The Death of the Toy Soldier

Back in the day, when I was but a youngster there was nothing better than than setting up huge armies of OO scale plastic soldiers and waging crazy warfare with a marble or other suitable artillery. Where did all these toy soldiers go? My preferred brand was Airfix, who had their financial problems, but if the demand was still there why didn't someone rush in to fill the vacuum? I wish I knew. These days toys are as much a fashion item as trainers (and I don't understand that either) and the days of the banker toy are almost gone. By banker toy I mean a toy that was a good gift regardless of the current fads. I'm not going to pretend that there weren't fad toys when I was young, but they weren't so all consuming. You could always fall back on a banker, namely (for me anyway), Lego, Airfix models, Airfix toy soldiers, or toy cars. Of these only Lego and toy cars still persist to any great degree and even then Lego is vastly different, consisitng now of kits designed to make pretty much the model you see on the box and nothing else.

Fad toys now rule the roost. Toy store shelves are now only just filled with "Batman Begins" toys, which will soon be discounted to make way for Fantastic 4 toys. My son's birthday is in June so he has missed most of these toys as potential birthday presents and I can be pretty certain that by Christmas they will have been swept from store shelves to be replaced with something else.

Of course it is not just about fad toys, there seems to be a move away from the kind of traditionally violent boy toys that my youth was filled with. The second world war was over 60 years ago, so should we still take delight in slaying hordes of little plastic Germans? Yup. We sure should. I liked playing with my Waterloo Assault Set. It didn't matter that Waterloo was 155 years before I was born. Without wanting to disappear up my own arse, this kind of play teaches imagination and creativity. They may be motionless plastic soldiers spread across your bedroom floor, but in your mind, they are fighting their way across treacherous battlefields, defining heroism and sacrifice. Surely this kind of play is way better for kids than using their Fantastic 4 toys to recreate scenes from the movie like little automatons?

Of course, if making a line of toy soldiers would be commercial suicide, what should take their place? Little plastic suicide bombers, insurgents (whatever they are) and car bomb plastic kits? I'm joking of course. We have just finishing celbraating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. If there was ever a better time to launch a line of WW2 toys osldiers I don't know what it is. Maybe it is just nostalgia mixed with being thoroughly sick of political correctness applied to children's toys, but I really don't see the problem with toy soldiers and I certainly don't understand why they went out of favour. I could continue this rant to include toy guns but it is Saturday night I want to park my ass on the sofa.