A Model Student of History

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by Kristian Jaime

As misnomers go, few could be as egregious as calling King and Country's product line toys. More to the point, they are collectible art and testaments to world history.

Laura McAlister Johnson, president of King and Country, could tell you quite a tale of these high-end period artifacts, and occasionally, she might even call them toy soldiers. But ask any of their loyal and demanding collectors and one realizes this is not child's play, but a lifetime devotion to obtaining entire series of hundreds of individually crafted pieces.

“Men will always want toys; what changes is how expensive they are,” quips Johnson as she recalls King and Country's long and steady climb to international acclaim.

The Glasgow, Scotland native is no newcomer to the business world—or to turning a seemingly modest opportunity into an overwhelming success. She applied extensive financial experience to an advertising firm in her early 20s with former husband and current business partner Andrew Neilson. When the duo sold it, it was the largest independent firm in Hong Kong. Neilson's career as a commercial artist came in again with the couple’s next business, King and Country, opened in Hong Kong in 1983. The next year the couple started Mad Dogs Pub, a watering hole for English ex-pats.

In just a few years King and Country was on its way to becoming the largest toy soldier company in the world, and Mad Dogs had expanded into six locations around Hong Kong. Then the late King Ranch heir and Texas business legend B.K. Johnson stopped into Mad Dogs on a trip through Hong Kong. Impressed with the ambience, he met with McAlister (by then divorced from Neilsen) to try to convince her to open a Mad Dogs in his Hyatt Regency Hotel on the San Antonio River Walk.

In 1985 Mad Dogs came to San Antonio, where it’s still thriving in the Hyatt. The following year Johnson sold McAlister on a romantic merger, and in ’86 she joined him permanently in San Antonio as his wife.

Widowed when Johnson died in 2001, Laura chose to stay in San Antonio. These days she’s busy raising two young children -- yet she still finds plenty of time to help Neilsen run their Hong Kong-based King and Country, which actually started with a gift Laura gave Neilsen, a former Royal Marine, back when they were still a young married couple.

“Andrew's hobby was collecting toy soldiers and over the years, I would buy him these gifts,” explains Johnson. “It was increasingly difficult to get them since most came from the United Kingdom. The last time, I had to get on a nine-month waiting list. I thought there must be a market in Hong Kong for them. So in ’83 we started producing our own.”

Neilson took the creative reins, designing sketches while Johnson maintained the business end. A small store in the heart of Hong Kong and several factories later, King and Country began supplying collectors while weathering growing pains like maintaining historical accuracy and perfecting how models were made. With new distribution points came clout.

Laura’s move to San Antonio, and the new downtown location for Mad Dogs, led to a new Texas client for King and Country, too – King's X, a toy soldier store in the historic Menger Hotel owned by S.A.’s Albert (Boo) and Meta Hausser.

When the Haussers decided to sell a few years ago, they thought of King and Country, and called Laura Johnson. “I had coveted that location since it was next to the Alamo,” Johnson says.

“We bought it, kept the name and started selling King and Country exclusively there. Our head offices are still in Hong Kong and that's where Andrew still works.”

Producing historically accurate toy soldiers and other figurines on a tiny 1:30 scale is a demanding process, Johnson says. It takes six months to develop a new line, such as the Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider figurines that King and Country introduced last summer at an international toy soldier convention at the Menger. After much historical research is completed, a sketch is made, from which master sculptors make three-dimensional models. After much revision, production begins—and a new collector’s item is finally born.

Summing up a journey which started with a hobby, blossomed with an unlikely romance, and continues to expand as an international toy soldier empire, Johnson simply declares, “Everybody has opportunities, but not everybody knows when to take them.”