the Johnny Red figure that never was

When I saw the front cover of the current issue of Wargames Illustrated (issue 366 - April 2018) poking out of the shelves of my local WH Smith's the other day I was intrigued. Why? There, on     the front cover (even though he's smoking a cigar) was Battle's Johnny Red. What on Earth is he doing there I thought 

The answer lay inside with a 2 page feature on how to use a character like Johnny in an aerial wargame. You also get a whole page of Johnny's backstory in Battle.

Seeing that the figure was described as being a new figure in the 'Giants in Miniature' range produced by Wargames Illustrated sounded good to me. However, a look on their website showed no sign of Johnny, where was he hiding? Eventually I e-mailed Wargames Illustrated who told me that the model had only ever been available to pre-order but that due to unforeseen circumstances all casts of the model had had to be melted down and that the figure would not be going onto production. 

And that was that, so near but yet so far...pick up the current issue of the magazine for your one and only chance to see this model.