Hey, I'm having fun today! I received several packages in the mail for my e-bay wins from last week. I bought a bunch of 21st Century Toys Modern Soldiers uniform sets. These sets are bad-a$$. 21C doesn't make them anymore, so the supply is dwindling rapidly. They're around, just hard to find. 21C missed the boat when they stopped making these very cool items for 12 inch action figures. They were intended for use with 21C's action figure, called a SSAM, (for Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine,) but the sets fit GI Joe and several of the other toy company's figures, too.

These sets represent the Woodland camouflage battle dress utility uniforms that emerged in the Army after I left in the late 70's. They came into service during the 80's for general issue to the troops. The US Army didn't much go in for cammie uniforms. The Army did experiment with them, but they weren't real happy with the patterns, as opposed to, say, the German Army in World War 2, which had scads of different camouflage schemes for each branch of the service as well as different theaters of operations.

The US Army has lost it's conservatism and has issued tons of cammie uniforms to it's troops. The other US services have followed suit and developed and issued numerous different uniform sets to their troops as well. Generally, they are desert-toned uniforms which I positively abhor. I got a bad thing about the desert--totally irrational, I know, but I can't help it. I like GREEN. I liked the older Army Olive Drab Green and I like the Woodland scheme green. Desert colors are BEIGE!

Beige is fine for living rooms and doctors' offices. I don't mind wearing beige trousers once in a while and during the summer season. But, BEIGE as a regular color for work clothes? No thanks. Thank you, Lord, for holding Viet Nam in a jungly green environment. Well, I don't mean thanks for having a WAR, but...well, you know what I mean about green. I hope.

Anyway...in the upper left I hope you can see an older photo of one of these neat Woodland Cammie uniform sets on one of my troops. It'll give you an idea of what I'm ranting about if you don't already know. I'll get around to publishing more up-to-date photos of the troops once I get the hang of running this blog. Hopefully, there will be many pix of the troops once they are generally ready to go for back-yard combat manoevers and such.

Now, just to clarify, that fig in the upper corner...he's wearing a 21C Woodland cammie outfit with boots from one of the sets. The rest of his gear is by other manufacturers. Since it IS an older fig, I don't remember all what I used on him. The figure itself, is from Lanard, which makes lower-end figures. Lanard figs are about half-a-notch below the "Classic" Hasbro Joe figs for articulation. For instance, this guy's feet doesn't have rotational articulation--the ankles only move front-to-rear, NOT side-by-side. That's not quite so good, ya know? Makes it hard to pose him naturally. But, it's what I had to work with at the time. His beret is an older Hasbro beret from back in the mid-90's. His holster and pistol, neck-scarf and sunglasses are Soldiers of the World, (So/tW,) the pistol belt is, I think, also from 21C, but from a WW 2 German soldier.

The over-all effect I was going for with this guy was to make a "mini-me." Many guys and ladies in this hobby, at some time or another, try to make a 1/6th scale Joe replica of themselves, usually just for "grins." This was one of the only figs at the time that had a beard, so this is also one of my first and only attempts at painting a Joe fig. Yah, I have a beard and long hair, too. I was NOT terribly successful with painting because my hair is more white that grey, but this fig DOES convey some of "me," in case you're wondering about that--I can't imagine too many people reading this might be.

I have changed some of his accoutrements to reflect some improvement of the figure, but I just can't get inspired to change the paint job on this guy to more accurately portray "the real me."