Ral Partha, 1970s 1st Generation Orcs

[Cat]

Ral Partha Legacy has announce they're bringing back the original Orcs, Goblins, and others as a 50th anniversary release.
 
These figures were my first big batch purchase for an army when they went on clearance sale c.1977 for .33¢/foot, .66¢/mounted.  And was thoroughly daunted by them when they all arrived!
 
They were a very hard metal, and the moulds were quite worn out by then, so it took a lot of time and elbow grease to clean them up and drill out the massive chunks of lead between the legs.  Also drilled out the hands for wire spears, carved off the little hands and eyes that were sculpted onto the shields.  Added thumb tack shield on the goblin wolf riders.
 
They came with me to college and it took 6 years of sporadic work to get them all prepped! Didn't get painted til late '83 or early '84.
 
Originally used burnt umber for the orcs' skin, and burnt sienna for the goblins'.  Painting them was when it finally dawned on me just how incredibly racist was Tolkien's description, but I didn't quite know what to do about it then.  A few year's later, Citadel and Games Workshop introduced greenskins, and shortly thereafter I repainted mine.  Opted to go with orange for the goblins though for more colour variety.

[SgtSlag]

With regards to Tolkien demonstrating racism in colors of non-human skin, that is a big leap of an unsupported, not justified, assumption.  Gygax ascribed various skin colors to different races in his D&D/AD&D games, and beyond.  I never assumed he had racism in his color choices.  I took them at face value.  Could it have been racism in his choices?  Maybe.  I don't know.  I never knew the man, nor his views on race.  I've never heard anyone ascribe racism to Tolkien, or Gygax.  I have no idea.  I took them at face value, that these were colors chosen for a fantasy race, not RW projections of the authors.

If you have evidence Tolkien was a racist bigot, share it.  Otherwise, be careful of making accusations that you cannot back up with evidence. Tolkien cannot defend himself.  England got over its racism long before the USA and other nations did.

I bought a copy of the Dragon Magazine Archive, TSR's Dragon Magazine collection, issues #1-#250, all in color PDF scans, on six CD's, when it first came out around 1995?  I poured over the advertisements, wishing I could see what the early fantasy figure sculpts really looked like.  And here is your post of some of those early Ral Partha fantasy figures!...  Thanks for sharing!

There are sooo many figures made in the past, gone forever, now.  It is really neat to hear that Ral Partha, or whoever now owns the molds, is re-releasing some early fantasy figures again.  I think modern gamers assume, incorrectly, that the early fantasy figures were terrible sculpts, compared to modern products.

I got into collecting miniatures and building armies with them, in the mid-1990's.  I wanted to buy armies of Ral Partha's official AD&D figure lines, but I did not have the cash.  Then TSR's license deal with RP expired, and TSR declined to renew it, so, per the terms of the contract, RP had to destroy all of their TSR figure molds.  They had some amazing figure molds that were destroyed.  Damn you, TSR managers!

Nice to see some old figures still existing.  I hope they bring you great joy to game with.  Cheers!

[Cat]

Whatever his personal beliefs and actions, and there are many arguments that he was actively anti-racist in regards to Nazi Germany's eugenics, his description of orcs, intentional or not, is racist.  Even if the description only came from an embedded cultural background,  the real world parallel is there.
 
The racial imagery of the broad flat noses and the very dark skin was inescapable when I first painted these particular archer figures, which are well enough sculpted according to Tolkien's description.  It was literally an eye-opener for me while holding the figure in my hand.  I am happier having gone with the more fantastical colour palette when I changed them a few years later.

[Rick]

Dunno Cat, whilst I agree that there is a definite characteristic of Tolkien's Orcs which we find racist and offensive to our eyes, Tolkien was writing from the point of a central european mythology and characterising all historical invading forces (turks, arabs, moors) as alien, as mythological orcs, bent on conquest and destruction (which many of the historical invaders probably were). If he set Middle Earth in Africa and cast the orcs as white-skinned, tea-drinking barbarians, would this be more acceptable?
I'm not sure I have any good answers and, as I never met the man, I can't speak to his motives but I would probably hesitate before completely blanketing his whole works with the label 'racist'.

[2010sunburst]

Weren’t orcs supposed to be corrupted elves?  To me he always portrayed elves as arrogant and aloof, so orcs are just a distillation of their worst characteristics, and the descriptions are simply descriptive of the absolute opposite to them.  In fact, the only races he seems sympathetic to are really the hobbits and the ents.  All others are shown to have flaws in their character, greedy dwarves, feckless men etc.  I wouldn’t call him racist, but do, perhaps, think he exhibited a dislike of poor governance and warmongering, siding with those at the lower end of society and showing admiration for their stoicism and honesty. I may be missing the mark though, I’m certainly no Tolkien scholar.

[anevilgiraffe]

England got over its racism long before the USA and other nations did.

I wouldn't say we're over it... it's not as bad as some, but it lingers... which is probably about as far into that topic as we need here...

[robh]

This is nonsense, there is nothing "racist" about JRR Tolkien's descriptions of Orcs, to claim otherwise is just woke virtue signalling. If you see it that way that is a YOU problem.

Orcs are monsters, brutish inhuman beasts. Nothing more, nothing less.

[snitcythedog]

Oh dear.  Another can of worms that does not need to be opened here. 

[Elk101]

Absolutely, so it's getting locked before it devolves further.