I remember it like it was yesterday, man. No…really…I mean it this time. It truly seems like it was yesterday for me, when I, like most red-blooded American males who weren’t into showtunes and poetry, enjoyed wargames, elaborately planned and executed within the confines of our backyard. In almost all cases, these were recreations of some unknown war involving any combination of nations (real or imagined), based on what we could scare up from the bottom of our collective toy boxes. In the Claymore Defense Forces, it wasn’t uncommon to find HeMan and Battlecat fall into formation with the likes of Lando Calrissian, Cylon centurions and the true backbone of any credible modern fighting force, the ubiquitous Green Army Man.
Green Army Man was the foundation. You didn’t show up to a neighborhood war without at least 20 or 30 of these plastic warriors in your arsenal. The backyard warrior ethos dictated that any kid who showed up and tried to draw ranks without Green Army Man in his Nike box, was to be shunned…unless he was the kid who brought all of his dad’s old WWII tank models to the fight. Green Army Man were commandos, rangers, snipers, sappers, engineers and most importantly, casualties. It didn’t matter if the dude had a mortar stuck to his leg, or was in a perpetual hand-to-hand bayonet charge, Green Army Man was the shit. The Real Deal. He could swarm a foxhole full of Stormtroopers, beat the shit out of Smurfs and then lead the assault past the swingset, flank the opposition near the Strawberry Shortcake bicycle and strike deep into the enemy cinderblock bunker. And while GI JOE gets all the props for being a “real American hero”, with his flocked beard and “Kung Fu Grip”, the 1970’s Joe looked like he’d be more at home at a Village People concert than putting imaginary rounds into Stretch Armstrong’s jelly-filled guts. No…it was Green Army Man who was boots on ground, kicking the tan army’s ass all the way back to the flower beds where they effin’ belonged.