One of the most popular past-times in 19th century Catalonia was collecting miniature tin soldiers. Throughout that century and most of the 20th, there were shops all over Europe making these tiny armies. In fact, they were not made exclusively of lead, but rather an alloy of lead, tin and antimony. The figures come in various sizes, although the most common measure between 20 and 90 millimeters. Reaching varying degrees of exactitude, there are different corps and battalions of contemporary European and colonial armies.

In Barcelona, the production of lead figures was begun around 1828 by Italian artisan Carlo Ortelli, who made more than one thousand two-dimensional figures. In about 1880 the Lleonart studios began to produce two-dimensional figures. In addition to soldiers, the studios created an entire Corpus Christi procession with more than eighty figures.

The production of lead toy soldiers suffered a blow in the 1950s with the invention of plastic pieces and new sorts of toys. The museum owns quite a number of the toy soldiers that were produced in Barcelona. There are also figures from Madrid and others from well-known European workshops like Britains from England and Heinrichsen from Germany.