Spotlight on figures: Waterloo Accessory Set, an update

Dated: October 5, 1998.

This page is a contribution from a reader from Holland and is produced verbatim below:

The page containing the Waterloo Assault Set accessories showed a very blurred and dark set, and an incomplete one. It so happens I came across the set at a modelshow in - how appropriate- Brussels a few years back, and both me and the vendor had no idea what it was. Its colour more or less indicated it had to be Airfix, but it was nothing I knew. Needless to say, I'd never owned a Waterloo Assault Set... Eventually the set passed hands for a mere $2.25 and it wasn't until I had dug through my collection of old Airfix catalogues that I found out what it was I had bought.

The original scan was so bad the number of horses weren't properly visible. The biggest wagon has two horses, the smaller one only one. The other accessories are visible too: I've cheated a little since my set had two items missing, and I duplicated them to show what is, at the best of my knowledge, the full set.




The other scan on the original page was commented on as being wrong in showing 'the top wagon's body but the lower wagon's hitch, horses and driver' This is not true: it only shows the wrong driver, as can be seen from the completed set below. The smaller wagon only has two wheels.




The original comment also said: 'The driver is medieval looking and probably the whole set could be used with the Nottingham Castle playset as well'. I could not agree less: the driver wears a kind of tunic which was very common for European farmers and farmhands well into the nineteen fifties! Spoked wheels on a horse and cart in the Middle ages however would indicate a royal or very high nobleman, rather than a peasant. For Medieval use you'd expect disk-wheels. Being a trained historian originally I know what I'm talking about... Feel free however to use them for any Europea setting in the seventeenth or eightteenth century, or even as late as WWI.

The incomplete set showed on the original page showed broken wheels, badly bent. This seems to have been a problem with this set, as all but one of my wheels were broken too!




I carefully cast new ones to have the chance to show my set as it was intended to be. I used Polyester resin and the result is quite convincing.




One last detail is the driver of the larger, four-wheel cart. He's sitting on a box and this box contains a nice joke, very much unlike Airfix I'd say. The man is sitting on bottles of wine. Maybe you'd need them to ride your wagon over the Waterloo field in the middle of a battle!




feel free to comment on my text

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