Review: BMC Army Camp Equipment set

The Army Camp Equipment set by BMC is a reissue of the Marx originals. These were included in many of the Marx playsets. They were also copied by Payton and Tim Mee. The set includes three tents, two sets of stacked rifles, garbage cans, a recoilless rifle (looks to be the 75mm M20), a Bazooka, a .50 caliber machine gun, and an oversize water-cooled machine gun. A nice assortment of accessories for army men.

The tents and stacked rifles make for a nice bivouac scene. The heavier weapons have other uses. For instance, the Shambattle games call for each side having two machine guns and a cannon. One set of the Camp Equipment arms one side! The set also works well for OMOG, providing heavy weapons and camp accessories. They make excellent markers for battle games.

The .50 caliber machine gun is pretty good for a toy. Though the tripod is not realistic, the gun itself is surprising. The carrying handle on the barrel and the sight at as they should be. (If you have ever fired one of these weapons, you know what I mean.)

The recoilless rifle can be used “as is” or mounted on a vehicle. With more range and accuracy than a bazooka. the recoilless rifle was very popular with the troops.

I took one picture of the Camp Equipment with the recently-released BMC World war II soldiers. They look good together.

You can get the BMC Army Camp Equipment here  https://victorybuy.com/collections/bmc-toys

OMOG can be downloaded here: http://www.thortrains.net/milihistriot/downloads.html

and Here: http://www.thortrains.net/armymen/sandygme.htm

Review Part II - BMC D-Day Soldiers

Now we come to the second part of this review:

The BMC D-Day Playset comes with plenty of soldiers representing three armies: USA in olive drab, Germany in gray,  and Great Britain in light tan. Figures are in the 54mm to 60mm range. I first came across these figures about 20 years ago when I bought the original D-Day Playset at Toys R Us.

Here are the troops by country:

24 American Infantrymen with Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Junior

22 Germans (with Rommel figure)

12 British including a Scot playing bagpipes

That is a total of 58 figures. Indeed, a good amount of men for a playset this size. Troops also have enough heavy weapons. The Germans have two mortar crews and a couple of machine-gun teams. US forces have a couple of heavy machine-guns, bazookas. flamethrowers, BARs and mortar men. Granted, the bazooka man is lying down dead. The British have a BAR gunner

US Soldiers: Machine Gunner, BAR gunner, grenade thrower

One thing about the current batch of soldiers is that the plastic is a bit stiff. I am surprised only one rifle was broken in transit.

There is a good assortment of poses. One glaring problem stands outs. The sculpting ranges from mediocre to poor

US GIs: bazooka man (dead?_, kneeling BAR gunner. kneeling rifleman

Rifleman, casualty, mortar and mortar man, officer

General Teddy Roosevelt Junior pointing with stick, machine-gun loader, flamethrower operator (prone)

Generic mortars for US and German crews

I have had or seen most Army Men since Ajax and Plasticraft. Only a few feet from where I sit are bags of Tim Mee M16 troops, Lido World War II type infantry and a bag of the BMC Iwo Jima Marines and Japanese. To be honest, the D-Day troops are some of the most awkward sculpts I have ever seen. Immediately noticeable are the ill-fitting helmets.

German rifleman, grenade thrower, kneeling with submachine gun

German mortar men

German casualty, General Rommel (resembles like the Matchbox figure - best sculpt in the set)

German casualty, machine gunner and loader

Some of the figures could be improved by a head-swap. There is a real mixed bag when it comes ot quality among these figures.

Jeff Imel, BMC’s current owner, told me he will continue to produce these figures. Having new molds made would be too expensive.  Perhaps there is someway the existing molds could be altered to mitigate the worst of the sculpting. 

British Infantry: 3 riflemen and Bren gunner. Note the short rifles.

Rifleman, officer with Thompson submachine gun, Scot with bagpipes. 

You can get the D-Day playset through Amazon.com or BMC Toys' website. If the set is temporarily out of stock, you can usually by components of it separately.

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Review: Tim Mee Cyan Blue and Rust Brown soldiers

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, Tim Mee cast some of their “M16" soldiers in neon colors. There was neon pink, neon blue, neon yellow, neon green. I never understood why. By the time those soldiers came out, I was already into the smaller scale Airfix wargame figures, Tamiya kits and metal military miniatures.

