A friend had a train around his room. We'd set them up & shoot them off with a blow/dart gun. Challenging to get them without putting holes in the walls.

That reminds me of The Desert Fox playlet I got one Christmas. I played with those soldiers and tanks for years. As best I remember the soldiers were very well modeled and pretty realistic. One even had a hole/wound in his back and you could snap him onto another medic figure and carry him to safety.

Used to set up our plastic armies on the carpet and roll or shoot marbles back and forth.

Had a Guns of Navarone playset as a kid. It was probably my favorite toy. My cat liked it too. I would set everything up preparing for battle and then Catzilla would come along and knock everything over.

I had a few plastic toy soldiers and several that I found along the way that was the good guy team (think A-Team, many years earlier). When I was a little older, I bought a set of plastic cowboys and Indians and painted them. Lincoln logs and marvels were good artillery at my house, too, but the good guy team often used infiltration methods similar to Captain Mallory in TGoN mentioned earlier.

When my wife and I visited Ireland a few years ago, we heard about the Prince August Toy Factory in a little village a short distance south of the road between Cork and Killarney. We stopped by for a tour of their facility and were impressed with it and their figures. They make and sell collectible figures, kits, molds, and supplies. There were a number of nice displays featuring figures from Greek and Roman times through the present. Their website is

https://shop.princeaugust.ie/

I’m not associated in any way other than by visiting that morning.

What I remember best about the plastic soldiers is if you lit one and held it the dripping burning plastic made the weirdest sound.

I had green ( ‘Merica) ones and gray ( Zee germans) ones....used to play with them all over our yard, under the house in the crawl space, at my grandmas....then suddenly I didn’t, growing up sucks

This was a big expensive gift when I got it. lol




The "Army men" I wish I still had more of are these guys. Army men, cowboys and indians. I have to tear the old shed down and I have a hunch when I do I may find a few more. They're maybe 5 1/2, 6" tall.
That cowboy's had his barrels chewed off and sports a couple BB gun wounds.

Had one of these growing up; part of the Civil War Centennial marketing system.

Could not afford toy soldiers so I improvised and put blanket on floor and made folds and hills and then had battles between red beans and black beans with nails as cannon and machine guns. I had armies with hundreds on each side.

They also had Roman legions, Medieval Knights and American revolutionary soldiers fighting the redcoats. For many years I bore the scars from soldiers that melted onto the top of my foot. Be careful when you set you’re toys on fire.

Oh yeah!! Lots of great memories.
Civil war with cannons, WW2 with a German 88, Panzer Tiger, and a castle with knights and working catapults, and Lincoln Logs!

So much fun!!!

definitely spent a lot of time playing with army men as a kid. I'm on the younger side of this conversation probably, but spent a lot of time in my mom's garden and flower boxes playing army men walking, crawling, and hiking through the mud, flowers, and "jungles." there's probably a few still in that back yard if someone looked hard enough.

God I loved that Navarone set. I remember buying it with birthday money.

When I was a kid there was this game called "Giant Cooties." They were big plastic multi-part six legged bugs. I didn't then and don't know now what the game rules were. I used the bugs to stage sci-fi movie scenes: I'd array the bugs against my back- of-the-comic book green army soldiers, with crumpled tissues to replicate artillery explosions.

I remember the plastic green ones would drip flaming little balls when lit on fire!

quote:

Originally posted by Xer0:
I remember the plastic green ones would drip flaming little balls when lit on fire!

Which is why I didn't have any after a couple years of playing with them.
I guess I was destined to be a fireman even way back when.