Norman Joplin was intrigued by Will Beierwaltes’ article on Feix in the Fall 2023 issue. He wrote in to the magazine, pointing out that on page 56 of the Feix article, the Japanese Officer has his sword in the same position as the Russian officer in the picture he had found in the O’Brien Archive. However, note that the left arms are quite different. The Japanese officer has a fixed arm, pointing, whereas the Russian apparently had a movable left arm, according to information reported to O’Brien. This information came from Donald Haberman. Donald was a regular supplier of information to O’Brien and would include notes with photos.
Page 57 of Will’s article shows the spiked helmet Officer figure has both arms in a different position. This figure is a different casting in comparison to both the Russian and Japanese officers.
The Feix images sent in by Steve Balkin on page 48 of Vol. 46, No. 2 (reproduced in full here, without apology) shows that the Russian and Japanese officers are quite clearly different castings, but it is hard to tell if the Russian’s arm is movable. It certainly could be, but not enough of his left arm is showing to be sure! It is definitely not pointing like the Japanese officer.
Will notes the difference in reference to his Figure 12, but does not mention that the Russian and Japanese officers (as shown in the Balkin photos) both have their swords pointing downwards. There seem to be at least 3 distinctly different body castings used for officers by Feix!
Are these alternative officer castings hollow-cast or solid cast figures? We know that Feix’s neighbor CW Beiser supplemented his imported knock-down sets from Britains with lesser quality solid cast officers and buglers. Could Feix have also done so?
Do any of our readers have examples of the Russian figure to confirm that it has a moveable arm?
Norman also sent in more poor quality, but interesting, images from the O’Brien Archive, showing both red and blue coated US Infantry with officers, plus an original mold for the officer pointing, with sword across his body.
The Pearlytoys Soljertoys Officer mentioned by Will in his earlier article, and shown in his Figure 12 compared to the Feix officer is, different to all three Feix examples, but sharing some features with them all.
Will’s focus on Artillery sets marketed by Feix also raised some other interesting questions. The set illustrated here was recently sold on eBay. This was attributed there to Heyde. It appears identical to one of the items featured in Will’s article.
Previous discussions in this magazine (Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 29-30), including exchanges with Heyde expert, Markus Grein, have suggested that many figures previously attributed to Feix may have been made and painted by Heyde.
The difference in paint quality noted by Will, pre- and post-WW I, may simply reflect the difficulties of importing finished figures after the U.S. entered WW I. Given that castings appear to be identical, it is otherwise difficult to distinguish the two makers.
In the previous correspondence Markus argues that many of the cavalry figures attributed to Feix were made by Heyde, exported to the USA, and sold in plain boxes by various retailers. The same also applies to some infantry figures (as discussed below).
Will recognised this possibility in his article (p. 54, third column), noting that Feix was working “strictly as a wholesaler”. Could it be that much of the Feix range, including the cavalry figures and the gun teams, were simply imported and repackaged rather than being manufactured in the USA, especially prior to WW I?
As another example of such behavior, see the mint in box, hollowcast set of Belgian Infantry, which was attributed to Heyde by the auctioneers (set #407), but which contains a list of available items sold by “World-War Toy Soldier Co. 429 Lincoln Ave., Brooklyn N.Y.”. It should be noted that the New Jersey-based Eureka toy soldier company was importing rectangular-based hollowcast Heyde figures, (as well as Britains figures) marching, shoulder arms for their knock-down game sets as early as 1908, as described in a previous OTSN article on CW Beiser (Will Beierwaltes and G. Scott Morlan. Britains Ltd.
and Beiser Games. Old Toy Soldier Newsletter. Vol 6, No. 6, 1982.
Pages from the Heyde 1911 catalog, courtesy of Bob Phillips, show the fixed arm cavalry figures and infantrymen, all hollowcast and 55mm scale (Size 1c). The 2nd page lists the various artillery sets produced in the same scale. These are so called 2nd quality, horse without base, “Hollow cast, very light, especially proper for exportation”. This supports the presumption in Will’s earlier article
that these horse artillery sets were imported and not produced in the U.S.
courtesy of Norman Joplin
In correspondence, Bob Phillips suggests that one way of distinguishing Heyde-made examples of cavalry figures may be that they had swords, trumpets or whips soldered to the rider’s hand, whereas the Feix-made figures lacked this refinement (see Figure 15 in Will’s previous article, which provides
supporting evidence).
The boxed set shown contains fixed arm infantry figures in the same scale. The box is plain with no label on the outside, just a small set No. (407) on the lid edge. This corresponds to the Heyde 1911 catalog, which describes it as containing 10 figures. The label on the back of the lid, listing all the sets
marketed by “World-War Toy Soldier Co.”, appears to adopt a different numbering system.
Will mentions in his previous article that the horse-drawn gun team was most likely from Germany as the tinplate caisson and gun were not part of the Beiser skill set, and were probably in the catalog only in the early days. The gun team pictured here is painted differently from the three in Will’s collection and the one in the Detroit Historical Museum. It is definitely German production.
The horses pulling the gun team are also unique, like Will’s examples, but are quite rare and may have been cast in, and imported from, Germany, (although it is possible they were made in the U.S. using German-supplied “molds”. We just do not know.
While some of the very early production may have come from Germany, it is unlikely that this continued, especially after 1914, because of the war going on in Europe between 1914 and 1918.
Will argues that most of the figures recognized as Feix are American-made, although often very similar to the Heyde production, for the following reasons:
1. Feix ran a metal shop, so clearly had the expertise to make his own castings. Also, importing fully finished figures would have undercut the ability to sell at a cheap price. Also, the wider variety of the Heyde figures (running horses, lances, hussars, etc, mentioned by both Marcus and Bob, and as shown in figure 15 in Wills’ earlier article) would have found their way into the Feix catalog had they just imported them. But this does not seem to have been the case, given the admittedly limited documentation we have. Will’s view is that Feix could have brought paint examples back to the US, or maybe even painters to train his folks. Paint and also casting quality certainly decreased over time, (that would not have happened with German production).
2. The fairly uniform and limited range of castings suggests Feix had only a few molds to work with, and the deterioration of the quality of the castings over time reinforces the idea that the molds were used in the U.S. They could not get new metal molds (let alone metal military figures) from Germany during or after the war.
The “World War Toy Soldier Company” was a post-WW1 phenomenon, where in the late 1920s and early 1930s Heyde was able to again import to the U.S. to companies like Marshal Fields and FAO Schwarz, but the new name hid the fact that these were German made toys. This was to combat the anti-German sentiment that lingered after the Great War. Obviously, the name “World War” could not have existed before 1918 as naming such a war had not yet taken place. Joe Wallis and Will mention this in the FAO catalog article they wrote for the magazine several years ago (Beierwaltes, Will. Toy Soldiers in the 1931 FAO Schwarz Catalog Old Toy Soldier; Journal for Collectors. Vol 44, 2021).
4. Ultimately however, we really do not have any good documentation that proves one idea or another, on Feix production (as reflected in Will’s previous article). There is no question that the entire line was inspired by German technology but the degree of Heyde’s involvement, especially over 25 years of production, must be speculative, so cautious conclusions should always be noted, not as factual, but best guesses given the circumstances and limited cataloging evidence we have.
