Zvezda - What's Up?

[Mr. White]

Looking over at Plastic Soldier Review, Zvezda minis have great reviews. They don't seem to have tons of box sets out there with most seeming to be released in the 00's. As I'm just getting in 1/72 I was hoping to pick up some of their medievals for Lion Rampant, but almost half of what I'm looking at is out of print and going for crazy money.

Is this company no longer in business or am I just a victim of bad timing between products?

[Pijlie]

About 10 years ago they cancelled all their big boxes and switched to producing 20mm figures for their household game. These were boxes with just a handful of figures, which about quadrupled the price.

Nowadays they are popular for collectors and diorama builders, but they are useless for wargamers. A great shame, as they make fabulous figures.

[Hobgoblin]

The machinations of 1/72 manufacturers always seem mystifying to me. Why doesn't everyone use Emhar's plastic (or Caesar's)? Why has Caesar cancelled the sets that everyone wants to buy? Why doesn't Emhar do more, given how good its stuff is? And why do so many manufacturers produce each other's sets?

[Mr. White]

About 10 years ago they cancelled all their big boxes and switched to producing 20mm figures for their household game. These were boxes with just a handful of figures, which about quadrupled the price.

Nowadays they are popular for collectors and diorama builders, but they are useless for wargamers. A great shame, as they make fabulous figures.

So these Zvezda boxes are done? A couple of them look great for Lion Rampart. The English, French, Russian, and Samurai each have an infantry box and a cavalry box that together make great retinues. I can only really find the two samurai, the two french and one of the russian boxes. the russian foot and both english 100 year war boxes are $$$$. It is a shame.

[Brummie]

Gone are the glory days of 1/72 plastics.

I remember being in school and saving pennies to buy a £3.50 box of Napoleonics or Punic Wars by Caesar from a local modelling shop five minutes walk from where I lived. Good old hard plastic kits that were just mind blowing at the time. Really got me into the hobby and military history in general. Then there was the Armour fast range which was just revolutionary.

Then one day they suddenly started making stuff in some god awful soft plastic that couldn't even glue properly.

Shame really. Was a very short lived revolution in 1/72 plastics.

[Mr. White]

ha, ugh. looks like I missed the boat on this scale for historics. I think Dark Alliance/Redbox is doing fine on the fantasy side, so maybe I just use 1/72 for fantasy gaming, but will have to look to a larger scale for Lion Rampant?

big bummer. I was kinda hoping to do both at the same scale.

(I would like a few copies of the Ceasar Undead - the skeletons, not the zombies - also... out of print... ha! )

[Brummie]

ha, ugh. looks like I missed the boat on this scale for historics. I think Dark Alliance/Redbox is doing fine on the fantasy side, so maybe I just use 1/72 for fantasy gaming, but will have to look to a larger scale for Lion Rampant?

big bummer. I was kinda hoping to do both at the same scale.

I'm also getting confused, I meant HaT miniatures. Caesar came in a few years later but they're figures are superb as well albeit a tad soft.

Fantasy is that weird one as that cropped up near the end of the era. I remember getting the Orcs but sold them off soon after as my interests were more or less going towards metal stuff.

I think with Zvezda much of what they made in 1/72 was just reboxed plastics from Emhar and Italieri with only a few of their own genuine offerings. I imagine by now most of the molds on those are long dead as some of them were old even in the mid 2000s.

I also wouldn't be surprised that at some stage someone pointed out they were being awfully generous selling a box at £4 with 50-60 figures in it and could make a bit more £££ if they seriously reduced content but for the same costs and justified it by throwing in a board game. 

[Mr. White]

Maybe I'll get these two samurai boxes, maybe the two french boxes as well, to use as the core for some DR armies. Toss in a few thematic creatures to round 'em out.

[Hobgoblin]

I'd get the Zvezda French knights, etc., if you can.

There are still loads of good 1/72 historicals out there: a lot of Caesar figures are great, and lots of manufacturers still seem to be producing new stuff.

If you want mounted knights, the Emhar "crested knights" are great - and they even take polystyrene cement! I bought them from a local shop in the UK within the past few months; the box cost me £7 or so.

