A is for Addict, Toy Soldier Addict.

What follows is a sorry tale first published on the HaT Forum under a thread titled " Toy Soldier Collectors Anonymous " started by Patrick Deck on the 6th July 2008, it is sobering reading and apart from a bit of a spell check and the odd tweak remains unchanged...

My name is Hugh and I'm an addict, I started light, the same way most do, you know....the odd Airfix "because I had them as a kid", but I mixed Esci to match, then Revell teased me from the back of Concord Models, it was late on a Friday night, I was tired, vulnerable, I had an overtime payment in my pocket, it was too easy. I'd barely tasted the full flavour of the new mouldings when there was A-Toys packaging all over the place, I didn't care they were the same as Esci, I 'needed' them all, looking back it's easy to see; I was hooked already. But even if I wasn't, it was too late. I entered that years BMSS show in Aldershot (a Fujimi SdKfz 222 and Scratch-built 221), some guy in the bar got talking to me - he saw me coming - "Pop up to my place in Hartfordshire, I've got some Atlantic you can have", I was a fool, less than two weeks later I had a car-boot full of it. It gets worse, it always gets worse...I discovered premiums, I was getting them as chasers for the other stuff, started safe'ish, with a little bit of Kellogg's and some Nabisco but it wasn't long before I was hitting-on to Ola, Tito and those strong French one's, then came the German Flats (Andreas Dittman pushed those to me!), I wanted more, there were more, 300 companies. Andy Harfield and Peter Bergner kept supplying me with cheap gear, then I found quality stuff from Giant; 'Blues' & 'Greys', followed them with well-cut pirate junk from their brothers in Hong Kong, it was spiraling out of control, some weekends I'd take so much I couldn't fit it all in, I had to start an 'Unsorted recent purchase' stash in the back room, then another, then another. The names, Almark, Subbuteo, Blue Box (she had several sisters and was related to Marx, he had connections to Dunby Combex and through them Triang, Minix, Frog eventually - via Hornby - back to Airfix but I didn't care, I'd take 'em twice), then the new ones, HaT, Imex and Pegasus from the States, Emhar, Accurate and ACTA from nearer home, then the 'Eastern Promise' of Odemars, Orion, Strelets*R and LW via the mystery of Kervella/HYTTY, but I was beyond help, I'm on the hard stuff now....Chas Stadden, Comet/Authenticast, Wille/Suren, Ral Partha, McEwan, Hinchliffe, et al....and real gut-rot; Games Workshop, Marauder, Mini-figs........The Horror!..........the horror!............

It is unknown what happened to the chap, but I fear deliverance eludes him to this day...