Welcome to the Army Men General!Previously: >>11200639>Plastic soldiers, knights and pirates, cowboys and indians, fantasy and sci-fi, cops and zombies, all are welcome here!>Archived threads:https://archive.palanq.win/toy/search/subject/Army%20Men%20General/>Army men wargame rules:https://combatstorm.com/https://onepagerules.com/portfolio/one-off-games/https://www.plasticcommand.com/https://freewargamesrules.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?query=army+men>Places to get army men:https://bmctoys.com/ and https://victorybuy.com/https://www.armiesinplastic.com/https://www.toysoldierco.com/https://www.classictoysoldiers.com/https://www.toysoldiersdepot.com/https://www.hobbybunker.com/https://www.michtoy.com/https://www.toysoldierhq.com/https://micshaunscloset.com/http://www.expeditionaryforce.com.sg/
>>11228948Does anyone else remember a playset of army men like figurines that was themed around people in a city?
>>11229369There's certainly been playsets along those lines over the years, though I couldn't come up with one off-hand; always been into the military side of things. I did one of these police sets, not sure if I also got the fire one at some point.
>>11229843Got these second-hand but they were some hunters on safari set originally, with a few natives of course.
>>11229845 White Man's Burdern. I suppose you could use one of the Fantasy barbarians as Tarzan.
>>11230461I have a few caveman figs for that, heh. They'll come in handy when the Greens decide to remake The Granite Family.
>>11229843Thanks. This both look familiar. >>11229845It's always nice to see niche subjects with army men
>>11230503Packs of these zombies and tombstones came out some years back at the dollar store, Dollar Tree I think?
>>11230521Until recently they've been the better of the two dollar store powerhouses for army men (Dollarama being the other); currently both have zilch to offer around here. For a while Dollar Tree offered these, there was a fire one as well I didn't get.
>>11230522That you could get everything in pic related for a maplebuck was mind-blowing, hadn't seen that kind of value in a long time.
>>11230523The rubber dinghy is a weird choice for the police but I guess a squad car would've been outside the price point.
>>11230524The Wild West pack is unintentionally historically accurate in terms of proportionate numbers; the wagon and campfire are easily the best parts of it though.
>>11230525All but the military one faded away after a year or so, that one popped up once in a while but hasn't been seen in a couple years at least. I picked up a couple here and there, mostly as a dirt cheap source of armour but I didn't get around to actually opening them until quite some time later. Finally got to them in the middle of a major cleaning and reorganizing project.
>>11230526...And I was quite surprised to find that some of the packs had entirely different soldiers than had been typical, namely cheap copies of the old Timmee Vietnam War soldiers.
>>11230528I haven't found where these guys originated but from the five poses they're clearly pretty modern forces (note the one pose with a SCAR); the pose with the battering ram suggests SWAT but they could also work as Delta Force or any other special forces unit. Wish I'd recognized the alternate figures back when they were still available.
>>11230528 Mutants vrs humans.
>>11234397A little unnerving when the mutants are packing bazookas and flammenwerfen (which werf flammen, if you were wondering).
>>11230522>>11230523>>11230524>>11230525>>11230526>>11230528>>11230531Thanks for always sharing your finds. I hate how the big toy companies have slowly taken over dollar stores and pushed out most of the cool stuff, like those niche army men. Sorta-kinda related, my dollar store had a bunch of not-Gundams that were really cool along side the army men and other toys.
>>11234509Yeah, I sorely miss all the mom-and-pop dollar and more shops that went under to the might of the duolith of Dollarama and Dollar Tree. Much of my collection was built on such foundations, from the dollar stores in Winnipeg to the buck-or-twos out west here. Much of my childhood was overseas where they didn't have dollar stores but flea markets and discount retailers made up for it, with just about every store there having a toy section (and some kind of army men in it too). Wonder if things have changed for the worse there since...Pic related was one of my best dollar-plus store finds, close to 15 years on now I reckon. It was way on the northwest end of town so going out there was a rare occasion, but one day we happened to be in the area and had to check the place out. I don't remember much else of what they had but for army men they had bagged sets of that big Bradley or a large transport truck, with a few token troops. They were premium-priced relative to a lot of their other stuff as I recall, but even that would just be like 3 or 4 bucks a pop. Got myself all the Bradleys they had, plus a couple of the trucks.
