A walk through Poundland yielded hundreds of versatile warriors for only £1 a bag.
Figures are plastic, about an inch high and available in three different colours, silver, red and green. There are 100 figures in each bag.
Although looking like modern troops, they could be used with painting or simple conversions for many other uses.
They also look good en masse:
Some have a real 1930s space figure look to them.
Some have very odd weaponry but should convert / paint easily to tribal warriors?
Others again have a Flash Gordon / Space Marine look to them.
Again these could be converted through painting to more futuristic or retro steampunk warriors as I did with larger versions (below).
Posted by Man of TIN, May 2016.
Published by 26soldiersoftin
Hello I'm Mark Mr MIN, Man of TIN. Based in S.W. Britain, I'm a lifelong collector of "tiny men" and old toy soldiers, whether tin, lead or childhood vintage 1960s and 1970s plastic figures.
I randomly collect all scales and periods and "imagi-nations" as well as lead civilians, farm and zoo animals. I enjoy the paint possibilities of cheap poundstore plastic figures as much as the patina of vintage metal figures.
Befuddled by the maths of complex boardgames and wargames, I prefer the small scale skirmish simplicity of very early Donald Featherstone rules.
To relax, I usually play solo games, often using hex boards. Gaming takes second place to making or convert my own gaming figures from polymer clay (Fimo), home-cast metal figures of many scales or plastic paint conversions. I also collect and game with vintage Peter Laing 15mm metal figures, wishing like many others that I had bought more in the 1980s ...
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Man of Tin blog 
I’m of two minds with these figures. I have some from ebay China and they are quite suitable to change into different eras. I like the posing, but the sizing is off. At 1 inch plus or 30mm or more, they are too big to mix nicely with the 1/72 crowd. Also several could easily be shorn of bases and mounted on suitably cheap cavalry horses.
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Doug
I think these are almost 28 mm / 30mm plus but that is an alternative size for gaming, one in metal which used to be fairly standard in the past. The recent 28mm is its modern equivalent. As you can see from man of TIN blog, I use my figures for very small infantry short skirmish games and garden games using my simple Little Close Wars rules based on a mash up of Donald Featherstone and HG Wells rules.
The idea of a plastic figure for a penny or a bag of 100 for £1 from pound store equivalent to your dollar stores is just too tempting for paint or figure conversions. You also never know when they are going to disappear out of stock so a few boxes put aside for rainy days is always a good idea.
Like you I accumulate soldiers, rather than collect toy soldiers in a red boxed display kind of Way. I’m sure I have more inexpensive plastic and inexpensive lead scrap 54mm stashed away than I currently know what to do with, but this is due to the erratic supply which creates hoarding, having seen Airfix repeatedly go in and out of production etc.
I would have thought that the cheap China Made toy soldier ranges we have here in the U.K. are probably pretty similar to those in Australia and the USA. Very interesting to see what crops up in other regions.
Best wishes Mark
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[…] stop-start diversion into “pound store warriors” and ultimately a bit of sci fi gaming. Man of Tin had been instrumental in starting me to look at these figures that did not even look like green […]
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[…] I noticed this post on the Wargaming Erratic blog from a link by lorenzoseventh across to my 2016 post on Man Of TIN Blog. […]
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