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.
The Valorians are basic humans. Questar is their leader, a very brave and considering leader. Other notable Valorians are Turret (an inventor), Gunner (tested warrior), Serena (healer), and Youngstar young guy with lots of confidence).
I see there's not limits to the joestar family legacy
army figurines as toys are definitely a thing in all west europe, and due to their cultural hegemony i expect quite widespread
i have just confirmed the USSR had them too which was probably the best bet for any country taking an centralized effort against militarism for kids
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 I remember thinking as a kid in the 90s how outdated the little green army guy designs were.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We didn't consider them outdated because World War 2 was still borderline "The War"
I see way more superhero and anime toys than army toys these days in Colombia
Gotta train those mayo boys early that violence is the solution to problems
That's why army "men" are so wildly popular
this just reminded me of being maybe 11 or 12 years old. very much a child of late cold war action slop and burgerland bullshit.
in my english class, one of the exercises we did involved "continuation stories" where we would all get out a piece of paper + pencil, and the instructor would give us 5 minutes and we would have to write some part of a story with a prompt like "introduce a character" or "something unexpected happens". super broad and basic. then we had to hand the paper back to the person behind us and take the one being handed to us from up front. then we would get a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the story thus far, and then get 5 minutes to continue it. this would repeat a few times until maybe 4-5 people had created a story, and then each person would read aloud the entire story they had.
i distinctly remember more than one occasion where some normal ass story would be occurring ("the grandmother was sitting on a porch enjoying a sunset and heard a kitten meowing.") when it would suddenly become an 80s action movie, like "a black Mercedes pulls up with four armed men quickly exiting the vehicle carrying Uzis. grandma jumped back through the window and grabbed her shotgun. the cabin was riddled with bullets as grandma began loading the shotgun while laying against the wall."). completely out of control plot jumps. that would revert to something else, like grandma fled the action and jumped on a bus, grabbing the cat. or whatever. the final products were always a mess.
i wish i still had some of that b.s., because i bet they would be great material for a surreal short movie. or just hysterical to read through. i was definitely not the only young guy in class who watched way too many action movies with gunplay at that age.
That sounds like a fantastic exercise and wish it was standard lol
Just a bunch of kids trying to make eachother laugh.
that sounds really fun honestly. kinda wish my english teacher had done stuff like that.
lol no, not at all. I played with mostly legos, airplane toys (civilian, not fighter jets), fire trucks, and shit ton of teenage mutant ninja turtle stuff.
The little plastic army men I had as a kid were distinctly WW2-flavoured, or maybe that was something I projected onto them since the colours were gray and tan, though I do seem to remember them wearing WW2-style German helmets. One of the bags even came with flags for each team, one was :germany-cool: and the other :ukkk:
Guess they didn't want to put the Nazi flag on children's toys :michael-laugh:
i had a bunch of army guys and then later as i became older and more of a hyper nerd i developed rulesets and made a tactical wargame to use them in.
A wide variety of guns, robots and cars that all shout Fire fire
