I have slowly come to terms with the fact that miniatures are one of my favorite parts of this multifaceted hobby. For most folks, I think, minis supplement play or are entirely central to it. For me, though, I just like the little guys on their own terms.

There’s a complicated interweaving of things here for me. For starters, my parents weren’t keen on the LJN D&D toys, and by not letting me have them, I think they supercharged my love of small weird plastic creatures. Second was M.U.S.C.L.E.s, which showed up in the US in 1985. Third, in 1986, Britains’ Knights of the Sword line of knights in armor were the object of my affections in various museum gift shops (particularly the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also Colonial Williamsburg?!).

And then there were, well, wargame/RPG miniatures. I know that’s what they are now, but due to context, I never really thought of them that way as a kid. These are the figures that would be in one small case in the sort of pewter shops that used to (still?) populate quaint tourist towns in New England. I could usually beg one out of my mom, and I got a few as gifts (there’s a Merlin somewhere in my house, and the Lady of the Lake’s arm holding up Excalibur). My very first came out of the gift shop at Medieval Times in Orlando, “On Foot Wraith” from Der Kriegspielers Fantastiques (took some doing to figure that out, lemme tell ya). He’s supposed to be a ringwraith, I guess, but circa 1985, to me, he was just a cool (if lumpy) hooded guy with a knife.

At some point in the early ’90s, there was something like a hobby shop in the Ocean County Mall, near where my grandparents lived. I went in one day looking for some new RPG book, but up front was a spinner rack full of Grenadier and Ral Partha blister packs. A small shelf nearby had box sets from the same. Prior to this, I don’t think I had ever seen fantasy miniatures in person (again, I had, but I didn’t realize it) or in commercial packaging. I had seen the photo spreads in Dragon magazine, of course, but never in the real. I don’t think I realized that they were sold unpainted!

Nevertheless, I was instantly obsessed. I remember trying so hard to remember what was on the rack so I could make a list when I got home, to keep the dizzying array of new monsters in my head. I worked extra hours for my dad at the garage for a month or so to accumulate enough dough to buy a big pile of lead the next time we were down the shore. I can still list off everything I bought that day, because I still have nearly all of them (and have replaced the handful that went missing over the years). I’ve even painted some! But even though I was super into RPGs by then, and had a regular group playing, the miniatures remained somewhat separate.

Just about all of the miniatures I got that day were Grenadier and I’ve had a special place for their work ever since. I own a couple catalogs from the same period and they’re catnip, but the real monument to the company and its miniatures is Terrence Gunn’s The Fantastic Worlds of Grenadier (2006) and its companion Supplement. Both are self-published tomes produced through crowdfunding campaigns. I got the latter almost accidentally and despaired at ever finding the former, but that, too, has finally found its way to me. It’s wonderful. A chronological history of the company, packed with photos, interviews and a massive product list. If you love Grenadier, get to hunting.