Recently, Jeff Imel of Victorybuy has had these Tim Mee soldiers reissued. The first set was issued in green and tan. Since then, he has them done in grey, black, a dark blue, light green, dark green, red and yellow.  The latest sets are done in rust brown and cyan blue. In fact, the Blue ones are also included in the latest recast of the Tim Mee C130 gunship. I guess they are supposed to be Air Force guys.

I like the Tim Mee M16 guys. They are well-sculpted in action poses, are realistic enough, and have a good assortment of weapons and equipment. When I worked out the game of OMOG Advanced, they were one of the toy soldier sets I used as a reference. In fact, I worked to accommodate everything from a World War II era rifle squad to a modern one and anything in between. The Tim Mee M16 guys had a few things that made them ideal for this. Along with the set of poses and weapons, they are also the most common set of army men.  The Tim Mee figures have been cast, recast, reproduced, copied and cloned for almost 50 years. Figures from original molds are available, as are copies and clones from China and elsewhere. One figure has disappeared from the set: the marching guy. And the guy who used to be throwing a grenade is now waving the men onward. No problem. There is an officer with pistol, mortar man with crude 60mm mortar, flamethrower man, bazooka man (3.5" rocket launcher), radioman, minesweeper man, a light machine gunner and five riflemen. For OMOG, a squad can have its officer, riflemen, squad machine gun and choice of heavy weapons.

But Cyan? Rust? Or for that matter, Red, Yellow, Orange?

For toy soldier games, the different colors are useful. Camouflage is not a matter on small tabletop games, as both players can see each others troops. Different colors allows for different sides. A game with four armies on the table is easier to play if figures are distinguished by their color. That is, for people who are not going to paint their soldiers. Paint? All one needs do is get a bag and open them.

One could use the cyan troops as air force or a naval landing party. Dark blue sets could be SWAT teams.

The Tim Mee M16 guys are a great set for toy soldier games. You can easily put together a rifle squad plus supporting elements of your choice: mortar team, antitank squad, engineer section (flamethrower and minesweeper). The only missing thing from those times is a grenade launcher, either the old M79 or later M203 over-and-under. No problem, Either use one of the other poses as the grenade launcher or borrow the tear gas launcher man from the Tim Mee SWAT team / tactical troops.

As for collectors, Tim Mee reissues have sweetened the pot with a variety of different colors and reissues. Collect them all!


Here’s some toy soldier history for you:

Back in 1998, my friend’s nephew had some of the Tim Mee M16 guys. He called them “old-fashioned soldiers.” To my friend and I, they were modern troops. They are pretty much how we looked when we were in the Army.  Being called “old-fashioned”was a shock, but it was true. We looked very different from our counterparts in the 90s and beyond. That was what led to my making the Army Men Homepage. It started as a joke. And it evolved into a service for the toy soldier hobby.

Tim Mee soldier with experimental machine-gun

There are anomalies in the Tim Mee set. More common infantry antitank weapons of the time
were the M72 LAW and the 89mm Recoilless Rifle. Then there is that machine gun. The actual squad machine gun of the time was the M60, a belt-fed model based on the German MG42. The Tim Mee machine gun was an experimental type that the Army was considering for Jungle warfare. It looked like a contender, but was eventually rejected. Tim Mee jumped the gun on this one. Much the same happened to Herald, Timpo, Crescent and Lone Star of Britain when the British Army was considering a bullpup weapon in the 1950s. it looked like a sure thing, so the toymakers used it for their toy soldiers. They wanted to be modern and “state o the art.”  Unfortunately, the bullpup was rejected because of NATO compatibility issues. Too late! The molds were already made and the bullpup had remained ever since.

Herald Brand British Soldiers with "Bullpup" rifle

You can buy the Cyan Blue and Rust soldiers here:

https://www.amazon.com/TimMee-PLASTIC-ARMY-MEN-Soldier/dp/B01N6JJB5T/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1493398190&sr=8-8&keywords=victorybuy+blue


You can download OMOG Advanced Skirmish Game Runes here:

http://www.thortrains.net/armymen/OMOG-advanced-game-2015.pdf

http://www.thortrains.net/downloads/OMOG-advanced-game-2015.pdf