You found the Tin Soldiers!

Tin soldiers are miniature figures of toy soldiers that are extremely popular in the world of collecting. They can be found with a metal finish or hand-painted. Tin soldiers are generally made of pewter, tin, lead, other metals, or plastic.

Often very elaborate scale models of battle scenes, known as dioramas, are created for their display. Tin soldiers were originally almost two-dimensional figures, often called "little Eilerts". Tin soldiers were the first toys to be mass-produced.

"Real" tin soldiers, ones cast from an alloy of tin and lead, can also be home-made. Molds are available for sale in hobby shops. Once, the molds were made of metal; nowadays they are often made of hard rubber which can stand the high temperatures of molten metal.

The best-known tin soldier in literature is the unnamed title character in Hans Christian Andersen's 1838 fairy tale "The Steadfast Tin Soldier". This tin soldier has only one leg because "he had been left to the last, and then there was not enough of the melted tin to finish him." He falls in love with a dancer made of paper, and after much adventuring, including being swallowed by a fish, the two are consumed together by fire, leaving nothing but tin melted "in the shape of a little tin heart." A more modern, happier version of this story was part of Disney's original movie "Fantasia".