A Toy (soldier) Story

The Toy Soldiers from Toy Story

As some of you might already have noticed in my previous post, there were picture of a MP-figure there which was not from the Tobar's Matchbox clones which I reviewed in that post. The figure is from another "budget source" though.


As mentioned before, I'm planning to use these figures as gaming pieces to play different miniature skirmish wargames, which rulesets are published online and free to use. I'm not an experienced 'wargamer' and I don't want to spend a fortune on expensive, thick and complicated rulebooks, which I have no time to read anyway, nor spending even more on expensive miniatures to go with these spesific games. I want to try to keep this wargaming-edeavour as  easy and simple as possible, on a Budget and most of all FUN. One such free wargame ruleset I plan to use is FUBAR, which covers a lot of different periods. Just go to the download-section to have a look for yourself. One thing with the FUBAR-rules is that is differs between different troop quality ranging from 'green' to 'elite'. If my previously previwed Tobar/Matchbox GIs are going to represent the regular and 'seasoned' infantry, I was going to need some other soldiers to represent a more skilled and better equiped squad on either 'side' representing 'veterans' or 'elite'. I found the answer very quickly at a fleamarket, were someone sold a bucket of 70 soldiers in 10 different poses for just 50 kr, or about $ 5.5 or £ 4.3.

This Bucket was actually a licensed 'Bucket O Soldiers' from Pixar's/Disney's Toy Story movies. The figures are about 2.5" tall and a tad bigger than the regular 54mm/1:32 scale and are made of very soft plastic. Therefore they were in pretty good condition as they're made for a lot of handling, but I'm not sure if they're going to hold paint very well despite propper washing and priming before painting. The soldiers themselves are a representation of the army men from the Toy Story movies, and are based upon the M16 Army Men from Tim Mee. Many poses are exactly the same as the Tim Mee soldiers, and some others are from the movie (as the saluting Sarge and a couple of others). The 2 paratroopers were missing in action, and were not in my bucket. I did'nt mind as I was not going to use them anyway, as with some of the other not so suitable poses for wargaming. I was only going to build a 'veteran' squad of 10 men on each side, and didn't need that many figures. The little more modern look with assault rifles fitted perfectly as they are supposed to be higher skilled than the regular infantry, and assault rifles gives 2 firepoints at close range with the FUBAR-rules. These are going to have both more expertise and firepower than the regular infantry, and will fill the role of better trained and capable troops.

All of the 10 different poses in the bucket. The saluting Sarge. and the 2 soldier to the right of him are not identical to the Tim Mee poses, but the rest of the figures are.

They are pretty large

Again I wanted a generic and credible 'Green vs. Tan' approach to these figures. They also needed to go along with the earlier previewed and painted regular Infantry from Tobar, and at the same time be different enough from them to sort the 'regulars' from the new 'veterans'. This time I painted the UN-troops with khaki uniforms, again identified by their blue helmets. I've found prototype for this among both Norwegian and Swedish UN forces. For the opposing forces I did just the other way around from their regulars; Giving them olive uniforms and tan helmets and webbing. I found this suitable for both Israeli paratroopers, Egyptian troops and the Iraq republican guard. To make the assault rifles a little bit different from their UN-counterparts, I painted the butt and foregrip in a wooden color.

Note the base was too small for succesfull wargaming, so I enlarged it a bit.

Even though I washed them, primed them, painted them and sealed them, the figure to the right flakes alleready…

A larger base was also needed on these figures.

Since this bucket also included figures firing light mortars, I decided to include some support weapons to the regular infantry, and painted them like I painted the Tobar/Matchbox soldiers previously reviewed in former posts.

Building an army..... -or two

Building an army for wargames

Building an army, or two, for spesific miniature wargames might be an expencive and daunting experience. As previously posted, I've found this cheap set of 32 toy soldiers of approx 54mm size in the museumstore at the 'Norwegian Armed Forces Museum'. As I plan to use them as gamingpieces for different miniature wargames found online for free, such as FUBAR, 1BC Wargame, OMOG, Burning Plastic, Fighting Plastic and several others, I've bougt 4 sets. -Enough for 2 rifle platoons (accordingly to the norwegian structure), each consisting of 1 HQ-section, 3 rifle-sections, 1 HMG-section and 1 anti-tank-section. And the bounus; You've got figures leftover for other projects as well.

The box of 32 54mm figures from Tobar, which are nice copies of the 1/32nd scale Matchbox american WWII infantry.

Since Iv'e been planning to use them for wargaming, I needed oposing forces. It might seems like a challenge to use only one kind of figureset since they're all of the same type. These figures portrays american WWII soldiers though,but the benefit is that american surpulse equipment after WWII was spread and used in different combinations among a lot of different nations world wide for many years. I've also wanted a generic credible"Green vs. Tan" approach to my fighting forces, and did not have any spesific nation or conflict in mind for my wargaming except for it was going to be 'post war'.

One force, which has a pretty generic approach, and also used a lot of ex-US equipment was forces from different nations joining United Nations in different peacekeeping missions. They're mostly idetified by their blue helmets. I have to admit I had norwegian UN-troops in mind painting these soldiers, but their look is similar for a lot of other nation joining the UN-forces in different missions world wide as well.

