Black plastic HQ minis

[lucapaschi]

Hi all,
I just bought these HQ minis.
- -
They are part of the US Game System, plus a Men at arm and an Ogre (EU/US, same model). The strange thing is that they're made of black plastic: it's not painted, it's actually black - I scratched one in a hidden place. Even the Ogre is pitch black, while in the expansions pack they tend to be of a blueish hue, and even the US men at arms are dark grey at best. Same goes for all the other base minis.

They don't seems recasts, the mold lines are just as the regular minis, the sprue connections seem absolutely genuine, even the finer details in the mini (anatomical details, finer mold lines on the feet or the underside of the mini, ect) are all in the right place, almost as they come from the same molds as the regular minis. Seller remebers getting them at a Convention in the mid 90s (suppose around 93-94).

Any thoughts? Thanks!

[lestodante]

I remember someone else posted black greenskins miniatures in the past, maybe on this forum too.
Considering their bases, it is possible they are prototypes or test models for the US release or that they simply used a wrong amount of color pigments in the plastic and discarded them.
It is also possible someone has the original moulds and is casting them using black plastic. Anyway... they are a nice find!
Definetely I would like to get in touch with the seller and discover more about them.

[Maldeev1911]

Cool Find.
Did you ever find any further information
about the black mini's?

[lucapaschi]

Hey! Let’s say so and so: the previous owner of the lot pointed to the GenCon, but who knows if it’s that one for real.
There was a lot, sold a few months before, with a couple of black men at arms from a seller who frequently sells HQ expansions, and I think another one recently sold with 10 ogres from a generic toy/comics seller. All of these came from the US, so these were surely made by someone in the US. But were these promo minis? Were they production miscast? The latter seems strange - I don’t know how production worked, but the minis came from three different games (Base game for the orcs, Barbarian and Elf) and the minis are supposed to be of different colors, so that they all got messed up in the same way color-wise seems strange, different pigments, different mix/quantity to get to jet black, if even possible. I’m trying to gather more info though. I should get my hands on the ogre lot in a few days, if they’re confirmed from the same mold as the other one, I’ll try and ask the seller their origin.
The thing is, a lot of 10 is weird in its own way: the Ogre Horde in EU got a few sets with inverted colors for the ogres (so black warriors and red command), but we’re still talking of a set of 4. With at least 11 having surfaced, it’s 3 sprues worth of warrior ogres! I’ll also double check against Elf and Ogre Horde ogres to see if they are more similar to one of the groups, I never checked to see if the Eu and US ogre have little differences, pointing to different molds. Everything would point to them being from the Elf sprue, though (the set is all warriors, no command group: same as the Elf Pack).
TL;DR: They’re surely american, no more info for now!

[lestodante]

Ciao Luca!
There are no differences beetween US and EUR Ogres except their colors (dark grey vs red/brown or blue). Same for the mercenaries (light grey vs red/brown).
Is this guy selling more Ogres and man-at-arms? Hope he has other molds from the US sets and someday he will start selling the figures. I know Hasbro didn't save unsold copies of the game and destroyed almost everyhing to make room in their magazine. I still hope some of their employers took some pieces from the production parts.
Also check this old topic: *RARE?* Black Fimir

[lucapaschi]

Hey! I know, but I suppose there were at least two sets of molds for the minis, one located in the UK for the EU (and Australian?) sets, and the other one in the US for the US one. I'm saying this because the boxes do show different "Made in" marks. So maybe there are slight differences in the minis coming out of the two sets of molds? Flow lines, casting details, etc? That could point to the mold that originally made the minis.
The seller doesn't seem to be very HQ-inclined; it's most likely a random find he put up for sale, just like with the first batch. Both had no history of previous HQ sales.
But yes, it seems indeed they come from the same source of that old topic! Black fimir is there, he definitely has at least two brothers then.
Seems it is a US-only occurrence, though. Actually the mystery deepens, as it seems it's not just a few minis, or just a bunch of defective Game Systems. There seem to be chaos warriors (and that would point to a whole sprue of black stuff: sorcerer, gargoyle, furniture) but also ogres and men at arms...

[lucapaschi]

Found some more black minis... There were unfortunately butchered for conversion into WFB empire soldiers! Tried to save them but no luck.

[lestodante]

Found... but where did you find them?
I hope someone saved the original molds and we'll see more of them in the future!!

[lucapaschi]

Some guy posted them on an Oldhammer FB group asking about them... But he was going to use them for conversions and didn't reply to my offer to give them a new home, so I'm afraid they're gone. Found a lot of 47 black weapons in the meantime, though.
Pretty sure they have been made many years ago... But who knows, maybe the molds are kept somewhere...

[Kurgan]

My suspicion is that they're either worth nothing, or worth a lot (rare is rare). They don't seem to be prototypes, maybe bootlegs? A lost relic of the unreleased "Hero Quest Chess Set" (that I just made up)?? I got six of those black scouts awhile back for about $5 apiece on Ebay. If somebody is just making them with his own injection moulds, nice work! I was going to say I can't tell them apart from the red/gray ones, but I don't have any actual ones to compare.

I'm intrigued by these subtle variants of the existing figures. I got several EU undeads awhile back to "supplement" my army, not realizing they were a much whiter color than the yellowish NA undead I previously owned. And I see there are brighter red Heroes (as well as medium and dark) as well as shades of "greenskins" too. I wonder if there are variations in the colors of the Ogres as well, or if these colors represent different colors used in each territory? But who then used black?


And this just goes to show if you're painting reproduction figures to "look like the originals" the shades of green, red, white (or even gray?) you use may vary depending upon what "original" was to you. I wonder if the Elf/Barbarian quest packs had variants too? Hard to tell because mostly they look like they were pastel blue, but a flash or other tricks of the light can play with the color.

I see the figures you posted (other than the Ogre and Men-at-Arms) have "NA Style" bases. Then again the NA exclusive EQP and BQP figures all had the EU style bases too (slightly thinner with the beveled edge).


Could it be that some Hero Quest parts were repurposed for some other project out there (kind of like how Advanced Hero Quest was used in Mighty Warriors/Heroes... or the many repurposed toys out there from Return of the Jedi ewoks/Robinhood Prince of Thieves or Batman: the Dark Knight/Robocop) ?