>>8278984Most of the time it's largely arbitrary, with maybe a few pre-determined plot points. As for vehicles, most of mine were acquired throughout my lifetime when army men were still widely available in every other store and mom-and-pop dollar stores hadn't been replaced by soulless chains. As an added bonus I spent a good chunk of my childhood in a small European nation where they were still very much a popular toy, got a lot of my stuff from flea market finds.
>>8279859The closest thing I've seen to what you're describing were bags of modified Timmee Vietnam War-era soldiers that were pretty widespread for a while about 8-10 years ago. They were either single army bags (green or tan) or mixed, and would come with a fistful of soldiers, a tank, barbed wire, a defensive emplacement, a flag and a couple trees. Some variants also included a plastic rock or too, can't remember any that had jets but larger buckets of the same armies would have them, helicopter gunships as well. Pic related is the most recent iteration of such a bucket I've seen, though they seemed to be on their way out when I got them.
As mentioned by others above, Timmee is probably your best bet for one color aesthetic, but there's others out there for sure (see this anon
>>8265524).
