A is for Army Gear

The Battle Squadfigures we looked at the other day were (along with their Star Wars 'Action Fleet' brethren and the Starship Troopers/Expanders lines) seem to owe their ancestry to these chaps, who were The first of the little chaps from Galoob as far as I know.

The original figures are in a hard polystyrene (or polypropylene?) with a stab-and-hope paint-job consisting of blobs of flesh and camouflage along with weapons being painted in. The upper image shows the body poses of the bad-guys (in grey) and the good guys in green, there being two duplicates, although this is only my sample and there may be other grey poses/duplicates?

The lower image shows the leg poses of both, I know there are grey versions of the kneeling guy in grey, so again this is only a guide and not definitive, although it's obvious from online images that the greens do - consistently - get better pose variety (per set) than the grey.

So far I have found them in the hard, painted plastic (left), unpainted in the same plastic (middle, with a green version of the bad guy) and in a softer vinyl/PVC, also unpainted (right). The unpainted ones seem to be from a second line Secret Army Supplies ('SAS' geddit!), but there's an end-of-line 'can't be bothered to paint them' look to the figures so they may well also be from foreign-market/other end-user sets - Ideal, Gig or someone like that?

 

The problem with these is getting the little plug-on PVC rubber bases to make them stand-up. This was sorted on the later decendents with most getting better bases, although the tiny bases for the Action Fleet and Battle Squad being not much better than no base, but the Starship Troopers and Expanders both getting proper bases.

More here with checklist