October 02, 2004
If you are of a certain age, you will remember seeing these great big ads in the back pages of Charlton, Dell, DC, Marvel & most other comics. They started in the 40's but their heydays were in the 60s-70s, disappearing forever in the 80s with the advent of Transformers, Hasbro Star Wars figures, etc. I was a big fan of Batman & Spiderman comics in the '70s (I'm 34) & drooled over these ads, but as the local supermarket toy aisle always had bags of various plastic soldiers for cheap, I could never convince my parents to send away for them. And of course, that was the enticing part of it. But my cheap-ass parents were right when they said "it won't be anywhere near as good as you expect." The 'footlockers' were flimsy cardboard, the figures were often flats, & the quality usually left much to be desired. But they are still cool. Variations included Civil War soldiers, Revolutionary War soldiers, Knights, Pirates, Romans & loads of variants. Better still those were the days of spring or lacky-band-powered artillery & catapults! They'll put your eye out, son! And so the girls aren't left out (cos their parents had money, too) there were hundreds of little dolls! /swoon. I had huge amounts of fun with such crappy plastic soldiers, strewing them across the lounge-room floor & all over the chairs, having massive battles with my two uncles, who weren't much older than me, at least not too old to enjoy a bit of plastic army fun. Later that night my dad would impale his bare foot on one & shout at me. Ah, fun times! This site could be a trip down memory lane for a few monkeys, I hope. For those whose reminiscence turns to desire, note that one of the toy manufacturing companies, Helen of Toy Co., is back!
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perhaps if george bush had these to play with, he'd leave the rest of the world alone!
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Reminds me of this modern art bowl. (Page of the bowl company is in resize-your-browsers flash.) I myself have a red ninja fighting a yellow pirate on my bookshelf.
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The nostalgia is killing me. We're of an age, Nostril. I didn't want US GIs, though, I wanted the British 8th army, packs of which I got from Croydon market every Saturday (such cheap quality that I can't even find a picture of them on the net). I persuaded my brother to start collecting Afrika Korps figure, from the same source. Little did he realise at the time that, for us to remain historically accurate, I would have to win every battle we engaged in. He hardly speaks to me these days.
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My toy soldiers usually died in a fire or while trying to defuse a firecracker.
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Anyone remember the Stephen King short story about a man being killed by something very similar to this...
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Lead or 'tin' soldiers: British and Indian Army, some cavalry (Bengal Lancers) with horses, Gurkha riflemen, Highland regiments in kilts, and also a set of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (the majority of whom, as I recall, were not mounted). Some were mine, some were my brothers', and I think some odd pieces had belonged to members of the preovoous generation. These toys required touching up with enamel paint from time to time, which was also fun. My cousins had some medieval knights, but they were old and battered, and missing many bits, so I did not encounter them in the days of their glory. With lead soldiers, you had to be careful not to bend small jutting perts like bayonets, lances, horses legs, etc because they broke off if twisted about. One of my older brothers was very clever at soldering things back together, and we saved broken bits in a special box pending his repair jobs. These lead toys came in sets of a dozen, and were still being sold as late as the mid-sixties. Haven't noticed any on sale for decades, however.
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>>and we saved broken bits in a special box pending his repair jobs that would have been an interesting box! parts is parts.
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I had the Civil War soldiers. They were great. I didn't care that they were cheapass plastic shit; I staged famous battles that took up my entire bedroom floor and made loud cannon sounds at will. Whee! Then my dad got stationed in a different country and my parents made me get rid of the soldiers and all my comics. *sulks*
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rungkutta: Battleground. Great story. I love King's short fiction and hate hate HATE his novels. I had a peculiar set which was all men in space suits. Sadly there were no rockets or moonbase buildings. My friend Stephen, however, had the ultimate monstrosity - a set which included ball-bearing shooting tanks and artillery and a four-foot plastic mountain. It was marketed as the "Monte Cassino" battle set, IIRC. Hundreds of soldiers.
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Cool! I still have two of these sets I got in the early 80's. But then I also still have most of my real army men and my nearly three foot tall Guns of Navarone plastic mountain. (Jesus, I'm 35 years old.)
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Haven't noticed any on sale for decades, however. You can certainly find 15mm wargaming figurines at hobby shops. There are also larger sizes, but I don't remember what the scales are. Nowadays they're normally made of some pewter variant instead of lead for health and environmental reasons.
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the lead ones make your hands smell funny.
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cowboys and indians, plastic ones. i ate them.
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Wait, I think cropshy has actually named the set I recall - although I know that my pal has extra stuff.
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er, had.
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And for our Latter Day monkies, Mormon Figures...via the Blort
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Whoa! Memory lane, indeed! I had the 100 dolls set. Was pretty cool, too, when the old man shreek and swear after trying to walk across the living room and impaling himself on one of them.
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I think this is a great link therefore I am upping it and to bum with the naysayers.
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One Christmas, my sister, who was at college and skint, got 7-year-old-me a big badly-painted box marked "Super Space Playset" or somesuch. It contained no less than three sets of scifi soldiers, one white, one blue, and one silver, which were an assortment of robots. Also included was a flimsy plastic flying saucer shaped base thing. That was me set for the next 6 months. Fantastic.
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The boy next door had 'em. Also the cowboys & injuns variant, and some sort of dinosaurs & cavemen thing. There must still be dozens of 'em buried in our sand pile, waiting for future archeologists to speculate on their religious significance. And nobody I knew called 'em "Toy Soldiers." Their proper name was "Green Army Guys."
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Painted lead soldiers. Nice new Bengal Lancers. Riflemen in green. Highlanders in kilts. And some of a set of Royal Canadian Mounted Police, not all of whom were mounted. "Don't put those in your mouth, now, darling." "I'm thinking if he's that damn stupid let him suck the paint off. 'Twill save us the expense of his upbringing."