I am happy to share today these two restoration pieces I have finished. The figures are from Manoil Toys. Manoil figures closely resembled Barclay toy soldiers, and often some are outright copies of the other. This happened frequently with the Dime store soldiers, and nobody seemed to be too worried about it. All of the companies from Northern New Jersey and New York City at the time were doing quite well financially.
These two figures date from the late 1939 into 1940. They are M80 Motorized Machine Gunner and M41 Machine Gunner. I have included some “before” photos so you can see how they came to me.
A note on scale: These are large figures; the average foot soldier stands about 70 to 75mm tall. So, they are really big hunks of metal.
The first order of business was the strip the old paint off of them. I use Biostrip exclusively to strip these antiques, as it doesn’t harm them at all and easily strips off paint decades old. I procured some copy replacement rubber wheels for the machine gunner and removed the axle pins.
The figures were hand primed with a brush-on primer and let to dry. I then painted them with acrylic paint in thin layers, letting them dry properly in-between steps. The originals were sprayed with enamel in the factory, and then the details hand painted. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury to work with enamels in my flat, so acrylic and gloss varnish will do for now.
Ideally in the future I will spray them with enamels and mimic the factory process. That’s for another day.
The figures were finished and then coated with two coats of brush-on gloss varnish, letting them dry in the sun. The results are spectacular.
Think on this, the last person to touch these toys like this was more than 75 years ago. In breathing new life into these figures, I feel a kinship with that community that came before us. I wonder what they would have thought knowing hobbyists are still appreciating the work generations later.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed seeing these.
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