My third posting on the topic of ‘figure sizes’ to follow the discussion on The Miniatures Page follow this link to the topic of: Size of Old Miniatures…
The following text has been scanned from the 1966 edition of ‘Jack Scruby’s Catalogue of Military Miniatures’.
25mm SOLDIERS OF THE AFRICAN WARS. 1880 – 1900
As you can tell by the illustration, 25mm is a new scale for Scruby Miniatures. We went into this size model soldier so that we could match some of the so-called “20mm” scale models available from England and Europe. As you can see it would not be advisable to inter—mix the Scruby 20mm and 25mm scale figures in a war game army.
Therefore it is our intention to eventually give 20mm 25mm the customer a very wide variety of models of the many African `Wars of the turn of the century, in this new scale. When the entire series of projected castings is available, it should present the collector with the opportunity of getting the very finest models in this interesting period of military history — all in one matched scale.
GENERAL INFORMATION
The first series of these new 25mm scale Scruby Miniatures are designed for the Sudan War of 1898 (We call it the “River War” after Winston Churchill). A full listing of the models appears on the back of this page.
Further series of 25mm models will soon be developed for the Boer War, the Wars along the Northwest Frontier in India, and we shall also include French soldiers of African campaigns, Arabs as “oppostion”, Italian Colonial troops, German soldiers and natives to oppose them.
The idea behind “brushfire” colonial war games is to try and have a “balanced” force for both opponents. Since historically the natives had little chance against the firepower of the European troops, war games of natives versus European soldiers never really makes for good action on the table top. It is best to make up mythical colonial wars, where one European power is pitted against another, and where the native troops are available as auxiliaries. With the entire continent of Africa to “fight” in, and with a balanced force of native and white troops to oppose one another, then the brushfire colonial war game is truly exciting…