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Men with Wooden Barrels (38070) 1:35 MiniArt via Creative Models Ltd Wooden barrels. You don't see so many of them these days without flowers sprouting from them, but before mass-produced metal and plastic barrels became the de facto standard, they would have been much more prevalent where large quantities of anything needed to be stored. Everyone’s thinking of beer right now, but they have been used for a great many things over the years, so they’re not only found in pubs and breweries. Barrels need someone or something to move them around, most of the hard work being done by wagons called drays that were pulled by cart horses fed on hay and grain, later to be moved around by internal combustion engined trucks. Moving them the last few yards was still usually a manual job, requiring strong folk to roll them around and take them to their final resting place, at least until they’re empty. The Kit It arrives in a figure-sized end-opening box with four sprues, plus a sheet of decals for stencilling of the ends of the barrels. There are four barrels of two types, one larger than the other, plus two figures to do the heavy lifting. It is worthy of note that the barrels have plank grooves inside, so an empty barrel without a lid is just as realistic, and there are supports to allow you to place the barrels horizontally, plus a spigot for a barrel that’s already been tapped. The two gentlemen doing the lifting are well-built types, one of a slighter stature that is wearing a shirt, apron and beret, with a pair of stout gloves tucked into his waist. The burly man is wearing a simple pair of denim dungarees and boots, wearing nothing on his exposed upper body save for the bib and braces over his shoulders. He is a muscular fellow from years of barrel wrangling, and you will need to fill the joints between his arms and torso as a result as the seam runs around his shoulders by necessity. The parts for each figure are found on separate sprues for ease of identification, and parts breakdown is sensibly placed where possible along clothing seams or natural breaks to minimise clean-up of the figures once they are built up. The sculpting is typically excellent, as we’ve come to expect from MiniArt’s artists and tool-makers, with natural poses, drape of clothing and textures appropriate to the parts of the model. Markings The small decal sheet includes four stencils for the barrel ends, and the back of the box shows where to place them, and suggests some colours to paint the figures if you’re short on inspiration with paint codes from Vallejo, Mr.Color, AK RealColor, Mission Models, AMMO, Tamiya, plus generic names and swatches. Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion Great figures for any diorama with the need for some barrels and men to shift them. Put them in the background or front-and-centre of your next creation to add some human scale. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of