QORANGE QOTOYS 1/6 Hero Series - 87th Division in Shanghai/Nanjing 1937 QOM-1004/1005

These sets were first announced in August last year, but have been delayed due to production capacity at the factory.

According to a statement by QOTOYS posted a fortnight ago on the BBICN Forum they are now in "tight production".

It was only yesterday that I began to find out what they were and where to get them.

There are six individual sets (body and head not included) depicting the German trained and equipped Chinese Nationalist (KMT) 87th Division.

Three sets are the padded blue winter uniform, and three the apple green summer uniform.


These are the basic components of either the winter or summer uniforms:













The extra parts that make up each option:

1004A Summer Chiang Kai-Shek Rifle:








1004B Summer MP18:








1004C Summer ZB-26 LMG:








1005A Winter Chiang Kai-Shek Rifle:






1005B Winter MP18:






1005C Winter ZB-26 LMG:







I hadn't looked into them before because they only seemed to be available on Chinese sites that were alien to me. But searching lead me to www.figurestation.com.hk, which was where I bought the Soldier Story 1938 Battle of Tai'erzhuang Chinese Nationalist.



They have excellent communication, and if you ever order it's best to check the different currencies as I found it worked out cheaper buying in HK$ instead of US$. A word of warning: Paypal put the payment into a pending status and said it wouldn't be processed until reviewed. I think this is because the item descriptions all include the code 'QOM'. Since Qom is also a city in Iran it probably automatically flags up as a warning. It took just over 24 hours for the payment to finally go through.


I ordered 1004A, 1004B and 1005C to get each of the three different weapons, and balance my collection with two winter and two summer.

I then scoured Ebay for suitable sculpts that would fit the spare bodies I already have. Looking at historical photos the prerequisites for these soldiers were short hair and clean shaven.

Cool sets. Thanks for posting.

not my "genre" but they look nice, and I really like the variant offers to build your own squad or army even lol, seen so many people complaining about that in the old place... great offers!

GubernatorFan wrote:Cool sets. Thanks for posting.

blackpool wrote:not my "genre" but they look nice, and I really like the variant offers to build your own squad or army even lol, seen so many people complaining about that in the old place... great offers!

I replaced all the images with ones from my Imgur account because the BBICN host became unstable.


A UK 1/6 retailer who I sometimes see told me that my interest in this subject was "unusual" in the west.

It stems from an interest with Shanghai in the 1930s, which in turn originated from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The more I read the more fascinated I became. I picked up books from the period including a reprint of a contemporary travel guide.

The city had the reputation for being the most dangerous in the world. Gangsters, opium, seedy night life, International Settlements, and eventually Japanese invasion.

It was 'peacetime' danger that prompted Fairbairn (of Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife fame) to develop the martial art of Defendu for the Shanghai Municipal Police Force to reduced officer deaths.

Thanks, I don't know why BBICN pictures always take a while to appear, but they always do at least lol

Now that you described that so well I wanna know more, you definitely triggered my curiosity, could you point some of the books you found? any novels? I always regretted that the temple of doom had not more sequences and action in Shanghai

blackpool wrote:Thanks, I don't know why BBICN pictures always take a while to appear, but they always do at least lol

Now that you described that so well I wanna know more, you definitely triggered my curiosity, could you point some of the books you found? any novels? I always regretted that the temple of doom had not more sequences and action in Shanghai

The reprinted guide book is:

All About Shanghai: A Standard Guidebook

First published in 1934, this book brings Shanghai in its heyday vividly to life. Shanghai remains the most modern city in China, although today much of the glamour is gone. With All About Shanghai, the enterprising tourist can recapture the atmosphere of this extraordinary city.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/All-About-Shanghai-Guidebook-Paperbacks/dp/0195815947

Policing Shanghai 1927-1937

Prewar Shanghai: casinos, brothels, Green Gang racketeers, narcotics syndicates, gun-runners, underground Communist assassins, Comitern secret agents. Frederic Wakeman's masterful study of the most colorful and corrupt city in the world at the time provides a panoramic view of the confrontation and collaboration between the Nationalist secret police and the Shanghai underworld.

In detailing the life and politics of China's largest urban center during the Guomindang era, Wakeman covers an array of topics: the puritanical social controls implemented by the police; the regional differences that surfaced among Shanghai's Chinese, the influence of imperialism and Western-trained officials. Parts of this book read like a spy novel, with secret police, torture, assassination; and power struggles among the French, International Settlement, and Japanese consular police within Shanghai.

Chiang Kai-shek wanted to prove that the Chinese could rule Shanghai and the country by themselves, rather than be exploited and dominated by foreign powers. His efforts to reclaim the crime-ridden city failed, partly because of the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937, but also because the Nationalist police force was itself corrupted by the city.

Wakeman's exhaustively researched study is a major contribution to the study of the Nationalist regime and to modern Chinese urban history. It also shows that twentieth-century China has not been characterized by discontinuity, because autocratic government—whether Nationalist or Communist—has prevailed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Policing-Shanghai-1927-1937-Philip-Lilienthal/dp/0520207610

The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937

In a remarkable example of history as detective work, Brian Martin pieces together the fascinating and complex story of the Shanghai Green Gang and its charismatic leader, Du Yuesheng. Martin sifts through a variety of fragmentary and at times contradictory evidence—from diplomatic dispatches to memoirs to police reports—to produce the most comprehensive account of this chaotic period of Chinese history. In analyzing the Green Gang's system of organized crime in Shanghai, the author broadens our understanding of a critical aspect of Chinese urban history and sheds light on the history of drug trafficking and organized crime worldwide.

Martin argues that the Green Gang, the most powerful secret society in China during the first half of the twentieth century, was a resilient social organization that adapted successfully to the complex environment of a modernizing urban society. Illustrating its multilayered and complex relations with the bourgeoisie, the industrial proletariat, and the foreign and domestic political authorities, Martin demonstrates how these factors led to the Green Gang's absorption into the corporate state system after 1932.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shanghai-Green-Gang-Organized-1919-1937/dp/0520201140


The links are just to show you the books, but the prices there are much higher than I paid years ago.


Osprey have a few military books:


Shanghai and Nanjing 1937


Chinese Civil War Armies 1911-49

The Chinese Army 1937-1949

Got an email from Figure Station that their supplier has these down for release in July.

I also had to change my order. All the riflemen had sold out, so I switched 1004A  to 1005B.

In fact, after my order everything has now sold out apart from 1004C and 1005B.

Figure Station's page hasn't updated yet so the stock/order levels showing can't be guaranteed upon.


They said that if 1004A (or 1005A) become available again they will change the order.


Either way will work for me as I already have the Solder Story 31st Infantry Division 1938 Battle of Tai'erzhuang, which has a wood and metal rifle.  

Just means I would have a group of three in blue winter uniforms, and one apple green to face off against the KadHobby Pattiz Japanese infantryman.