In the game Warhammer 40,000, one of the armies is the Imperia Guard, which are quasai-futuristic army men. Since they come unassembled, you can glue them together. My Cadian company consists of fun little customizations I did-
-All the mortar teams are doing something goofy; one has the loader loading the mortar in backward while the other guy is looking in horror. The other has an angry officer socking the poor Pvt in the gut, and so forth.
-The tank commander has a huge honkin sword which he is wielding in mid-swing. The idea was I was going to get some little alien guys (rippers or hormagaunts) and have them swarming over the tank, with this guy nobly fending them off. Because in the grimdark future of the year 40,000, the best way to protect against xenos attacks on tanks is big-honking swords. Or chain saws
-A penal legion consisting of a bunch of rambo-type guys, but rather than just give them lasguns/knives (boring!) I got creative. I had some holding lasguns gangsta-style, others had a very random assortment of weapons I ordered online (tiny hockey sticks, chain saws, board w/a nail in it, etc)
I had the regular Army men, plus I had some bigger 6 inch long soldiers made of the same hard plastic but not so sucky. They were like the giant freaky carpenter ants vs the little piss ants.
I bit the heads off a few of them. No idea why, seemed like a good idea at the time. They didn’t complain.
“Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!”
One customisation I’ve seen which I thought was quite cool was a space marine wincing and shielding his face as he fired his plasma gun (a gun prone to overheating and killing the operator).
They describe him on the above-cited Army Men Home Page as “Running With Ammo Can”, though it’s not all that detailed a box, and could as easily have served as a small first-aid kit or some sort of box for delivering messages, or perhaps lunch…
Also according to the above site, that one’s a “Tim Mee” Vietnam-era figure, quite different from the WWII-era Marx series shown in the article. In my experience, the “Tim Mee” were the most commonly encountered toy soldiers in the late '60s and '70s, sold in bags at convenience and grocery stores, as well as toy stores. I think they’re also the basis for the toy soldiers in Disney’s Toy Story. The Marx soldiers only came in big boxed sets like the “Battleground” and “Navarone” sets. Those were distinct from the Marx “metal suitcase” playsets, which I believe came with slightly smaller scale figures.
While the above site identifies “WTF” guy as a mortarman, I agree, as Scumpup suggests,that there’s a case to be made for his being a bazooka loader. The only mortar in the Marx sets was a separate piece molded from hard plastic. This had three ready rounds molded into its base, and was clearly of a larger caliber than the round the figure was holding. Also, his arm didn’t reach high enough to load the weapon. I recall as a kid being bothered by that, and realizing that if you twisted the soft plastic figure’s wrist to make the round horizontal, it was just the right height and size to go with the bazooka.
A friend and I made a few primitive Super-8 animated movies staring my soldiers. For one we made a couple small buildings out of construction paper, which we then “blew up” using paint thinner (we used gasoline in an early experiment, but it went up too abruptly to appreciate). For another, we actually dug a small, shallow trench and filled it with water for a river battle.
Mine were all Airfix, very similar to the American ones in the links. As th emost useless I nominate, both from the German Alpjaeger:
Cyclists. There was usually enough of firepower to assume you can’t get to run your enemy over with a bicycle.
Ski-carrying troops. While the actual skier could be envisioned in a cool James Bond type chase, the ski-carryers can only harm anybody in a slapsticks type of scenario.
I had more of these than any of my friends which increased my popularity cinsuderably. From WWII I had at least
German
infantry
Africa korps
Paratroopers
Alpjaeger
British
infantry combat group (I have no idea why the complex name)
8th army
paratroopers
commandos
US marines
Japanese infantry
Soviet infantry
And then I had other stuff, a lot of. I had easily over 20 boxes so close to a thousand soldiers.
I wanted to do stuff like this when I was doing my friend’s IG, but he wouldn’t let me. And they were all metal Mordian Iron Guard, which is a lot tougher to convert.
I got (and still have) most of those Airfix sets also. I think there were some differences in the ones marketed in the US – my German mountain troops had no bicyclists, for example.
Besides overall historical accuracy, the best thing about the Airfix sets for me was that they had a German officer actually firing a pistol, instead of just looking through binoculars or standing around giving orders. That made him the go-to badass final villain figure.
Not him, but same idea. Thanks to this thread and the links within, I actually found him - he’s Ammo Carrier. Uh, OK, I guess - still no explanation for why he’s doing the boogie with his other arm.
He definitely has that sinister air. Unfortunately, neither Airfix nor anyone else ever produced a partisan set, though I recall assembling a small hard plastic figure kit to attack O gauge troop trains.
Having had several packs of toy soldiers handed down to me in the 80s, I remember that German officer fairly well. From the airfix site I seem to see a few other very detailed packs my uncle may have had as a kid, including the Commandos. The attention to detail on those soldiers was quite high for a small kids toy, the radio operator especially.
Mixed in with them were some fairly anonymous plastic soldiers and Britains soldiers with metal bases, amongst them this dude :dubious: I think I have representatives of some of this collection somewhere, I’m still not sure what branch of the US military went to war in green with yellow belts though.
I guess I’m just weird: When I was a little guy I used to play with plastic army men and I loved all the minesweeping, mortar-launching marchers. I would try to set up a real battle with minesweepers out ahead clearing the way, guys on the radio calling in strikes and men marching in formation.
Come to think of it, this was probably a precursor to my Warhammer hobby.
