This blog is only about trying to put as many photos of 54mm Hinton Hunt soldiers down as possible but I would like any info you have. Always go below.I add to the other periodsDesigner Marcus Hinton of Hinton Hunt became one of the first manufacturers to mass produce model, as opposed to toy, soldiers when he launched a range of 54mm figures around 1957. “The business probably began properly around that date,” John Fabb a long-time friend of Hinton recalls, “But Marcus had been dabbling in making figures for quite a while before that”.
The mysterious Hunt, rarely mentioned and never with an attached first name, was Simon Hunt, a designer himself, who had previously worked with R. Briton-Riviere designing larger figures for Sentry Box. According to Garratt, Hunt left the company to “devote his energies to music”.
“Simon was only really involved with the business in the first few years,” Mr Fabb says, “Certainly the connection with Sentry Box may have been relevant, because Miss Edmunds who ran that company originally made all the moulds for Marcus”.
Hinton had no formal training in sculpture or indeed anything else for that matter. “He just sort of drifted along until he found this thing he turned out to be terribly good at.” John Fabb’s wife, Penny told us. Mrs Fabb, a figure animator with Tradition, worked for Hinton for a number of years first at his boutique in Islington and later as caster of the 20mm range.
“Marcus had always been interested in military uniforms,” John Fabb says, “He collected militaria, particularly French Napoleonic items and armour”. In 1962 the two men had helped found the UK branch of the Confederate High Command, Britain’s first re-enactment society. A few years later they were both instrumental in the formation of the Sealed Knot with Brigadier Peter Young and Edward Suren.
