Talisman Plastics, As You've Never Seen Them Before...

 Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

So, last week I updated the Middlehammer Memory Lane page to include the second half of 1994, which covered the release of Talisman 3rd edition. In that post, I bemoaned the fact that precious little was made of the set of miniatures I painted for it, in that only the minotaur was featured in the article and all the rest of the models remained unseen. I mentioned that there was a reason that the miniatures didn't get featured on the Talisman box and cards, and that was because the miniatures simply weren't ready in time. It wasn't uncommon for plastic miniatures to not be available when final production artwork had to go off to the printers and it was thus with Talisman, so there wasn't any pictures of the models themselves in the finished product and probably why they didn't end up in the launch article in White Dwarf (although White Dwarf would have been prepared long after the product was finished so I'm not sure if that's actually the case in this instance.) Whatever the reason they weren't featured*, it's a real shame, as they were superb sculpts, certainly the best plastic sculpts of the time, and I was very proud of the work I'd done on them. 

However, as luck would have it, I am able to show some of those models here. You see, once they had served their purpose (or lack of it, as it turned out) I was allowed to keep some of the models I painted. These days they are in the hands of Jon New (who runs the thoroughly excellent Talisman Island website- the ultimate resource for all things Talisman) but I took some decent photos of them before giving them to him. So, here they are, some of the heroes I painted for 3rd edition Talisman, including never-before-seen back views. 

There we go. I hope you liked these. Hard to believe these were painted nearly 30 years ago! The halfling is my favourite, without a doubt, but I think they're all great sculpts (even the minotaur, which really could have benefitted from being in more than one piece and not been wearing gloves.) One day, I'll get around to painting a whole new set (including another dragon) so that the whole lot can be shown off all in the same place. One day...

Thanks for reading!

Stu

p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁 

*This wouldn't be the only time Talisman would be let down in the pages of White Dwarf. The plastic dragon I painted for Dragon's Tower, a gorgeous sculpt by Trish Carden that would go on to be the basis of many other Citadel dragons, was never featured anywhere and disappeared without a trace.