Kinda curious about non Americans or maybe people that didn't play army stuff as kids. It seems like so many of the toys I had were either little army guys or guns or something, and it was like this at other kid's houses.
Does this happen all over? Currently? I feel like I still get nerf or nothin for some nephews, so not army but still somewhat adjacent.
Army Men, as in the little plastic injection-molded figurines of soldiers, are pretty universal in the USA, they even made multiple video games about them. I've also seen in person toy guns that were modeled very directly on real guns. I think the one I saw was based on like an AR-15, you pulled the trigger and it lit up an LED at the end of the barrel and played a gun sound over cheap ass speakers. It wasn't based on like an M16, looked much more like the kind you'd find in a gun store.
Damn they still sell those? I remember thinking as a kid in the 90s how outdated the little green army guy designs were. They all looked like WWII US infantry with WWII era weapons. I'm guessing they had like 5 molds back in the 40s and have been using them ever since.
Usually the big sets had an equal assortment of light tan army guys. It was kind of amusing because they had the same designs and weapons as the green ones. Even the army guy manufacturers knew that the US military usually only fights armies it used to supply arms to.
Every now and then you'd get a figure with a deformed head or a limb that didn't mold completely. I'd pretend those were battle casualties.
We didn't consider them outdated because World War 2 was still borderline "The War"