Qualiticast - Some Illumination!

Following the previous post on Qualiticast, Andy Taylor was kind enough to contact me via email, and send some more information and some smashing pictures. Very many thanks, Andy.

I read your recent blog entry and comments about Qualiticast with interest and was particularly surprised to learn that the company are such a mystery to many people. It’s true that there are very few images of these elegant figures on the web, so I thought you might be interested to see this selection of units from my own collection.

I’m pretty sure I bought these towards the end of the eighties. One of the early Qualiticast mission statements that appeared in all their advertising was to design a range of metal figures that would compliment the plastic ones then available and specifically to fill the gaps in the plastic market.

Amongst my first ‘buys’ were the Brunswickers, Prussians and 95th Rifles. No one was making those in plastic back then as this was long before HaT had arrived. They were also an acceptable match for Hinton Hunt figures which were next to impossible to find in the days before Tim Berners-Lee did his stuff.

I think the company was a husband and wife team who were a regular feature at SELWG on the rare occasions that I attended. I don’t recall their names but they were a delight to deal with in much the same way that I’ve read people compliment the guys at Newline and Tumbling Dice. On one occasion they sent me some British colour bearers but later declared that they hadn’t been altogether happy with the design of the figures and subsequently sent me a double load of their new mould. If there was a difference between the two excellent designs, I certainly couldn't see it.

My main interest in them had started with the Zulu War figures they produced, which I still rate as the finest in any scale of plastic or metal.

It’s a huge loss that they’ve gone. The figures were never less than perfect and I never encountered flash at any time. The last time I looked at a catalogue, their range had expanded to include Waterloo , The Peninsula, US Civil War & Plains War, Vietnam , The Crusades and Imperial Rome. I think they also dabbled in 28mm too which, given today’s developments, makes them truly visionary.

It's only right and proper to note that most of the artwork on these figures was done by GJM Figurines.