>>11234521The Bradleys turned out to be cheap knock-offs of an old MicroMachines playset I once had (and later managed to get a replacement of through eBay); think two out of the three have their top machine guns glued on but they're great all the same. Years later I did find an online toy shop based in Ontario that sold 'em and the trucks, ordered a few of each to boost my mechanized forces and was delighted to find their Green version of the Bradley was somewhat better quality. Sadly that site has also long vanished from the internet and I've not seen those sets for sale anywhere. The Patriot launcher and truck in pic was a TRU find, from a little line of metal military vehicles they had at the time. Guess they didn't sell well cuz I was able to get a number of them on clearance, including the missile truck.
>>11234524The Humvee in pic is from that line; as I remember they had a three-pack that included a Humvee, Abrams tank and a truck with multiple-rocket launcher on the back. The Abrams have extendable barrels, useful for storage and I didn't even realize it until long after I'd bought 'em heh. Also in the line were flatbed trucks similar to that Patriot truck, with either an Abrams or a helicopter for cargo (can't remember if I bought one, have to someday dig through that giant tote where a lot of my older stuff is currently stored).
>>11234531Getting back to dollar stores, there was one in Winnipeg I hit up back in 2002 and let me tell you, that place was special. They had large bins and buckets full of toys and fun stuff that were 3 or 4 for a dollar. Among those treasures in bulk were little bags of army men and ninjas, the latter being a first for me at the time. I raised an entire division's worth of troops from the former, and added a handful of the latter as a kind of curiosity at the time.Pic has one of each pose intermingled with some ninjas I got much later from ToySoldiersDepot online, might not be able to tell very well from pic but the shinier, less detailed figs are the dollar store ones.
>>11234532These are the army men from that same store, a representative sample of the poses. They're clones of Airfix German Infantry, with the interesting modified officer pose where his cap has been replaced with a stahlhelm, more realistic for combat situations really. My records indicate the division strength to be over 200 effectives, almost all of them from that original dollar store visit. Despite being designated a Panzergrenadier unit their battle record is somewhat lacking; they've routinely been overlooked while the more glamourous Afrika Korps gets the nod for violence and action. I intend to rectify this in the near future, though whether it will be in the context of the Colour Wars or something else remains to be seen.
>>11234536Before I pass out there's one more store (and army men find) I wanted to talk about. Also in Winnipeg, also around the same time, there was a large discount toy store called BJ's that I imagine had much in common with the KBs south of the border. Among their seemingly countless products were packages of these Matchbox US Infantry copies, slightly smaller than the average plastic soldiers but I didn't care. Because I had relatively few numbers of true "enemy" army men (mostly WW2 Germans) I designated this group as a "Rebel" division and they fought with distinction across many battlefields.In the early 2010s I had to downsize my collection for reasons and ended up selling a hefty amount of soldiers through kijiji, though I made sure to keep a fraction of each army (a platoon here, a company there). The Rebel Division was no exception and I elected to retain enough for battalion strength; and then they seemingly disappeared. For years I was at a loss; even in my great clutter I could account for almost all other armies but those remained MIA. Was starting to believe I must've just sold all of them, until I randomly looked through a stack of containers that had been sitting right behind me all these years, having assumed they were all various lego pieces. One of them had the lost battalion, another a missing company of blue soldiers.
Going back to that big kijiji downsizing, 10 years on and I have more army men stuff than before it heh. Was helpful to re-house hundreds of troops that were never going to see action anyway though; a decade prior to the downsizing I'd gone on a bit of an army-building spree and could sometimes clear out a dollar store's stock in the pursuit of raising new divisions.I remember finding at one store literally dozens of packages of the re-imagined Timmee clones, each pack containing about 50 men in green and tan, plus bunkers, barbed wire and trees. In hindsight I'm most thankful for getting all those trees heh, is hard to build a substantial plastic forest when you get maybe two or three for every company of infantry. At their peak the Green and Tan divisions of those troops easily numbered over a thousand for the former and above six hundred for the latter.
>>11236135If I regret giving up anything, it'd be the Red and Blue troops, not easily replaced when the Big Three colours (Green, Tan and Grey) tend to dominate the army men scene.
>>11234536 That just makes me sad. I realized I haven't hit up any of the stores in Toronto in Chinatown. We HAVE found some useful guns for S.T.A.K.E.R cosplay.
>>11236215Get out of here, stalker.
>>11234531Your pictures are so inspiring.
