Jul 3rd, 2007
Plastic Army Men
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a bucket of green army men? You know, those teeny tiny 1-2 inch tall green army men in various combat poses standing on those little plastic platforms. (The army men are one of my favorite parts of Toy Story, btw.) My son decided he wanted an Army theme for his birthday party, which is just fine with me. We’ve got a heavily wooded yard, so we figure the boys can play capture the flag and run around in the trees with their little plastic army hats on. We also got this fun pinata shaped like an Army tank. The great idea that the hubby and I had was to fill the pinata with little green army men. So we went to Target, absolutely positive that we’d walk to the toy section, grab a bucket of green army men, and be on our way. Much to our surprise, there was no bucket of green army men. There wasn’t even a teeny tiny bag of green army men! So off to Walmart we went. Again, disappointment.
We were absolutely flabbergasted. Really? No bucket of plastic green army men? “How can this be” we thought?! Back in the day, we could walk 2 blocks to the tiny local grocery store and buy a bag of green army men for a penny! They were EVERYWHERE! Apparently that is not the case anymore. I figured that one of the stores would have them online, so I get online Monday morning and go to Walmart.com. I type in army men and come up with all kinds of movies, video games, even books - but not one single toy! Really?! Off to Target.com and Toysrus.com with the same results. Who woulda though getting a bucket of green army men would be so tough! I even tried Oriental Trading Company - they’ve got tons of crap and an entire section devoted to an army birthday party - they HAVE to have a bucket of green army men! Nope . . . but hey, they do have a 48 pack of green BENDABLE army men. Oh, and did you know that there are 12 items in a dozen? I’m totally serious . . . Oriental Trading Company said so . . . over and over and over. “4 dozen per lot. 12 items per dozen.” I decided to “keep that in mind” as my kids say when they can’t decide which “thing” they want to choose.
I finally give in and google “green army men” - well, you can only imagine what kind of results I got for that! Not the kind of stuff I really wanted coming up on my computer at work. Next I tried army men toys. BINGO! Turns out, there’s actually a Web site called plastic-army-men.com. Who knew?! I also learned that you have many many choices when choosing your plastic army men. You can get men from all the different wars! Really, I just want a package of about 100 plastic green army men - I really don’t care what they’re wearing. I found the 100 green army men package that I was looking for, but the thing is, the company is in Canada. I am not. While I could get a gazillion green army men for $15, the shipping was also $15! Sorry, but not paying $30 for some green army men that had a 2-4 week shipping average and may not make it for the party. I was about ready to give up and fill the pinata with candy (ICK!), then decided to head to eBay, where I of course found tons of auctions for huge lots of plastic army men with all the trimmings. Again, excellent prices - buy now and for only $20 you get over 500 green army men, tanks, and whatever else you might ever want to accessorize them. Oh, and they are BRAND NEW too! Of course, shipping will cost you $20, but that’s OK, cuz look - you’re getting all these cool brand new army men for a mere $20!!! Um, no thank you. So I tried Google one more time. This time I tried plastic army men. Apparently THAT was the magic phrase. I got 5 whole sites this time to try, and I was happy as a clam when one of them, http://www.backyardartillery.com, offered me 100 plastic army men (I got to choose green or tan!) for $6.99 and only wanted to charge me $6 in shipping. And get this, the order will be here in 5 days!
So, here’s to hoping you have GIRLS, because they are much less likely to request little plastic army men for a birthday party. But if you do have boys, you now know exactly what to do and what NOT to do to find those darling little plastic green army men.
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[...] My son loves to go to the Dollar Store. He thinks it’s the greatest place on Earth! Keira, she could care less . . . she’ll take her dollar and dime out of her piggy bank, and usually ends up getting something to color. But Jason, he could spend hours in that place just choosing the right thing - then getting home and wondering why it broke after a couple weeks, or why the arrow doesn’t shoot very far . . . I have to keep telling him that the stuff is $1 and it isn’t meant to last forever. But, he keeps wanting to go back. So Dan and Uncle Scott took the kids to the Dollar Store this past Saturday. And guess what they came home with (besides a coloring poster and markers and a bow and arrow). Plastic Army Men. The friggin’ Dollar Store has plastic army men. [...]
I Just google searched army men because i had the same problem and i found this site lol
HAHAHAHA!!! Welcome
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[...] It’s only a week late, but I’ve finally gotten around to downloading pictures from Jason’s birthday party. What fun we had! The kids had a lot of fun running around in army gear, rescuing the kidnapped cake by finding clues around the yard, and rescuing the wounded soldiers. Of course a pinata is always a must, but I think this is the last year for Jason - they can hit too hard and not everyone gets a chance! That’s why this year we played a little joke and made them all take a turn hitting it with a pretzel stick - much to my surprise they actually broke it - and out came the gazillion plastic army men [...]