Pre-war Soviet soldiers, which are now sometimes found in collections, were not distinguished by special refinement of forms, but these toys, like no other, give an idea of the Soviet era. The peeled figures of the so-called Soviet "tin soldiers" seem very heavy, but if you take them in your hands, you can see the opposite: they are very light in weight. Due to the high cost of tin, they were cast, as a rule, from various alloys. While Europe has already abandoned the use of metal since the 1920s in order to save money and switched to other materials, in the USSR, the production of "iron" soldiers traditionally continued until the end of the 1980s.
In the post-war period, for the same reasons of economy, the figures of soldiers begin to be cast from cheaper aluminum alloys, as a rule, silumin (an alloy of aluminum with silicon), which makes the figure heavier, although it is cast according to the same pre-war forms. If the early Soviet industrial soldiers (late 1930s) were manufactured "in volume", then over time, after the war, they become "semi-voluminous".
Some post-war soldiers, cast from aluminum alloys, crack and collapse over the years, which indicates the quality of the metal used for their production. Comparing the figures of the 1930s with the figures of the 1950s and 1970s, it is noticeable that the requirements for them have decreased significantly. The coloring of the soldiers becomes schematic, faceless, and later just plain, without highlighting the face and hands. For comparison, in the 1930s, on some figures (walking sailors) on black shoes, you can even see a brown leather sole.
In the mid-1960s, the "era of the plastic soldier" came to the USSR, which was sometimes a cheap copy of a metal one. Plastic soldiers, as well as other military toys, strongly crowd their metal counterparts, which are now produced in smaller quantities. The most famous were the historical sets "Ice Battle" (1969), "Red Cavalry" (1972) and "30th anniversary of Victory" (1974) of the Moscow Toy Factory "Progress "(until 1966 - the Factory of metal toys No. 1), the molds for which were made by the sculptor Z. V. Ryleeva, the metal "Ice Battle" of the Leningrad Carburetor-reinforcement Plant named after V. V. Kuibyshev( LKZ), the molds for which were developed in 1968 by the sculptor L. S. Razumovsky[14]. The latter also created molds for the Kulikovskaya Battle set in 1987, which was first produced in plastic by the Leningrad Carburetor-Reinforcement Plant named after V. V. Kuibyshev (LKZ), and today — under the name "Rus and Horde" — produced by LLC "Baltic Chemical Company" (Komsomolskaya Pravda Plastic Processing JSC) and CJSC "Plasticaster" (LLC "Plastics").
The sets of soldiers "Warriors of the Middle Ages" (on the theme of the same battle on Lake Peipsi), "Cavalry of the Patriotic War of 1812" and "Horse Army" of the Astretsovskaya factory of metal toys, according to the molds of the sculptor B. D. Savelyev, were also widely known. The latter were duplicated in black plastic in the 1980s by the Moscow factory of plastic toys "Malysh".
Mass editions were produced, both in metal (silumin) and in plastic, sets of "Russian warriors" ("Don Campaign"), "Soldiers of the Revolution", "Sailors on parade" of the Moscow toy Factory "Progress", as well as sets of soldiers of the Minsk Motor Plant and the Bryansk Automobile Plant.
After the beginning of production in 1976 at the Donetsk Toy Factory (DZI), and since 1979 at the Dnepropetrovsk Toy Factory (DFI), three-dimensional figures with a high degree of detail, unconventional for our country — primitive people, Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, knights, pirates, Indians, cowboys, etc. — the plastic figure forever wins the hearts of Soviet boys.
In 1984, the Moscow Experimental Toy Factory "Ogonek" began producing a set of Indians (according to the molds of the "Go to West" set by Cofalu, France), as well as cowboys and Vikings-according to the molds of JI (former Louis Marx and Company). In the 1980s, the Moscow toy Factory "Progress" produced mass-scale gift sets of three-dimensional plastic figures "Warriors of the Middle Ages"," Russian Squad"," Indians","Soldiers in battle".
The Moscow Toy Factory (MKI) produced a series of figures of mounted warriors of different eras and peoples — "Roman horseman", "Knight", "Russian hero", "Mongolian Horseman", "Turkish Janissary", "Polish Hussar", "Zaporozhye Cossack", "Don Cossack", "Hussar of 1812", etc. - molds for which were created by the sculptor-designer Mikhail Anokhin. Being made of environmentally friendly rubber, they did not stand out with a high level of detail, but they were durable and safe for young children.