>>11236405 You have me beat. :)
>>11238668Thanks anon. Crazy how long it's been since that setup in particular, on a cheap digital cam I barely knew how to use.>>11239227Heh nah, we're all friends here... unless you're a T*n
>>11240149That's what is endearing about it to me. Your older pictures have this old internet, "kid just fooling around in his grandparents house and posting to Imgur or some forum" kinda vibe.
>>11240394That setup was heavily inspired by the Believe ad campaign for Halo 3, even made a video along those lines.
>>11242345>>11242346>>11242348>>11242396Pretty charming; the little details like them using sticks for guns add a lot
How old were you when you got your first army men? Do you still have them?>was 7 or 8>pic related were some of the first troops in my armies
>>11242590 I really like then but the shipping DSL (not UPS or Canada Post) doubled the price. if that stuff gets worked out I would buy another set.
>>11244009Memories of my early life are non-existent. The earliest thing I remember is getting a bunch from the dollar store--firemen, police officers, and the actual soldiers--and having them participate in a much larger battle between clone troopers and droids.
>>11244009>>11244467For Christmas, one year, around six or so, my grandfather gave me a great big WWII box set with green Americans and grey Germans to play with while I was sitting on the floor watching war movies with him. However, my main bread-and-butter was Wild West and Civil War stuff. It went well with my G-scale Gold Rush train set and the display my dad helped me build for it.
>>11245063Awesome memories. Grandpas really are the best.
>>11245252He taught me all I know about miniatures, scale modeling, and everything else that goes into trains and wargaming.
Thoughts on these guys and or Britain Deetail? I just discovered them by watching YouTube videos? It's cool that Brits have their own BMC/Timee equivalent that's been around for ages. The paint and really dynamic poses are also another stand out feature. https://www.wbritain.com/product-storehttps://www.historynet.com/w-britain-model-soldiers/
>>11246966They look great, might have one or two random ones in my collection. I don't remember what company made pic related but they're probably the most vintage soldiers I have.
>>11246972In my plastic armed forces there is a Veterans' Brigade, comprised of all the soldiers who don't have an army of their own for various reasons, usually cuz they're the only representatives. Years ago I took some pics of the members and I'm guessing one or both the painted Brit soldiers at the back would be Britains.
>>11246978A sub-unit of the Veterans' Brigade are these war-torn figures, repaired to the best of my abilities but rather too fragile to be stored in the main container. The standing painted guy with FAL and grenade is almost certainly a Britains figure, was missing his stand but I cannibalized one from a batch of particularly poorly made soldiers I had in abundance; most of the others are also recipients of such transplants.
>>11246978>That guy without a head>The random /k/ommando hunter with the orange hat and vest>>11246981I think that German is a Britain figure too. https://haroldsrangers.wordpress.com/2012/09/
>>11247951Not having a head just grants you immunity from headshots; additionally in my armed forces it grants the label of "Davy Crockett" (old in-joke with brother). Good catch with the German, wondered cuz of the paint apps. These guys are vintage too, US-made but I forget the companies behind them. Really miss Thor's Army Men website, had this kind of info but it's lost to the internet since his passing.
>>11247977 the more information we have - or is boasted about - the more we seem to lose. These shitbird attacks on the internet archive don't help either
>>11248897Still have it in my bookmarks but the archive just says it was excluded, no reason given. However, I just learned some awesome news - apparently train autism runs deeper than one could imagine. Seems the model train community which was his main love came together and somehow got his site back online a few years ago. It's currently down again but this time around the archive saved it!https://web.archive.org/web/20210407135421/http://www.thortrains.us/armymen/index.htmlGonna save all the pages myself, just in case.
>>11248941Unfortunately I was a bit premature in my celebrations, as while a decent amount of the main pages have been archived, almost none of the ones about different kinds of soldiers he had have made it. Another letdown, doesn't look like it'll be coming back up either if the one post asking about it from earlier this year is anything to go by. Still don't have an answer to the above soldiers but there's other places with that knowledge I guess.
Found these cool videos:https://youtu.be/EXSo9LeuX2M?si=1nVSTbhBtTreu3RVhttps://youtu.be/jVcUurs0RR4?si=Sm0hsWuAAQdOi6oTI think it’s cool to see and hear about army men history
>>11249010Yeah it's good stuff, though the guy is rather annoying. Course I'd probably be just as awkward heh.
>>11250072And in fairness it could be worse, tried watching The Plastic Commander...
