Military Figures
249 sixth-scale figures across 15 manufacturers
The military shelf holds the soldiers, sailors, pilots and police units that have no film behind them, only history and a uniform. Here the loadout is the character. Each figure stands for a real unit, a real war or a real operation, and it is judged by how faithfully it gets there.
It is also where twelve-inch figures began. In 1964 Hasbro released G.I. Joe, the first fully articulated action figure, an American serviceman about a foot tall, and that height became the hobby's yardstick (the [G.I. Joe](/franchise/gi-joe) shelf has the rest of that story). When the format came back in the 1990s for adult collectors, makers such as 21st Century Toys, Dragon and BBi built their reputations on realistic uniforms and gear. Hot Toys' first release, in 2000, was a US Navy F-14 Tomcat pilot.
Today [DamToys](/manufacturer/damtoys) leads the modern era, with special operations units recreated down to the kit and tied to named units and operations. [Soldier Story](/manufacturer/soldier-story) covers US naval special warfare, and [Easy&Simple](/manufacturer/easy-simple) is known for tier-one operators whose gear could pass for the real thing. [Medicom Toy](/manufacturer/medicom-toy) made counter-terror units in the early 2000s, from the British SAS to Germany's GSG-9 and France's GIGN.
History has its own specialists. [DID](/manufacturer/did) and [Facepool](/manufacturer/facepool) cover the Second World War, [Alert Line](/manufacturer/alert-line) works the Soviet side, and [VeryCool](/manufacturer/verycool) and [Flagset](/manufacturer/flagset) put Chinese, Russian and women soldiers on the shelf. Collectors here judge a figure by its accuracy: the right camouflage for the year, the right rifle for the unit, a head sculpt that looks like a person and not a toy. Many treat the boxed figure as a starting point and rebuild it with extra kit. The [Soldier](/character/soldier) page tells the longer story.
RECENT RELEASES
RELEASES BY YEAR
TOP MANUFACTURERS
MILITARY & THE SIXTH SCALE
This is the wing with almost no names on it, and that is the entire point. One hundred and sixty-eight figures live here and only seven of them are named characters: the rest answer to Soldier, one hundred and thirty-three of them, the anonymous professional in a hundred and thirty-three different loadouts. In every other wing of this Archive the character sells the figure. Here the gear is the character: the plate carrier, the night optics, the correctly-laced boots, researched and reproduced down to the stitching.
Collectors of this wing will tell you, correctly, that it is the hobby's oldest discipline and its most demanding. Nobody notices an inaccurate cape. Everybody notices an inaccurate rifle.
THE DAM DYNASTY
One house rules this wing: DamToys, with one hundred and nine of the one hundred and sixty-eight figures, nearly two in three, most under its long-running Military Series banner. The remainder is a roll call of specialists: VeryCool and its twenty-seven female soldiers, DID at twelve, Soldier Story at seven, Flagset at six, each with its own national and period focus.
The units file by era and theater rather than by name: modern special forces, WWII Wehrmacht, naval special warfare. Read the shelf like an order of battle and it opens up.
THE BORDER RULES
The wing's boundaries are drawn deliberately. Anonymous role figures live here; a named historical ruler marches over to History & Culture; and a soldier who is secretly a film character in disguise gets filed under the film, because a likeness is a likeness. The handful of real names that do hold posts here, a fighter ace, even a Napoleon, are the exceptions that prove the rule.
It is the quietest wing in the Archive, and its collectors like it that way. The figures do not speak. The loadouts do.