Stargard Aliens

What's this blast from my 1980s past? Someone's taken the old Britains Stargard alien figures and turned them into 3D prints? Add to cart ADD TO CART ADD TO CART!

I'd forgotten all about these figures until they popped up in the "crap you might like" section of my Etsy feed. I vaguely remember having some when I was around 10 or 11; they were, if my memory serves (and I'm someone who can't remember his own wife's phone number), a kind of bendy plastic that foreshadowed Reaper Bones by some 30 years. The figures were inserted into lozenge-shaped metal bases to hold them upright and give them some weight, which had the side-effect of making them far less cool than even a bloody Ewok figure.

Unfortunately, manufacturer Britains, famous since 1893 for producing detailed lead miniatures of all kinds of things from soldiers to farm equipment(!), were late to the sci-fi genre, and their shiny new range of futuristic figures and vehicles — simply and rather boringly called "Space" — didn't do that well with British kids who were way more into Star Wars and Judge Dredd. It also didn't help that Britains had a reputation as a stuffy and dull brand and that its figures retailed at well above the price of a Hasbro Darth Vader or even an Airfix Spitfire.

It is a shame as the figures were very well detailed, consisting of the brave human astronauts (doubtless all Englishmen armed with stiff upper lips and accents straight out of Downton Abbey) in bright yellow spacesuits and the aliens, which I bought, in evil black with blood-red skull-faced helmets. Britains went on to add more figures in the shape of mutants and would rename and re-release the whole shebang twice under the names "Stargard" and then "Star System". In 1988, just seven years after their introduction, they were binned for good, which is just as well as the chances of these surviving the onslaught of Citadel's plastic Beakies was on a par with a snowball in hell.

Anyway, onto the painting.

As you can imagine, these were pretty easy to paint. After priming them black, I painted them Black. Thrilling, I know.

I highlighted them a light drybrushing of Dark Grey and stopped there as I wanted them to be as black as possible.

The metal bits of their armour and weapons were painted with Iron Warriors and drybrushed with a little Dawnbreaker, and the helmets were basecoated with the ever-reliable Khorne Red and given a highlight of Mephiston Red and Vermilion.

I based them very simply by gluing sand to the bases, painting it Violet and then highlighting it with Purple and Dechala Lilac.

Despite being a doddle to paint they came out looking good and very faithful to the original Britains figures. I got 20 in the pack, and the next squad will reflect Britains' second generation of aliens with orange suits and blue helmets. There's also a set of the astronauts so I might pick them up at some point.