Retroplastics! Will be an ongoing retrospective series focusing on the history of some of the hobbies weird and wonderful historic miniatures.
During a late night search for dwarf miniatures to join my ongoing 6th edition Dwarf army project (more to come on that project) I came across this fantastic sprue from the 1980's. As a Collector, read Hoarder, of hobby tut I couldn't help but pick them up...
As I waited eagerly for them to arrive in the post I decided to dig into the history of these charming Dwarfs and found an interesting word used in the advertisement... Psychostyrene - Is this some new fangled super material? the name of a prog rock album? or maybe just the mad marketing of 1980's Citadel Miniatures.
Advertisement (Full Colour) from Warlock - Issue 6
So…what is Psychostyrene?
It’s the marketing of 80s Citadel Miniatures doing their thing, a somewhat more ‘exciting’ way of saying ‘these new kits are made of styrene plastic’
The Psychostyrene Dwarfs are some of Citadel Miniatures first Plastic Miniatures, Released in the summer of 1985, costing only 75p for three sprues and made of a hard plastic styrene plastic, now that's a steal! (I recently bought 1 sprue of them for £5 and I thought that was cheap!)
Each sprue had one body section, three different characterful heads, two weapon hands, a viciously sharp axe and a short sword, also included was a couple of scabbarded weapons, and finally a shield smaller than a 5p coin, image freehanding on that! - luckily A set of waterslide decals were included in the kit allowing for a number of shield design options.
All the options found on the sprue are wonderfully captured in the artwork above.
Psychostyrene Dwarf advertisement (Magazine excerpt)
These are fantastically characterful dwarfs and although the details are certainly soft when compared to even there 90s counterparts let alone modern plastic kits, these 80's dwarfs look great in my eyes and are arguably better sculpts than the 1996 Plastic Citadel Dwarfs (More on them at a later time).
I wasn’t able to find clear information on who sculpted the miniature, however it is known that Bryan Ansell, Games Workshop Managing director at the time, and John Thornthwaite, previously of matchbox, yes that matchbox, worked together on these original plastics.
The Psychostyrene Dwarfs were followed up in February of the following year, 1986, with the equally madly named Drastik Plastik Orcs, sharing a similar sprue layout with a single body and multiple head and arm options. These two model kits were to be the vanguard for future plastic model kits from Citadel Miniatures, such the 1987s Fantasy Regiments which we will be looking into in the near future.
Warhammer Fantasy Regiments painted miniatures
I’ve got some fun plans for this Dwarf Sprue so keep an eye out for updates on that project in the future!
Thank you for reading, If you have any insight further into the history of these kits or want to see an article on one of your favourite kits, please let me know in the comments below!