Harlequin Miniatures

• Harlequin:
• Boxed Sets
• Ranges
• Shields

• Licensed:
• Babylon 5
• Doctor Who
• Lord of the Rings

• Ranges:
• Ackland Accessories
• Dwarves (FA)
• Fantasy Adventurers
• Kelts
• Lizardmen (FA)
• Monsters (FA)

• Related:
• Black Tree Design
• Icon Miniatures
• Scotia Grendel
• Seb Games

Status	Out of business
Active	1994? - 2000
Website	harlequin-miniatures.com (archived)
Address	Nottingham, England, UK

Harlequin Miniatures Ltd was founded around 1994 [2] by Dean Edwards and Vaughan Edwards. They created the Raven wargames rules in 1996. They were later licensed to produce a range of Lord of the Rings figures but lost the 5-year license to Games Workshop. Harlequin Miniatures Ltd was acquired by Icon Miniatures in October 2000. Icon Miniatures quickly turned into Black Tree Design and almost all of the Harlequin figures are still in production. Their general fantasy ranges were originally produced under the "Harlequin Miniatures" label, and some of these had pre-slotta bases, but they were then re-organised under the name "Fantasy Armies".

Product Code Lists: By Range, or Boxed Sets

Company History

• Company Number: 03096910
• Incorporation Date: 31 Aug 1995

Dean Edwards, the co-founder of Harlequin Miniatures had worked for Games Workshop, Marauder Miniatures, Fantasy Forge, and Grenadier before setting up Harlequin with his brother Vaughan Edwards. Although in an interview with Dean the foundation date is given as 1994 it is likely that this may have been earlier. Dean worked for Fantasy Forge which closed in 1992, he joined Grenadier Models U.K. almost immediately, for 3 months, before being made redundant. It wa following the redundancy that he started discussion with his brother starting Harlequin Miniatures. The Kelts range have been seen with date stamps of 1992 so may have been produced either before Harlequin started or during the initial days.

They produced the Raven rules for wargaming in 1996 and went on to produce licensed ranges for Doctor Who, Babylon 5 and (briefly) Lord of the Rings. They produced a short run magazine called "The One Ring" in 1999 to support the LotR range. The LotR license was supposed to have been a 5 year, £1 million contract with Tolkien Enterprises and the company were working on a new fantasy tabletop wargame to be the basis for a the LotR tabletop wargame. But this fell through and Games Workshop ended up producing the wargame rules and miniatures instead.

According to the Raven rulebook, published 1996, Harlequin Miniatures were Vaughan Edwards, John Olsen, Dean Edwards, Tony Ackland, Pete Brown, Janet Isaacs, Nick Eyre, Tim Olsen, Zena Ellis, Rob Bannister, Dave Leigh and Kev Adams.

Kev Adams, Tony Ackland, Aidan Anderson , Nick Collier, Lisa Palin, Dominique Seys, Phil Solom have all worked as sculptors for Harlequin, Nick Eyre did a lot of the figure painting for them and Bryan Ansell was noted in the 1997 catalogue as a consultant.

Addresses

• Harlequin Miniatures Limited, Unit S3, Top Floor, 632 Radford Rd, Nottingham, NG7 7EX, England, UK
• Harlequin Miniatures Inc., P.O. Box 50081, Amarillo, TX 79159-0081, USA
• Harlequin Miniatures, Stephansplatz 6, 20354 Hamburg, Germany
• Wargames Warehouse, 12 Chrome Street, Salisbury, QLD 4107, Australia

Branding

Website

• Domain: harlequin-miniatures.com (archived)
• Registered: current registrar gives creation date as 2003-10-21 which is post-Harlequin era - now a link bait/squat site.

Distribution

• Hexagonal, 94-96 Rue Faidherbe, 93700 Drancy, France

Disposal of Assets

Most of Harlequin miniatures are still in production from Black Tree Design.

References

• [1], TMP, "Harlequin Miniatures Ltd"
• [2], SFSFW Ragnarok Issue 31, "An Interview With... Dean Edwards of Harlequin Miniatures"
• [3], The One Ring Issue 2 (1999)
• [4], Raven (rulebook)