do you play with your toy soliders?

Yes I do still play with my toy soliders. When I was little me & my Dad would shoot them down with rubber bands. We would play like it was the Normandy landings with sound. No video game couldn't mach up with type of fun.

 

I certainly did.
This idle question made me recall that as a five-year-old kid, I would go to the town market and buy cheap plastic toy soldiers. By the time I was 12, I had over 4,000 individual pieces, including tanks, fighters, choppers, trucks, apc's and artillery pieces. I had my own pocket brigade.
The problem was setting them up. As my playing collection grew, it took longer to set things up, with the bed as the mountain to be taken, a jacket on the floor hilly terrain, then a small stool as a plateau, etc.
I had a dedicated tank company, a mech one, a pure leg infantry unit, even an airmobile detachment, plus several artillery and anti-aircraft batteries.
It came to a point that it would take me nearly two hours to set things up just right and about 30 minutes or so before things are over and I have to clean up.
Come to think of it, this was better than video games because my imagination was used.
Later on, my collection expanded to include scale figure miniatures (Tamiya) and GI Joe figures from the 1960s. These figures were not for playing though but sometimes I did set a few of the fancy ones up to practice with the battered plastic veterans of my younger years. The GI Joes never figured in the set ups. They were just too tall.

 

Well I am 17y old and I just love to play with my younger brother with my Airplanes. We had such dogfight scenes, that you could almost think that these strategies are real.
USAF P-40 against IJA Zero, RAF Hawker Hurricane against Luftwaffe Bf-110, Canadian P-51B against German Me262... And bomber vs ground battles. Mainly Ju-88 vs Shermans...

 

I used to...i don't do it anymore...but i have the best memories...
I miss that kind of playing...so innocent...

 

It was always fun for me

The stories they do tell....

especially the time where i sent them parachuting without a parachute (budget cut ) from an incoming transport, and then they rolled outside the window of our 4 storied apartment, and they survived so i can crush them beneath tanks again

Sad part is, no more time and i donated all my soldiers to the local orphanage.


Men will be boys,


Regards,
TBA

 

Been playing with my K&C Market Garden set

 

I think it is absolutely pathetic to think of grown men playing with soldiers, but yes, I do. I also make low level aerial attacks with the odd allied model aircraft on my dog. She is a German shorthaired pointer so it serves her right. She started it.....

Michael

 

Some of my best childhood memories come from playing with the green and grey plastic soldiers on the brick fireplace hearth at my grandparent's house. I had hundreds of them. I used to flick the grey guys into the fire sometimes. I stopped doing that because after awhile I noticed the green guys were outnumbering the grey guys about 5 to 1. I also had a couple of buckets full of the 3 1/2 in. GI Joe figures. For me though, it was never GI Joe vs. Cobra - they were in World War II.

I don't collect toy soldiers, but over time I bought my son TONS of the same plastic guys that I had. I have lots of fun playing soldiers with him. Probably more fun than he does.

 

Every week a few of us get together and fight out battles, mainly WWII, sometimes Napoleonic, sometimes the old West. Last week we finished a Vietnam scernario, next week it maybe Warhammer or Warhammer 40K. God knows how much stuff we have between us but one of us recently had a tot up using Ebay prices and he reckons it would cost him 20,000 pounds to replace all his figures, models, and terrain it's taken him over 30 years to collect.

 

I don't play with toy soldiers, but I DO steal my son's die cast WWII airplanes, and bring them to work with me; my rationale for doing that is that they'll last longer at my work than they will at home getting played with (though that doesn't mean I don't play with them at work!).

 

you guys are probably way to young to remember Tin shoulders, plastic guys melt too easy under magnifying glass the airfix armor melted quite well I remember

 

No Erich, not true.

I do remember the tin ones. One of my bookshelves has a small army of Britains Great War British and French soldiers and artillery. They have to be there to protect the Britains farm people and animals (to their left) from all those books!

Michael

 

Play with toys !? Me ? ......




....never !

 

someone please mow the runway before this Lanc does a header, yeah rub it in Martin ...............

great atmospheric shot.

 

I posted that pic on a UK aviation forum, just saying that it was taken at Fiskerton in November '09 ( which it was ). Someone took it really seriously, saying how come the BBMF Lancaster landed at Fiskerton last winter, why hadn't the event garnered more publicity, etc.....

I felt quite embarrassed at having to say, Buzz Lightyear-style...'It's a toy....'

 

Been there done most of it. As a kid played with the green plastic soldiers, the 1/72 scale airfix guys, the plastic model naval battles and the original 12" G.I. Joes.

I got away from it until I had sons of my own. It's really hard to say no to your little boy when he begs you to play war and you've just come back from a six month deployment. Then it became easier, they just had to ask, not beg because it was fun. Good stuff. We did the Lego pirates, knights and cavalry and indians. We did the 1/72 guys (sons called them little man war guys), and the 3 3/4 GI Joes (let's play a Joe war). Well they got older and the last toy guys I got them were the Ultimate Soldier 12" figures and we had some good times. They became teenagers and it all went away, the troops went in boxes and I thought it would wait till the grandkids.



When the oldest son was getting ready to leave for bootcamp, he said "you know what I'd like to do one more time before I go? You me and Ryan play a "big Joe War". We did, had a great time but the foxholes kinda messed up the back yard. Begore he left for Iraq the same request, same results. When he was gone I discovered Dragon/DML/Did among other 12" figures and started buying them. When he got back and mentioned a "big Joe War" I broke them out better time. The next deployment to Iraq same thing, good time before, collection grew when he was gone, better when he came back. When the youngest son left for bootcamp he had the same request, we played and this time took pictures. Unfortunately, it started raining after we'd deployed a couple of platoons so the war was cut short. Now he'll be leaving for Afghanistan in a couple of weeks and one of his requests for his pre-deployment leave is the "big Joe War". It will happen and I will provide photograpic coverage to anyone interested.

A couple of pics from the last "big Joe War":

 

This is great looking! I played with my action-man soldiers ( most time how to kill my cousin´s Barbie)

Regards

Ulrich

 

I have seen this at an other Forum. Good dioramas but sometimes a bit strange
Marwencol - Home

Regards

Ulrich

 

yes, i do. the question though, is, WHO WOULDNT?!?!!?

But i dont really play war, i just line them up so the soldiers take a form of a large Square...

But, Ive made games using the soldiers!

War Checkers: Same as the original Checkers except you use soldier dudes, and if you have 3 or more radio dudes on the bord you can call in a toy tank

its soooooo fun...