Redartz: Countless millions of these little troopers have fought untold battles across innumerable backyards, for decades. Yes, the 'green army men'. Kids everywhere had boxes of them, myself included. In fact, I had some gray ones (supposedly German soldiers from WWII) and tan ones (Japanese soldiers, from the Pacific theatre). There were tanks, also, and troop carriers. But the main focus was on the 'infantry'. These plastic soldiers faced giant dogs, thundering garden hose floodwaters, firecracker bombs, and many other perils. Never a complaint; they took it all in stride. My friends and I staged huge battles across the yard, and probably lost as many of these in the grass as we managed to keep. At any rate, they provided hours of fun, adventure and imagination. And hey, they were regarded highly enough to rate prominent roles in the "Toy Story" films!Did you have any of these, or some other low- budget 'action figures'? Perhaps some cowboys and "Indians", or space men? Did you stage some pretty impressive battle scenes? And did any survive? Dump out your box and let's see...
15 comments:
Love it!
Red I probably had the ones you discussed: green Americans, blue/gray Germans, and yellowish Japanese. If I recall the yellow ones were unique in that they had someone with a sword (banzai charges, no doubt). We just set ours up, in lincoln-log forts, and rolled marbles back and forth to see who would have the last man standing
Never had any out of the comic books, though. Cousin did and they were quite a bit smaller than the ones you / I had.
Picked up a bunch of wild-west ones at a garage sale for the kids. Probably from the 60s.
Bought a bunch with tanks, barbed wire, and such, in the 200s, from the Dollar Store. Had to do some table-top demos for the National Guard. Commander loved it.. said it was the best demo he'd ever seen for explaining how to do recons and such.
I had some farm animals. Do they count as action figures ?
Sure Colin sure! We used anything miniature to enhance the effects of total destruction!
Charlie- speaking of smaller figures, I recall having some tiny HO scale soldiers that came with model kits (back when that was a big thing for me). Less than an inch in height; there were a bunch of them; had a bit more variety of poses than the standard green army men...
And yeah, lincoln logs (and lego's) made perfect forts...
Colin- absolutely! Some of those farm animals are capable of quite a bit of action!
My main memory of the really tiny little plastic toy soldiers is that they could never be made the stay upright, so you had to pretend they were all dead. It was quite depressing really, like a searing commentary on the futility of war.
Steve - LOL! Spot on!!! My cousin had those little things... useless!!!
I actually sent away my hard-earned money for that foot locker of toy soldiers from the comic book ad. Let me say, they got more bang for my buck than I did! The foot locker was about the size of a fat wallet, and the soldiers were not only small but flat! It's like they were 2D rather than 3D!!
Rip off...
But I'm over it now.
Doug
I got a footlocker full from a dollar store. I never had trouble getting them to stand up. We'd set them up in two groups and then play a game pitching marbles at each other's group to knock them down. Whoever knocked over the most of the others with 5 or 10 shots won!
I had a handful of the other colored ones that were passed down from my uncle who had cowboy and indians and WWII ones from the 50s and 60s.
I gave mine away to a collector friend in the mid-00s, soon after I collected the last of my childhood stuff from my mom's place when she moved from the last place I ever lived with her, but kept just one: an army man being blown up by a grenade or mortar fire - it seemed a lot more indicative of the horrors of war than the rest.
My nephew was killed in Iraq in 2007 when he was hardly more than a kid himself, nowadays I have a hard time accepting war/army toys as acceptable playthings for kids
I ordered the footlocker of WWII soldiers from the comics ad. Needless to say, the actual product did not approximate the dramatic representation. As someone else pointed out, they were basically flat, two-dimensional figures, and made of very cheap plastic to boot.
Now that I think of it, this bait and switch probably came second in my list of childhood letdowns only to Sea Monkeys.
I probably had more of the darker green soldiers showed in the third picture than any others. My favorite, oddly enough not pictured, was the soldier holding a pistol about waist high. I always figured him as the C.O. of the company.
I used to use those paratrooper toys along with them. They were a bigger scale but it was all in good fun.
I figure kids have been losing those toy soldiers in their backyards for generations. I was digging up the backyard in my house a few years ago, for a new sewer line and found a metal toy soldier, looked like it was from the 50's.
I still have a bunch of these ... some of which resemble the first photo, except in different colours.
They came in a big bubble pack with six different armies in different colours: Orange=British, Dark Green=American, Light Green=Australian, Dark Blue=German, and Medium Green for both French and Japanese. They all had different weapons and stuff; if I can find them, maybe I'll drag them out and take a photo.
I definitely had army men of all sorts. We used to set them up and use rubber bands to shoot them down - seeing what kind of distance we could get and still knock them off their perch.
We also had a couple of cowboys who we called Butch and Sundance. We would always throw them off of things to mimic the last scene of the movie.
Had some dinosaurs too that would attack the army men Godzilla-style.
For a while I had army men ( basically in the same poses as the small ones) that were about five-inches tall. Those were cool. There were army, Vikings, and knights in that configuration.
I had bunches of green army men from the local Dime Store, later a Dollar Store. I also ordered the Revolutionary War soldiers and they were somewhat disappointing, too......so tiny that you could t move one without knocking eight or ten askew.
I got a couple of play sets out of the Christmas catalog a few years later. One was the Revolutionary War set. I think it was called Sons of Freedom and the other was a Civil War set that had the Appomattox courthouse.
Now that I think about it, regardless of the size of the soldiers, finding one that would simply stand up was a treat, LOL. How many times did I have to take the bigger ones and bend them...
Ahh yes the ol' green army men! I used to pretend they were soldiers like DC's Losers or Marvel's Sgt. Fury and his howling commandos! Of course I did have the requisite 'cowboys and Indians' figures too, a whole box of assorted figures as I recall. Quite a difference from today's electronic generation - Pokemon Go, anyone?
- Mike 'too short for army service' from Trinidad & Tobago.
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