[Andrew_McGuire]

I also wouldn't be surprised that at some stage someone pointed out they were being awfully generous selling a box at £4 with 50-60 figures in it and could make a bit more £££ if they seriously reduced content but for the same costs and justified it by throwing in a board game.

‘Someone’ as in a publicly trading Nottingham-based company, or one inspired by its business model?

[Hobgoblin]

It's odd - Zvezda still have lots of their great historicals on their website, but some of the kits (like most of the medievals) are gone. The French knights and medieval peasants are still in production, though, along with the superb ancients.

1/72 moulds seem to last for a very long time, judging by the amount of Italeri, etc., stuff that's been on the go for decades. So I wonder if some of those kits might come back into production.

The Caesar 15th century knights are very nice - and while they can be a bit bendy, they're easy to convert. So you could replace a spear or polearm with a wire or plastic one easily enough; the figures take superglue well (like Reaper Bones). The earlier knights look very good too. I'd say that the Caesar and Emhar figures are generally much better in the "flesh" than they appear on Plastic Soldier Review (where they get very high ratings).

For fantasy, the second set of Caesar orcs is absolutely brilliant - brimming with character. The first set was OK, but looks outdated next to the new ones.

[AdmiralAndy]

Well Italeri released a 100 years war battle set in 1/72 the past year, got a castle and a bout a 100+ figures of French and English.

That would do LR ok I think if you check it over:

https://www.italeri.com/en/product/2867/61/0

[Mr. White]

The Caesar 15th century knights are very nice - and while they can be a bit bendy, they're easy to convert. So you could replace a spear or polearm with a wire or plastic one easily enough; the figures take superglue well (like Reaper Bones). The earlier knights look very good too. I'd say that the Caesar and Emhar figures are generally much better in the "flesh" than they appear on Plastic Soldier Review (where they get very high ratings).

Yeah, tbh from what I can tell, just from that site, there's a fairly large difference in quality in the minis between the Zvezda and the Caesar. Take just even the bowmen of these two:

Zvezda: http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1245

Caesar: http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=2300

Besides the Zvedza bowmen having more varied, and dynamic sculpts, the heads and weapons just appear cast better as well. Now, I haven't seen either in person, so maybe the Zvezda are also all bent and the reviewer straightened the minis out for the review? I don't know, but the Zvezda look exciting to paint, whereas the Caesar feel like I'm just settling for what's available.

[MikeRC97]

Hey Jack - Zvezda is one of my favorite manufacturers but unfortunately they have moved away from producing figure sets.  It wasn't a random thing - the founder of the company Konstantin Krivenko passed away suddenly in 2014.  After that the company made a lot of changes.  They have a Russian language official message board and from second hand translations what was reported on the message board was that the figure sets were not profitable so they decided to limit production to vehicle/aircraft model kits, toys and the small WW2 board game sets (1/72 figures and 1/100 vehicles).  I think the latter had more to do with Flames of War being very popular at the time and the Zvezda 1/100 vehicles were a source of cheap alternatives to the Battlefront models.

The 2000s are often referred to as the "golden age" for 1/72 collectors like myself but the recession really hurt the hobby and many of the manufacturers like Caesar (aka MiniKnight) and Hat have either stopped making figures or only occasionally release new figures.  Italeri just does re-releases now.  The exception has been some of the East European manufacturers like Strelets, Red Box, Linear A and Orion.  Unfortunately the quality of their figures is sometimes very low, but they cover periods not available from other 1/72 plastic manufacturers.

I don't know if you're already familiar with Benno's Figures Forum but if not you should check it out.  I love LAF but 1/72 doesn't show up often here, Benno's forum is almost entirely dedicated to 1/72.

[Mr. White]

i'm sorry to hear of the passing of Zvezda's owner. It does sound like the 1/72 historical medieval options are going to be dwindling from here on out.  I guess i should grab would I can. Too bad I'll be missing some great figs.

Even the Fantasy options don't seem very robust. As we mentioned Dark Alliance/Redbox but then a lot of things that "can sorta fit" with 1/72