>>8629102Cont.
As I got older and acquired more armies it felt like pose counts kept increasing, adding very specialized ones that weren't always useful (Matchbox US GIs notably). Then came the era of the mass-cloning of two specific sets: Airfix British Paras and Timmee Vietnam War troops. At first this was great, army men were everywhere and both sets are pretty good ones. Without the same treatment for their enemies though they soon overwhelmed the market. Since my first soldiers weren't even green I wasn't of the the different colors = different armies camp, rather I based it off the poses themselves first, colors second if necessary.
Eventually it did become more necessary as there was a fondness for releasing those Matchbox US GIs in packages of three different colors (green, grey and tan/yellow), each with their own flag (green was USA, grey could be Germany or France, yellow was Japan). This was and continues in limited fashion to be the basis of some of my armies (grey Matchbox GIs are French, yellow are Japanese). I have another set of American soldiers (probably Airfix) that as a kid I designated as Iraqis. The first Gulf War had just happened and my armies needed more enemies. The set didn't have an officer pose so I arbitrarily designated one soldier as being Saddam Hussein heh, with a little splash of whiteout on one leg to tell him apart.
Getting back to the British Paras, that choice of set to copy and clone ad nauseum was perhaps the most unfortunate thing to happen to army men. The set on its own merits isn't terrible (see
>>8536512) but for mass production it's a terrible choice. They're great for small actions, just like their real-life inspiration, but for massive battles there's just too high a proportion of less useful poses to the fighting ones.