The soldier to the left (behind the Bazooka soldier) is actually from the Matchbox 1:76th scale range, and was not included in their 1:32nd scale of the same set.

Now I had to find a credible generic oposing force using both M1-helmets and 'M1 rifles' (not easily recognizable on these figures), to my generic UN-troops looking exactly the same. That seemed like a thougher task, but after som searches on internet and from different Osprey publications I've found some similarities; Green-ish M1-looking-helmets and webbing over kaki-ish uniforms and rifles with wooden stock would be appropriate for postwar forces from Congo, Angola, Haitit, Israel, Syria and Egypt.

There were no figures with Light Machine Guns (LMG) in the sets, and I needed some of those to make the rifle-sections complete. So some 'figurebashing' and modifications were needed. I simply cut the tank and hose off some flamethrower-figures, and added a bipod and an ammunitionbelt (yes, I know it's fed from the wrong side). I think the LMG will pass for a M34, MG42/MG3 or some similar small machineguns.

The tankf removed from the 2 outer figures is not so obvious here as that their LMGs are feed from the wrong side. I considered to have the belt on the right side, but their left forearm was in the way.

I also wanted to add a sniper to each side, and simply just added some plastic-rodding to a kneeling rifleman. If I'm doing this again I would use a little thiker rodding next time.

Since snipers are suppose to hide, I gave these guys a little more camouflaged uniforms than their fellow Brother in arms.

Now the leftover-figures became handy; already in the cutting-prosess I got inspired and added som variations to other figures as well. A kneeling bazooka-guy got new legs from a handgrenade-figure (a kind of figure I find kind of useless for wargame purposes anyway. Who goes to war only armed With handgrenades? -Except for North Koreans during the Korean war).

A couple of standing HMG-figures might also be handy for wargaming, operating either stationary or vehicle-mounted HMGs. Agin the legs from the otherwise useless handgrenade-figure became useful.

Not looking so good by them selves, but they'll probably look better in a watchtower or on a vehicle.

Depending on what (free) rulesets to use for the wargaming, I've though that a couple of medics might be neccesary and usefull on either side. Here the again otherwise useless handgrenade-figure became usefull again as he's not armed and by simply cutting his handgrenades away.

The pose is maybenot so typical for a medic. At least he's unarmed, and gives a possebilitty to use medics in the play.

Since I was a Military Police-officer during my own service, both domestic and abroad, I wanted the possebility to add a small group of MPs to the game as well.

By now, it's not many usefull figures left in the box from those 4 sets, but probably some possebilities to play credible skirmish wargames settled somewhere in Africa, the middle east or in the caribbean.

Clone Wars?

Plastic toy soldiers, army men, greenmen, småsoldater, krigere, myrersoldater

Plastic toy soldiers, army men, greenmen, småsoldater, "krigere", "myrersoldater" or whatever you prefer to call them isn't that usual to find in regular toystores or in reatail in generel anymore. Unfortenatly (!). At least not in Norway they aren't anymore.

It was therefore a great surprise when I've found these cheaply priced boxes containing of 32 troopers  in the museumstore at the 'Norwegian Armed Forces Museum', for only kr 50,- or approx.
£ 4.4 or $ 5.6. The box contains 32 GI's in 12 different poses and an aditional carrybag.

The soldier themselves seems to be (chinese?) copies of Matchbox' old 1/32 or 54mm scale American Combat Troops (from WWII). These soldiers are distributed by Tobar Toys. The Matchbox originals were only containing 15 figures in the box, compared to these of 32 figures. All the original 1/32 Matchbox-poses seems to be there as well, except for the officer with pistol and the great coat. -Instead this set contains a figure from the Matchbox 1/76th scale American Infantry set (WWII); an rifleman leaning forward.

The plastic is a little harder than the soft plastic from the originals, and should perhaps hold paint better. It's still soft enough to bend any bent rifles etc. thou. The figures seems a little smaller/shorter than their Matchbox equivalentes, and they are maybe closer to1/35th scale than to the originals 1/32nd scale. The moldings on the figures are good, but not as crisps as the original ones. The rifle is not that clear to be a M1 Garand as with the Matchbox figures, and seems to be a more generic type.

Here are some photos for comparsion; Original Matchbox to the left and Tobar Army Troopers to the right:

Submachine guy. Maybe he's the sectionleader?

The flamethrower guy.

The Heavy Machine Gun (50. cal) guy. The loader is not incuded in any of the sets.

All in all, I think these are nice clones, a fair amount of soldiers for a reasonable price, and they are a lot better than many of the other buckets or bags of cheap armymen to be found out there.

Now I'll need to paint them.

Tour of duty in the garden

On Amazon I found a bucket of 24 big armymen in 8 different poses. I've not seen this set in Norwegian stores.

4,5" or almost 12cm tall, they're maybe a bit too big for wargaming due to fireranges etc.

Their size didn't seems too bad in comparsion With my garden railway in G/1:22.5 scale. It's narrow gauge an a german 'Heeresfeldbahn' diesel by the way.

Who really need 'garden gnomes' anymore, when you can have these superb giant figures patrolling Your perimeters?
Now they are occupying Norway's perhaps smallest garden railway.