Wednesday 20 February 2013

White Dwarf: Raiders of the Lost Adverts (and other stuff)

"In my day, adverts were adverts..."

"When I was a boy, all these pages were just quality content."

"I used to wake up in the morning and had to play quality boxed games for 10 hours before I got out my paint brushes."

Ah, nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. But yesterday was clearly a nostalgia fest, with Realm of Chaos 80s receiving over two thousand page views (the most its ever had in a single day) and a fair few new followers and contributors to the comments section. 

So thank you all once again. A year and few days ago I would have never imagined that we would have achieved the things we have. From a few passionate individuals, to a real community planning its own Oldhammer Weekender, under the auspices of the Mighty Avenging Bryan Ansell himself. 

I've had some very positive feedback from my recent trawl through the ancient archive of my White Dwarfs. These selections pre-date the main focus of this blog, Third Edition, but are interesting just the same. Many of the figures that we have been looking at were available and used for WFB3 so its nice to see them in a slightly different light.

Today, its adverts.

Here's a quite run down of the better quality adverts I found during my quest into the depths of 80s White Dwarfs. Orcs, Dwarfs, Chaos Warriors and Feudals battle for your attention and command the opening of wallets. Hordes of mulleted miniature enthusiasts, with the arms of their T-shirts undoubtedly torn off, probably beat down the doors of Citadel Miniatures in a frenzy to get hold of some of these beauties.

There is lots of nice painting to be seen too. 

Mostly by Colin Dixon. 

When greenskins were more than chunky, generic brutes.
These dwarfs are so lovely that if you pick them up they leave a little pool of character behind. 
I LOVE THESE! I really do hope that the Ansells still have the moulds for these brilliant models. If they  do , my bank account may suffer. 
"No spikes here Bob, an' you can stick your skulls up your ar...."
Here's hoping you saw something new here...

Orlygg.

12 comments:

  1. Haha, it's nice to see these again. It's true what you comment about spikes and skulls, hehe, sadly no one would recognize a Chaos mini now without them...

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  2. ...raid, destroy, pillage, burn and support West Ham...

    Ah, classic Warhammer. Back when the adverts had both game content and sly local rivalry.

    Especially tickled by Papworth Organgrinder's name and heraldry.

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  3. I used to own a unit of these Orc Champions, happy days. The nicest thing about the old adverts was the the accompanying profiles listed the points value too, so you could field these miniatures straight away, once GW started marketing arm/codex books the points cost was left out of the profiles.
    Cracking Post
    J

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  4. Ah, I still got a bunch of Imperial Dwarves lying about. They look like gnomes next to the "modern" dwarves, but they are way more prettier.

    I also got the Twin-axe Chaos Warrior, I think his name is Slambo in the advert. I like the fact that when GW made a twin-axed Chaos Champion a couple of years ago they actually made the model look like a development of Slambo, still sporting the same axes.

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  5. Here he is:
    http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440108a&prodId=prod1160053a

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  6. The warm glow of nostalgia from these wonderful old adverts will keep me toasty all day.

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  7. I am pretty sure you can get several of the Feudals from Foundrys 'Barons Wars' range - I think I spotted Frederik in there somewhere!

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  8. Loved those imperial dwarfs, wish you could still get them £1.50 for 3

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  9. Hello, my name is Slambo, I am a Chaos Warrior, and many, many monopose plastic monstrosities will follow in my wake...

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  10. I always prefered the Mighty Zog, he had the best Axe

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  11. Ahh, Chaos Warriors. I want them all... Although I've got more chance of flying to the moon than completing the set. :(

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  12. Dread Indy Babylon, hillarious stuff.

    Great blog you have going here, I might not agree with everything but your passion, sincerity and knowledge truly is inspiring.

    Thank you for constantly providing quality material!

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