Frankish Infantryman with Spear

 

This is the Frankish Infantryman with Spear that first appeared in the Miniature Figurines 72/73 catalogue as PB 195.

Both PB ranges were based on Phil Barker's books Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars and The Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome. This figure is taken from illustration 95 in the first edition of AEIR.

The code numbers for the AEIR range correspond to the illustrations in the book plus '100', i.e. illustration 1 is figure 101. 

The base is numbered PB 195 on the upper surface in the usual manner.

This model could well serve in practically any Germanic army of the third century or later. He'd comfortably slot into a fantasy army for that matter.

The AEIR range was originally released with rather thick - some would say overly thick - spears and javelins. These obviously caused some unrest, because they were soon replaced with much thinner versions. These in turn obviously failed to cut the mustard, because they were often replaced with new weapons that were either a little thicker or just 'different'. One suspects the factory was having problems casting the thin versions! This particular model is one of the later 'thin' types. 

The thick-spear version of the same figure has his spear held almost parallel to the ground, so not only was the spear redesigned but it was slightly repositioned too.

In the end, Minifigs gave up entirely and started to produce their figures with open hands to take separate weapons. However, that didn't happen until the 72 PB range had already been replaced with the  later 78 ranges - as far as I know!