Copplestone - em4 troopers, whats going on there?

[YPU]

What with Malebolgia's Chrome Warriors playtest I am considering investing in a few small cyberpunk forces. I've always liked the em4 troopers (now mostly sold trough moonraker) and the copplestone ones, however taking a closer look I realised many of them are the same, however both lines appear to have models unique to them? I'm not accusing anybody, I'm sure this is all on the up and up but what is going on there and is there a place where one could find the entire range?

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

As far as I recall, the Story is something like this:-

Mark Copplestone sculpted them for Grenadier many years ago (late 1980s I think).  
Grenadier went bankrupt and the moulds were sold off.
Mirliton bought many of the fantasy range moulds.
EM4 bought many of the future range moulds.

After the closure of Grenadier, the rights for the sculpts went back to Copplestone.
For the past fifteen years or so, Copplestone has built up his own ranges and now sells direct under his own name.

[Malebolgia]

Jup, basically there are two similar lines: the old Future Warrior line (link: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/sol/grenadier/future-warriors.html) and the Copplestone line. The old Grenadier line can be found here:
http://www.mirliton.it/index.php?cName=future-warrior-28-mm
(which has more models than em4)

Copplestone released similar models for his own range; I assume he changed the greens so he can sell them himself. But I don't know the details.

*edit*
For Cyberpunk I can also recommend East Riding Miniatures. Very cheap and great miniatures. A lot of fun to paint too!
http://shop.eastridingminiatures.co.uk/corporate-wars-55-c.asp

[Banderium]

however taking a closer look I realised many of them are the same

They aren't the same. Mark Copplestone resculpted part of the previous lines for his own company.
Mirliton bought the ex Grenadier Future Warrior too: link

[YPU]

Thanks guys. That explains it, and why indeed some of the models look extremely similar but with minor differences. 

[YPU]

I wonder though does anybody know how the plastic troopers fit into all this?

[area23]

Actually the story was this, IIRC: Grenadier was Grenadier Inc in the USA and Grenadier UK as the UK branch. The brilliant Future Warriors and Fantasy Warriors ranges were produced by the UK branch.
When Grenadier closed down the US moulds were sold off, but the UK moulds were not sold and remained with the ex-manager of the UK branch and are now sold as Em4 miniatures and Moonraker.
 
Mark Copplestone apparently kept his dollies, greens or masters and from the early 2000's resculpted many of those as Copplestone Castings, after he left Wargames Foundry.

The US moulds eventually ended up in europe, changed hands a few times and are now owned by Mirliton in Italy.

[Steve F]

The plastic troopers (and gang members) were originally created for a boxed game called "Combat Zone", produced by Paladin Publishing (see https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11947/combat-zone ).  They were sculpted by Bob Naismith.  Their only connection to any of the Grenadier/Mirliton/Moonraker sci-fi ranges is that em4 subsequently bought them up and bracketed them with the old Grenadier figures under the brand name "Future Skirmish".

[eilif]

What with Malebolgia's Chrome Warriors playtest I am considering investing in a few small cyberpunk forces. I've always liked the em4 troopers (now mostly sold trough moonraker) and the copplestone ones, however taking a closer look I realised many of them are the same, however both lines appear to have models unique to them? I'm not accusing anybody, I'm sure this is all on the up and up but what is going on there and is there a place where one could find the entire range?

Some of the figs are quite similar (possibly reworks of the same fig in some cases) but I don't think there are any figures that are completely the same in both lines.

The two lines are complementary in many ways though and those looking to expand on a given faction can often do so by dipping into the other line.   I have a fair number of EM4 and Copplestone examples.  The Copplestone figs seem to be the teensy-est bit chunkier than the em4 figs, but they look good together.

As for the backstory, there is still disagreement on who really has the rights to the old Grenadier sculpts.  I reviewed some Grenadier sculpts a while back and Stefano from Merliton made comments to the effect that they believe themselves to be the only legal distributor. See the comments for this post:  http://chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2013/05/28/painting-up-old-school-chaos-fantasy/

Regardless of legal wrangling it appears that at this time both EM4/Moonraker (also distributed by Forlorn Hope) and Merliton have the molds for the entire fantasy and sci-fi ranges but Merliton seems to produce a bit more of them.  Merliton also produces the formerly grenadier historical ranges, which I haven't seen for sale anywhere else.