Last weekend I stumbled over Preiser's "Arbeiter 1939-1945" (Preiser - Nr. 64010) a set of civilian workers in 1:35 scale doing some digging and cleaning up work. Despite the title the figures can be used in a far larger time frame since their work-cloth are found on pictures ranging from 1900 to at least the 1970s.

The set contains five workers and a "worker monument"(1) using shovels, a pickaxe and forks to move rubble.

Each body is molded in one piece with heads and arms / part of the arms separat. The arms come in pairs already holding the cast-on tools. There are eleven independent heads with a variety of headgear for the workers as well as some "rubble".

The figures are done in white, easy to work plastic. The kit has some minor flash and molding seams. Detailing is generally good and the fitting requires only minor work and little in the way of filling. The fact that the arms and tools are "one piece" makes fitting them easy but see below for problems.

Changing a figures pose or switching tools is difficult since the hand/tool combinations are matched to their individual torsos and would require quite a bit of surgery in separating the tools and all.

The poses themselfs are all nice and the figures would work independend of one another. Due to tools, clothing and the generally "sturdy build" they won't look out of place as a communal work column in the 1970s, a civilian mending his kitchen garden or even a farmer in the potato or cabbage patch.

The assembly instructions are printed on the inside of the box so you have to cut it appart and find another storage for figures and parts.

I found the set quite useful even more so given the low price (around 12-15€) even so I will only use one figure (The "worker monument") initially. I'll try to add some pictures when(if?) my camera returns from Rome.

(1) A worker standing around, leaning on his fork

Took a while but here are some pictures of the kit:

Um, I ordered a set of Preiser 1/35 figures and found them overscale and not very good looking. Don't bother.

Tom, I disagree. Scale is pretty flexable with figures. Tall, short, big, small. Not all figures should be the same 5'11" height. I also know Preiser has a long, distinguished history of providing figures to a LOT of scales. Railroaders swear by them.

These are nice figs, getting on-topic and all. Very railroad-ish. I'd be willing to bet the reason they appear big for scale is because they are, in reality, 1/32 (No. 1 Gauge) or 1/29 (G-Scale), both modelrailroading scales.

Cuhail

They're probably closer to 1/32 scale , I think they were originally made to be used with Marklin #1 gauge trains ,so like some larger scale figures (1/25 LGB) they are more toylike.But as there is not too many European looking civilians around, with some TLC and some careful placement in your diorama they should be ok. Would look good with that wagon from Master Box. Jim

The figures aren't that big. The biggest are around 50-53mm from top of cap to sole of boot standing slightly bend. That comes out to around 175-185cm so even erected they would be in-scale for 20th century german manual labor workers comparing them to my grandfathers and some neighbours that where born around 1900-1940

Are you sure the ones you got were 1/ 35 scale ? Could they have been 1:32 scale? Preiser makes figures in scales from 1:500 to 1:22.5 .

Preiser figures are widely used by model railroaders.

This link is to a shop in the USA that carries most of their line:
http://www.reynaulds.com/preiser.aspx

Unless the box was mismarked, they were supposed to be 1/35. Besides, if the figures are from the past, shouldn't they be relatively scrawny?

Why do I always hear modellers saying that people in the 40's were shorter? I'm 185 cm tall and my grandfather, God rest his soul, was my height. Also, all my uncles, both on my father's and mother's side were, an the living ones are, my height... and a couple of them are taller than me. I don't see much of difference between the generations. There were tall and big people in all decades of the 20th century, isn't that right? Maybe the difference is if you go back two or three hundred years back?

Hisham

I did some looking into this issue (height) a while back for review purposes. German males of the 1940's, that is those born between World Wars I and II and participating in WWII, are said to have measured between 5'8" (+-172cm) and 5'10" (+- 177cm). This is mostly due to the poor economic conditions (leading to malnutrition and thus stunted growth) in Germany post-WWI. I think it fair to assume the same of those persons born during the Great Depression in the rest of Europe and the US.

Naturally there would be exceptions to these, due to genetics and better nutrition in certain regions. South African and Australian in particularly were said to be rather large men when compared to their British counterparts.

And those are clearly "manual labor" people so they will be tall/muscular and resonably well fed (Best rationing books). Average heights of german people I know from that time period (born 1910+) is between 170 and 195cm (Truck-Drivers, Miners, Steel Workers, Carpenters) for males. The statistics may say different but I take real people over mathematics.

And the famous pictures of the Coelian Mockup with the "sizeabel" civilian guard in front of it should be well known.

Besides from their faces those are older man in their 40th or even older. That would also fit since unskilled labor (That they represent) out of uniform in WWII would have to be "past common draft age"

Statistics also have the problem that certain labor groups are under-represented in the armed forces. Steel workers and coal miners where often draft-exempted. OTOH they are among the best fed / paid jobs of the time AND keeping rabbits, pigs, small garden patch was common for this groups.

Final fact: My father (born 1938) is 182cm and he is the youngest/smallest of the three brothers.

Having used a few hundred Prieser figures on my HO railroad ,I am willing to give their larger figures a shot.True they are not as crisply molded as other manufacturers sets ,but they do look the part. As I said they just need a little TLC. The set above could be cleaning up rubble from a bombed out building. They have a set of old ,frumpy looking women sweeping the street and a couple of sets of refugees ,one set with luggage and the other with children.and small carts. Just the thing to fill in those sidewalks in western Berlin as the tanks roll by on VE Day Jim

I can't speak for conditions in Egypt, but Americans who were children during the 1930's were not as well nourished due to the Great Depression, the decade-long economic collapse that crippled the world economy. Fresh or even canned vegetables and fruit were regarded as expensive luxuries, and diets tended to be very starchy. I've seen it in the generation of men who have been passing away within the last 20 years. Their children are mostly taller than they were (during the 1950's, vitamin fortified milk and bread became common parts of the US diet). For example, my brother and I were both about three inches taller than our father. Author James Jones once remarked that a six foot (183 cm) tall soldier soldier in the US Army during World War Two would always be nicknamed "Stretch," for his unusual height. As for judging scale figures, in 1/35th scale, a 5'10" man is exactly two inches (50.8 mm) tall.

Where height is considered there is a break around 1929 and it get's worse for the 1940-48 group (rationing) in Europe. OTOH one borne in that period won't be represented by this figures who are well past their 20th. Nor would he be a regular soldier, he'd be "Volkssturm" or "HJ". That break is visible even in Europe

Most of Europe got their Vitamins through vegetables (Reinforced milk's not common over here) and a small garden is part of the culture, either at the back of the house or separat in the (in)famous Schrebergarten that dates back to WWI and before.