't find them they wont play with them and in 20 years time what adult collectors there will be shall probably be hunting down Papo and Schielch rather than Britains and Airfix.
'Said the General of the Army " I think war is barmy"
So he threw away his gun
Now he's having much more fun
Spike Milligan