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Yeah, I know I'm old enough now to call myself a toy
collector. Saturday morning visits to Toys R Us.
Marauding down the action figure section on every trip to
Wal-Mart. In the past dozen years, I've seen a good
number of the play things I remember fondly from my childhood
return to toy shelves. "Star Wars" made a return to the big
screen and brought with it a number of figures that we only
dreamed about as kids. Masters of the Universe came back for
a short period of time. Transformers was re-introduced in an
action packed summer blockbuster. GI Joe is even getting his
turn on the big screen next year.
 However,
there is a childhood soldier that appears to be heading towards
extinction. The little green army man. Us older folks
will remember them. Whether they came in a bucket, a plastic
bag, or some sort of playmat and fortress set from Sears, we all
had them. And we all played with them. The younger
folks have probably turned their noses up at the solid color
military dudes in the dollar store. Some kids probably
thought they were only birthday cake decorations.
And that's the part that bothers me. Back
in the day, it didn't matter the green guys didn't belong to a
particular license or brand. Truth of the matter was the
green army was always the heroes from what ever World War II movie
was showing on TV on Saturday afternoon. They were the Dirty
Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, and a number of others fighting men.
When you read about WWII in history books in grade school, these
guys brought it to life.
 Don't
get me wrong. I love GI Joe. In both the large and
small size, Joe will always have a special place in my collection.
But doesn't he owe something to the little green boys?
Remember GI Joe started before the comic book
and animated series got to most of us. In some regards he's
an extension of the green army guy. Only he's got a name.
If you think about most of the original GI Joes
in the Real American Hero line, they had an Green Army Guy
relative. Bazooka was obviously a bazooka soldier.
Short Fuze was a mortar trooper. Hawk was a leader.
Breaker was a radio guy. Grunt is the most obvious generic
soldier.
Much like army men, my first Joes went on
missions with no preconceptions of Cobra or their character's
personalities. How many action figure lines today can
boast that? It seems like the characters have to exist in
some other media before they find their way to toy shelves these
days.
 One
of the cool things about army men though, was you could have a lot
of them. I remember being at a friend's house as a kid and I
bet he had enough for at least 50 pieces per side. And some
tanks and trucks in addition. It really didn't matter whose
house it was or if it was at school, everyone knew there
were some basic rules an order to playing army men.
A normal battle would start out for us
with a big pile in the middle of the floor. Everybody would
take turns picking soldiers until they were gone. Then you
would slowly and meticulously place all your soldiers. Each
person would then get one shot until somebody won.
Now, there were always discussions about how
grenades would take out more than one guy. Or how the guy
hiding behind the candle couldn't be hit because he was behind
cover. That was just the fun of it. I remember one of
my buddies always liked to put soldiers in potted plants.
This was the general way the unspoken rules
worked in our little group. At one point however I got a new
set of "rules". A friend of my parents were watching me at
my parent's house. He was a pretty cool guy. He filled
gum ball machines part time, and well, that's a story for another
day.
 Anyway,
what he came up with involved a couple of dice from a Yahtzee
game and piece of paper. Each type of soldier was assigned a
particular dice roll. Each of us would take a turn with the
dice. We'd pick one of the guys on the other side of the
type rolled and knock them over. This would go on until one
side was completely knocked over. I remember the guy laying
on his belly was two ones on the dice because he was hard to hit.
Now, I don't remember who won or who lost.
But I do remember it was fun. He didn't need to know who
Boba Fett was or what a Shogun Warrior did. We just both
understood the game.
Not bad for a toy soldier who has no
articulation, huh? Historical accuracy? Nope we didn't
need that. Detailed sculpt was not a requirement either.
Just add a little imagination and little green army, and boys of all
ages could pass the time together.
So, why don't you go dust off those green army
men of yours? I bet there's a little boy out there that
would love to battle it out for supremacy of the living room
carpet.
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