Fujimi are another manufacturer of hard plastic kits which briefly ventured into making figure sets before the rise of soft plastic figures in the 1990s. This is one of those sets, and as can be seen from the photos the infantry are in desert kit. Fujimi included an accessory in each of their figure sets, which had the effect of limiting the space available for figures, so only 10 are included here. Each figure comes with separate arms and in the case of the heavy machine gunner separate lower legs also. However there are good clear instructions on how they should be assembled, so while there is some scope for variation our examples conform to those instructions.

These are not good looking figures, and part of the problem is in the arms. These are separate even when they do not need to be, which does mean they could be swapped around if desired and at least justifies the description of this product as a kit. However we found many of the arms were not a good fit and certainly did not merge well with the shoulder. The general level of sculpting is not great either, with very little surface detail and some problems with mismatching of the moulds. The figures are quite thin overall, although flash is at a fairly low level. One of the problems with separate weapons is that the hands cannot be made to grip them, so here the relevant hands are open to take the weapon, but clearly do not then look like they are holding them. In addition we found it difficult to get the weapons to fit comfortably, as can be seen from some of the awkward poses in our pictures.

Leaving aside the difficulties of construction, the chosen poses are a very boring bunch. The kneeling/prone figures are OK, but most of the standing ones are much the same thing - a man holding his weapon in front of him and either standing still or walking. Even if these had been well sculpted they do not begin to deliver the dynamism and energy suggested by the box artwork. What detail there is does not win any awards for accuracy either, with misshapen pouches and much kit missing, although the weapons are a better effort.

Fully half of the space on the sprue is taken up by the enormous arch feature. Only the two arches and top section are included - the instructions helpfully suggest using drawing paper to fabricate the remaining parts. While this is all well and good we would question its inclusion, which is perhaps a cheap and easy way to expand a set. However we would have preferred a duplicate of the figures sprue to this largely waste of space, particularly since it has no obvious relevance to the subject matter.

By looking at the full figure sprue you can see that bases are also supplied, but these irregular-shaped pieces are enormous - much wider than they need to be - so we omitted them from our picture. Because these figures were made many years ago they have the mould marks on the back which are not too intrusive but do not help matters. However while the choice of separate weapons is a good feature there is really not much else to recommend these figures. There are plenty of good soft plastic British desert infantry figures around today, but if you absolutely must have hard plastic then hunt down the much better Esci set, even though that is long out of production and the Fujimi set is still readily available.