ESCI – 211 – World War II Italian Mountain Troops “Alpini”

Description:

Unpainted plastic soldiers in 1/72 scale depicting one of the famous Italian corps, the Alpini, very distinguished during the First World War and part of the Italian army also during the WWII.

This box released in 1983 contains 46 figures in 13 poses and two mules in one pose. Some of the figures wear the distinctive felt alpine hat and those wearing helmet retains the distinctive feather, perfectly identifying these figures as Alpini.

ESCI never highlighted by great poses, and so at least two of the poses in the set can be throw away as they look really awkward, while rest of them are correct. There is one pose aimed to hold the mule and these two figures, men and mule, build a nice team. The officer pose is not bad either. The set include also an skier pose, ESCI solved quite well the engineering of this difficult part, though the room for the mule and the skis reduced the usual number of figures and poses in most of ESCI figure sets.

These same figures were later issued under Italeri brand as Italeri – 6059 – World War II (Alpini) Italian Mountain Troops and till date, any other manufacturer depicted the Italian Alpini during WWII, though when wearing the helmet, they look as any other Italian troop of the European theater with the exception of the feather, which an skilled modeler could add to figures made by other makers. In the same way, removing feather from helmets in these figures, transform them in regular infantry to use in the European theater.

Detail, sculpture and cast is very good as ESCI always did on soft plastic figure sets.