Spotlight on figures: Atlantic's Gatling Gun

Dated: March 7, 1998. Updated March 12, 1998.

The Gatling guns are one of Atlantic's rarer Western sets, this is partly because they were not available as any of the small individual boxes. They were offered as part of the Washita River playset. Other figures in that set were Apache Warriors, Apache Camp and Confederate Cavalry (none of any of these figures were actually at the battle of Washita River). There were four other sets in the series (series 1456), one of which was Little Big Horn. The Gatling Guns were also available as #1053 which was part of the Mezzi del West series. The other sets in the series were:
#1050 Abilene Wild-West City
#1051 Fort Riley Frontier Fort and
#1053 Pioneer Wagons

The first scan shows the box. It measures approximately 9 1/2 by 7 inches (24 cm by 18 cm to the rest of the world) . It is one of the two Atlantic box art styles showing photographs of the painted figures. As can be seen, the box is not in very good shape, being wrinkled and buckled. Attempts to flatten the box out against the scanner face only resulting in bowing in the glass surface, don't try this at home! Note the small rectangular discoloration on the left side of the box. Atlantic aficionados will know it is the very thin cellotape that the factory sealed it's boxes with. After 30 years, there is no trace of any stickiness in the cellotape.


As with some other boxes, the photograph does not show the true contents of the box. The photograph shows the Gatling guns, and figures from 'General Custer' and '7th Cavalry' sets. This particular box contains 2 Gatling guns sprues and 2 'U.S. Camp' sprues. After this page was put up, a reader noted that his sets contained 4 sprues of Gatling guns (the front of the box actually notes the box contains 4 models, presumably it meant 4 sprues). It is quite common to find the same Atlantic set with different contents, the switcheroos either occuring at the factory, the dealer or by the last owner of the set.

The next scan shows the sprue of figures. It is a characteristic Atlantic double sprue. If this set was offered in the smaller boxes, the sprue would have been cut in middle and produced two sets, as it is, the box contains (including the US camp sprue) 4 Gatling guns, 4 double horse limbers, 2 riders, 6 tents, 4 other horses, 12 figures and many other camp accessories.

The Gatling gun itself is nice, it's in 9 pieces including the gun carriage. The instructions on the back of the box are a great help and the pieces fit together nicely. It is rather oversized though. The Gatling gun was one of the earlier attempt to produce rapid firing or guns. In those days, each man fired one bullet at a time, the idea was for one man to fire a lot of bullets (i.e. many guns by himself). Now machine guns work by running belts of bullets past the firing pin and firing through one barrel. With the Gatling, rapid firing was achieved by rotating 6 to 10 barrels around and firing through each barrel in sucession. The Gatling was hand cranked. Only two figures come with the gun, and both of them sit on the limber, there are no men to operate the gun! The figures are of the thin undernourished type.

The Gatling gun is a rare subject in the 1/72 scale world, and also rare set. This set is seldom seen in used lists. Prices for this set tend to run about US$30 MIB. If you see it for $20, it's a good deal, but it has also been offered and sold at prices up to $40.

Atlantic is the only manufacturer to have offered such an amazing line of Western figures. Of course at that time, Western themes were king. Every 2nd movie was a Western. John Wayne was a national hero, and even today, many people pop up in the news with John Wayne first and middle names. Today if this series came out new it would probably bomb, but because old Atlantics are such collectibles, these sets are often snapped up as soon as they are offered.

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