These are the old plastic Heller, Compagnies Méharistes kits from the 1960s and 70s. I always used to find these kits in the bargain box at toy soldier and model shows so I bought them when ever I found them. They are built pretty much right out of the box with a few alterations of the camel heads and necks as well as some of the soldiers's arms so they didn't all look like clones.

 

Anyway, they were a fun project of a pretty interesting group of soldiers.

 

If anyone has any badges, or anything related to these camel troops please post them, I would like to see the insignia.

 

Thanks for allowing me to display them here.

 

Dennis

 

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Dennis, thanks very much for posting another project. You are one of the most "productive" modeler I do know. Every time you are surprising the community with awesome new (old) kits of figures and vehicles.

 

I remember seeing these kits in the 1980's over here as well, but never bought one. I like the many different variants you were able to do from this single kit. As usual the painting of the figures is outstanding.

Like all of the other vignettes you have posted before, the bases of these figures are very realistic executed as well.

 

Thanks very much for sharing your wonderfull work!

 

Lars

Excellent job, the old Heller figures were not that bad at all, not like Italiari's right

The Heller figures are pretty good. The torsos are molded in two pieces and camels were molded in about eight pieces, and they have nice detail. But, they do require a bit more work putting them together and filling the gaps and seams, it's not a big problem.

 

I've never seen Italieri's 1/35 scale camel soldiers. I've seen the 1/72 scale soft plastic figures, but I have never done anything with them. 1/72 is too small for me and the soft plastic is hard to paint. So I stick with the 1/35 guys.

 

I have the Heller Moroccan Goumiers with the pack donkey. I will try and post them tomorrow.

Thanks Lars,

 

I like finding and modeling the more obscure and mundane subjects.

Nice figures. Rich A. in Pa.

Wow, Dennis. Nice work on the figures and camels. Like Lars said you always find interesting subjects. BTW they are not mundane.

The attention to detail on the camels, blankets and uniforms is outstanding.

 

Semper Fi.

 

Manny

On 9/9/2019 at 3:57 PM, Old Marine said:

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Awesome concept! I’ve never really heard of these guys. I’ll have to do some more research about them!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Méhariste  Some information here.

Searching for other references I stumbled across this photo.