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I am undertaking a research project on vintage miniatures. The group I am doing this for is interested in an article on popular lines, and models from the early days. I am mainly looking for models pre 1990, but I do invite anyone to contribute. What models do you remember being hugely popular? What vintage models do you prefer. This is not limited to GW. Any model from any manufacturer would be great. If you can provide a picture or a link to the model for reference that would be even better. Any help from the community is very appreciated.

Another good thing to maybe look at is the earliest gaming specific minis. I've found some D&D wolves from '76, but those are the oldest I've ever seen.

I was a fan of Ral Partha's Dr. Mordenheim's Lab (although I think it dates from the 90s.) Grenadier's Tomb of Spells set was really nice. The box art is classic as well.

Hit me up with a PM inquisitor leiwis, I have an entire battle company of mostly pre-1990 Pre Heresy Nightlords. I only used old models.. the "newest" model is a conversion for Zso Sahaal using the 2nd Marneus Calgar model (not the Calgar taking a dump) pose one. So its from 1993-94 or so, the rest are pre-1990 marines.

I was just looking at some archives the other day for a mailing list for very early table top games. The date on the list was 1952 I believe. The late 70's did see tabletop wargaming become a bit more "mainstream"(I use that term very loosely).
Most tabletop wargaming up until this time was directed more towards historical wargaming, instead of fantasy- sci fi.

The early all-metal marines were pretty fine, they were late 80s and I recall us buying up every variant of Terminators to play Space Hulk.

I don't remember much before that but the Ral Partha-Citadel days produced all the D&D stuff and some of that is still in production today.

I've got a whole box of early RP and other manufacturer's pewter/lead models in varying degrees of condition, if you'd like some pics. Some of them were really great models.

One thing I've noticed is the sense of humor that many sculptors/companies translated into their work at the time. For example, one of my players' favorite models was a RP fig titled "King of the Bards", a mandolin-weilding fantasy version of 70's era "Vegas" Elvis.

Well from 1987 it was probably RRTB01 (beaky) Space Marines fir scifi minis in the UK, I don't think 40k took off in the USA for a while.

For fantasy it was probably the brilliant regiments of renown boxsets. My guess prince ulters dragon company or skarlocks woodelf rangers being the most popular.

Outside of GW there were Grendel, grenadier, ral paltha (battletech) all doing well.

Grenadier, Ral Partha and Heritage (Minifigs) were the first biggest fantasy and sci-fi manufacturers.
You can see all the photos you want at www.solegends.com

Check also some of the PDF's of vintage catalogs here: http://www.megaminis.com/0-MINI-MAG.htm

I love me some dakka, but it probably skews younger than the kind of information you are looking for, and gaming in the era you are describing is much more dominated by Historical miniatures. if you want the lowdown on the origins of miniatures gaming from some people who were there, you really need to check out the gronognards (I mean that in the best possible way) at
http://theminiaturespage.com/
Alot of those guys were wargaming long before GW/Citadel even existed! The site is a bit old school, but theres a wealth of information on vintage gaming.

I met a guy back in 77-78 or so that had been playing for quite some time.

Here were numerous Ma and Pop outfits that were cranking out small quantity such as Cobblestone, Ral Partha, and several others. They had some guys back then that used Historicals, and added stuff in like companies do now with GW, but there wasn't an official policy for anyone.

A bunch of people also just used the cardbaord chits, in thier gaming. A few of the minis that stick out in my mind are from Call of Cthuhlu, ( which by the way are almost the exact same sculpts that they started out with) D and D figs from Ral Partha, ( also did some for Gamma World, and Star Frontiers), and again from Cidital. ( which a bunch of contemporary great sculpters cut thier teeth on, and branched out on thier own.) Olley, Cobblestone, Elliot, etc...

You can kinda get some of the old stuff if you dig around. The minis pretty much bounce around from company to company, and they still shoot them out in small batches, like they used to do.

http://www.solegends.com/citadel/index.htm

http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=144799

http://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/categories.asp

ETC ETC ETC...

If you can get hold of some old school WD's, there are even advertisements, and discussions of these typles of minis and companies.

Another one to get hold of is Col Marbles and the Frothers.

http://www.frothersunite.com/

As a side note, go here for some good info as well. Lot of memories here. You'll like what you read, and there is a great step forward as far as Info goes.

http://www.dndlead.com/dungeon-dwellers/Dungeon-Dwellers.htm

Got some golden-oldie marines here I unearthed from the vault. I thought about stripping and restoration, but these are the first marines I ever owned, set of 10 in a plastic box, the paint is too nostalgic for me to remove. I'd love to get copies and do them up real nice. I've got some blubberings about old minis on the blog in my signature.







Weetyskemian has an awesome thread approaching 100 pages featuring many awesome classic Citadel minis here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/315548.page

But more to the point of your article (which we would all love to see when complete) is this blog: http://oldschoolminiaturesbulletin.blogspot.com/
In my neck of the woods (NY, USA) Grenadier was a big company and their material was easily found in many hobby stores. Was it popularity of product or actual marketing? I've got some late-80s Dragon magazine and Grenadier and Ral Partha are heavy advertisers. Oh - just remembered, Tom Meier writes a unique and awesome history of his experiences here: https://www.thunderboltmountain.com/autobio.htm

I really like the beakies. THOSE are some of the fun ones.