Long before sleek plastic sets and pre-painted armies, tabletop adventurers brought their characters to life in cold, heavy lead. The late 1970s and early 1980s marked a strange golden age of miniatures — a time when names like Grenadier Models and Ral Partha Enterprises stood at the vanguard of fantasy gaming.
These figures weren’t polished collectibles. They were rough, sometimes awkward sculpts — but they were ours. To hold a lead mini was to feel a character become real: a fighter’s broadsword glinting under a desk lamp, a dragon’s wings dangerously thin but impossibly wide. Each was a promise of adventure.
Grenadier Models: Boxed Quests in Metal
Grenadier, founded in New Jersey, burst onto the D&D scene in 1980 with the first officially licensed Advanced Dungeons & Dragons miniature sets. Each came in a tidy cardboard box, cover art as dramatic as a pulp fantasy paperback. Inside, nestled in foam, were whole adventuring parties: clerics in flowing robes, rogues with tiny daggers, fighters with swords thicker than their legs.
The sculpts were crude by modern standards, but to players of the time they were a revelation — the first chance to line up a warband and see your adventuring company assembled in pewter-gray lead.
Ral Partha: Elegance in Scale
Where Grenadier brought bulk, Ral Partha brought artistry. Their figures were slimmer, more delicate, and far closer to what we think of as miniatures today. Elves with flowing hair, dragons coiled in dynamic poses, wizards etched with tiny runes.
By the mid-1980s, Ral Partha’s reputation for quality rivaled the TSR artwork in your Player’s Handbook. Owning their miniatures was a mark of taste — and of a DM who wanted their table to look just a little more professional.
The Weight of Memory
The figures were heavy. Literally. Lead had heft, and to pour a sack of minis onto the table was to feel like you were handling treasure. Of course, the hazards were real too: paint flaking, bent swords, and yes — the later panic over lead poisoning, which eventually forced the industry to switch to safer alloys.
Yet for those who grew up with them, the danger was just part of the mystique. These weren’t toys for children. They were the stuff of dungeon delves and late-night campaigns. They belonged to you and your imagination.
Lost Armies
Today, many of those Grenadier and Ral Partha sculpts survive only in battered boxes or yellowed catalog pages. Collectors hunt for them not because they’re perfect, but because they embody the birth of the hobby. Each bent spear or paint-chipped cleric tells a story: the story of how fantasy left the page and landed, heavy and cold, in the palm of your hand.
💬 “You don’t just remember the character — you remember the weight of the miniature you used to play them.”
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