BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project
Posted by Jeff Imel on
I was recently asked a question that comes up every so often, "Do you stock any female toy soldiers?" Marx and Tim Mee offered Army Nurse figures decades ago, but I'm not aware of anything currently available, so I let the customer know we don't have anything like that in stock. Usually, that's the end of it, but this time the customer (a retired Navy Sailor) made a compelling case for why Plastic Army Women might be popular. I promised to conduct some research, and discovered there might be enough folks looking for Little Green Army Women to consider producing some.
Our initial concept for BMC Toys Plastic Army Women figure set is based more in the toy realm than historically accurate hobby figures. We would choose a few classic Plastic Army Men poses and have new sculpts made that reflect the style of the most popular plastic soldiers, but in female form. The figures would be 1:32 scale and olive drab color, so the figures would fit in with a wide variety of the plastic figures that are already in several generations of toy boxes. Here are some concept sketches by artist Tina Imel:
The sketches are a first impression of what we think customers would like, based upon a few requests, some quick research, and a bit of gut instinct. We could be wrong, so here's where you come in: Subscribe to the BMC Toys Plastic Army Woman Project newsletter to let us know you are interested in a set of female plastic soldiers. There is also a comments section in the email subscription form, so you can tell us exactly what you would like this product to be. Let us know if we're on the right track, or if we're way off our plastic bases. If there are enough confirmed subscribers, we'll continue to develop the project, and possibly run a crowdfunding campaign to get these soldiers deployed sooner rather than later. Tanks' for your help:
June 28, 2018 Update: The initial response to this project and the concept sketches is very positive. The most common request has been for regulation hairstyles, so I'm going to commission some head study drawings to work on this issue.
August 10, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #1
August 30, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #2 (IT'S HAPPENING!)
September 9, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #3
October 20, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #4
November 8, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #5
November 28, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #6 and Happy Tanksgiving!
December 24, 2019: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #7 and Merry Christmas!
March 8, 2020: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #8
May 22, 2020: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #9
May 22, 2020: BMC Toys: Plastic Army Women Project: Update #10
Great idea – long overdue & glad.simeone is finally doing this! I served 31 years in the Army.
I would like to see models with short hair and m16s.
This is great! These seem reminiscent of the classic Army Soldiers. What about making them after today’s female Soldiers? They’d be historically accurate and start a new classic line.
Yay!! Can’t wait! Had these soldiers positioned all over the house when I was a little girl. The uniforms should be the same as the male version. And like the military, be sure to integrate about 20% into the overall bag of soldiers. 😊
Use correct weapon.
All women who fired weapons started with the M16A1…I was The weapon in the sketch is an M1 used prior to Vietnam and early Vietnam. My M16A1 was made by Mattel toys…check out the history of the contracts for them. Use AR15 as model for the women’s firearm to get it almost right..that would be a compromise. A .556 is close (it is the M16 kind but also used in the 306…the 223 is too small.