News — Plastic Army Women

JoAnn Marie Ortloff, Fleet Master Chief, USN, Retired The Navy’s first female Numbered Fleet Command Master Chief when assigned to Commander, U.S. THIRD Fleet, 2009-2012. The Navy’s first female U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa Fleet Master Chief, May 2012-April 2015. The most senior enlisted active-duty female in the Navy at the time of her retirement in 2015. Branch of Service: United States Navy Rate/Rank: Fleet Master Chief, USN, Retired Dates of Service: 1982 – 2015 Birthplace: Suffern, New York Current Residence: Bullhead City, Arizona Spouse: Rich Ortloff Photos courtesy of FLTCM JoAnn Ortloff: JoAnn Marie Ortloff, Fleet Master Chief,...

Here's a way overdue and exciting update on the BMC Toys Plastic Army Women project: It's been an incredibly hectic and productive couple of months since the last blog update. The plastic injection molds went through several rounds of testing and refinement and finally arrived at the factory in Scranton a couple of weeks ago. They were tested again for pre-production and after just a small adjustment to a couple of ejector pins have been happily molding the final production figures.  Here's one of the molds installed with water lines connected and a bin of the initial test factory shots:...

There's a lot of exciting Plastic Army Women news to report. The plastic injection molds have been built and will be tested next week. This is a major milestone for the project and gets us a big step closer to final production. Testing is followed by further adjustments and refinements to the molds. This process of testing and refinements may have to be repeated a couple of times.  After all the refinements have been completed the molds get  shipped to the local factory. The factory will install the molds in a plastic injection molding machine for testing and dialing in...

After months of being sworn to secrecy, I can finally announce that Little Big Shots with Melissa McCarthy invited 7 year old Vivian Lord and her family out to California to be part of the program. The show will air on NBC this Sunday evening at 7pm Eastern (March 24th, 2020). Vivian's letter brought the Plastic Army Women project to the media's attention last summer and really helped get the project moving forward. Sean Clancy from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette most likely wrote the very first news story about Vivian's letter and has written a new article: Youngster gets her...

The new BMC Toys Rosie the Riveter figure sculpt is complete and the resin master models are scheduled to arrive in a few days. The models will be used to make the steel plastic injection tool. Here's the sculpt from several views: Rosie was an unexpected spinoff of the BMC Toys Plastic Army Women project. The sculptor, James Van Schaik, suggested making the sculpt and offering some resin figures to help promote the Plastic Army Women Kickstarter. Initially, I didn't think it was a good fit, but I ran the idea by friends and family and was quickly overruled. The...