The battle of the little people

Today I picked up a package from Japan from the post office. This one was the latest sets of little people from Eishindo. Who would believe that this tiny modelling scale would yield a selection of over 300 people to populate a layout!

Eishindo has 4 packs of people with 32 people in each pack and the Eduard etch of QE2 passengers has 180 passengers and crew...

I thought it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two ranges to see what is available to you. They are two very different types.

Firstly the Eishindo range. I'm thinking these figures must be injection moulded as they come attached to a sprue. As such these people are modelled in three dimensions. Running people have their legs behind and in front of them. There are also some very interesting poses. People running as I have just stated, people sat reading newspapers, a man carrying a child on his shoulders are some examples. All recreated very nicely, get in close with a magnifying glass and you can tell what they are.

Where these figures are let down is in the painting. Quite how these are even painted at all is a mystery to me. David K Smith postulated on "talking t gauge" that perhaps they were printed with an ink jet printer. As you can see from the extreme close up paint does indeed seem to be thrown at the figures. This picture is of set 005.

To give you an idea of size the mounting pin that the people are stood on is 1mm across. Figures below are from set 004
But as you get further away from them the painting becomes less noticeable. These figures below are from set 003 and are nearest to actual size. They are delicate and great care will need to be exercise when mounting them on the layout.
Compare these to the Etched figures from Eduard sold though Mr Hobby/Gunze Sangyo of Japan. These are flat etched nickel silver people. So they are flat, no people running. The most animated they get is a person waving an arm. But the painting/printing on these is outstanding. You can make out ties, belts, hair colours and faces.
The Eduard figures are available here.

So "You pays yer money and you takes yer choice" as they say. In this scale, at this size no one product is better than the other. It's two different bites of the same apple. There's a dynamism and reality to the Eishindo figures that the flat static Eduard ones just don't have. But because of the wildly different standard of finishing it might be unwise to mix them in the same scene. Clearly I'm going to have to take a deep breath, don my magnifier and learn to paint Eishindo figures. As with a little care I think they could be very very nice indeed.