Marx's Government Issues

As time permits, I'll take a fond glance back at Marx's olive drab heroes, who, '72 Dolphins-like, passed through the entire season of my boyhood without a single defeat. On carpet or staircase and in garden or sandbox, these troops achieved a career win-loss record of something like 1,459-0 against both the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich.  In terms of pure fighting potential, Marx's G.I. molds yielded more killers than its German crop - including a machine gunner, bazooka man, knife fighter, prone B.A.R man, etc. But they also produced a wide variety of soldiers who weren't strictly (or even remotely) poised to mete out instant death to America's plastic enemies. The leader of Marx's G.I.s can be seen at right. Likely a captain, he mustered in with Basil Duke's Corps D' Elite in the mid-'70s, in The Guns of Navarone playset. "C'mon, men! Follow me! We've got to get off this #@$&* beach!!!" he yells. I was always particular to this fellow; I like his gesturing arm and the fact that his helmet's chin straps are realistically flapping away from his head. Plus, the pose in its entirety radiates "Leader." Too bad, though, that our captain's head couldn't have been turned more to the front, so that he looks directly at whatever he was about to empty the magazine of his under-sized .45 "Model '11" into.