King Country Toy Soldiers
Anyone who is into collecting and playing with authentic toy soldiers has undoubtedly heard of King Country Toy Soldiers. The company was founded in Hong Kong in 1984 and has become one of the world’s biggest creators of hand painted, all metal 1:30 scale military miniatures and soldiers. The company’s owners are two expatriate Scots named Andy C. Neilson and Laura McAllister. Andy was a childhood collector of toy soldiers who grew into a Royal Marine Commando and Laura brought a good business background to the undertaking.
Making the Models
The company remains headquartered in Hong Kong and the owners oversee all aspects of the operation, from design, to development and then on to production of all King Country Toy Soldiers products that takes place in mainland China. As you can imagine, the pieces are extremely popular to collectors and the company takes part in many trade and collector shows throughout the United States and Europe.
Types of Models
The types of the models that the company produces are not limited to simply “toy soldiers” as one might expect. They have also developed an incredible collection of scale model buildings, fighting vehicles, ships, tanks, and aircraft to compliment their growing collections. They are also known for their line of “corporate gifts” that they have put together for different corporations in the airline, publishing and other business areas.
For the most part, King Country Toy Soldiers are not compatible with other brands and should not be mixed in large dioramas, simply because of the scale of the models. Their models are built to a 1:30 scale, which are slightly larger than other models and would not look right if combined. The reason that they build their models on a larger scale is because of the amount of detail that they wish to put into them. King Country Toy soldiers have a tremendous amount of detail in their models, which is one of the factors that make them such a great value and, in many cases, collector’s items to hold onto for year’s to come.