Star Wars Miniatures:
Inexpensive Plastic Toys

Dollar stores are full of cheap plastic toys made in China, sometimes deliberately copying designs from popular movies. A few of these have the right scale and level of detail to fit in with the Star Wars miniatures. All some of them need is a little flash trimmed off and a good paint job to disguise their lowly origins.

These 'Soldier Force' figures (right, below) sold for only 99 cents per pack, including 4 different troops and a simple vehicle (choice of helicopter, undersized X-wing style plane, or wheeled buggy with 2 guns). The troops are almost exactly the same scale as the Star Wars miniatures (see WEG Rebel commando below for scale). They are wearing light body armor and closed helmets with large visors, and three have backpacks. Two carry rifles, one has a heavy weapon, and one has a small rifle or large pistol.

Caveats: The soldiers were cast in a soft, flexible plastic that would require some special care in repainting. The original paint jobs are crude, picking out only the boots, gloves, visors, and guns. Because of the soft material some details may be bent and figures may not stand straight, and fixing this might require adding some rigid reinforcement.

On the plus side: 99 cents gets you a commando squad and a vehicle that can be modified for use or parked on the table as an objective or obstacle. There is a surprising amount of detail on the figures including belt pouches, pockets on the fatigues, and little fiddly bits on guns and backpacks. If you only want your figures to be painted sufficiently to serve as gaming pieces, then you could do worse than to use these as-is straight out of the pack.

The light body armor easily could be hidden with the right paint job, but I suspect that someone could turn these figures into a Mandalorian army with a little effort by reshaping the helmets slightly and painting the bodies to emphasize the armor and backpacks.

I have seen figures cast from the same molds packaged in large playsets with some nicely detailed 25mm scale vehicles, and in small packs with a wind-up walking imitation Godzilla toy.

Update 4-3-00: I have identified these 'Soldier Force' figures as copies of Galoob's Starship Troopers Action Fleet scale poseable figures. Identical looking figures were labeled as specific characters from the films and were packed with Galoob's vehicle and bug toy sets. That explains the exact match in scale and relatively detailed sculpting for such cheap toys. I do not know whether these nonposeable soft versions were produced with permission or not.
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This 'Star Attack Jet & Warrior Playset' (left) is packed on a card showing the toys in action beneath the looming head of Not Darth Vader, battling in the docking bay of the Not Death Star, accompanied by a marching file of Not Imperial stormtroopers. Each pack sold for only $1.99 and included a flying vehicle, a wind-up 2-legged walker, and 2 warrior robots, all reasonably close in scale to the Star Wars miniatures (below).

Despite the shameless knock-off card art and the garish plastic colors, there is a lot of finely sculpted detail in the vehicles. With a little modification and a grey or brown paint job the flyers could be parked next to some Star Wars Action Fleet vehicles to create a big docking bay or landing pad display. The walkers should make excellent large AT-PTs once the wind-up sticks are cut off, the top platforms removed, and a few gaps are filled. Even the 2 war droid figures are the correct scale to be based and repainted, though they are a softer plastic.

This wind-up walker is similar in size to those shown above. With the oversized tool arms removed it also would make a convincing AT-PT. It was a 5 cent garage sale find:

That's 8 troops, 4 war droids, 3 AT-PTs, 3 flyers and a buggy to modify or park on the table, all for a total cost of $6.01.

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