Review: Cavemen Vs Pirates Vs Ninjas Vs Army men

Everyone knows the classic green army men. Big bundle of poorly made army men with plastic flashing down the join, devoid of paint and detail. But they're cheap and you get a big bag of them and when you're small this is more than you need to keep yourself entertained for hours on end.

One of the more bizarre items of merchandise created for the Toy Story films was the 'screen accurate' tub of army men. Charging a premium to get an exact replica of what Pixar had gone to great effort to create an exact replica of a really cheap toy.

But I'm not reviewing those.

Instead, I'm reviewing these packs of toys I found in B&M. They're really the next advance in army men toys. No, there's no added paint or articulation, nothing of that ilk that 'improves' them. Instead additional teams have been added: Ninjas! Cavemen! Pirates! Zombies! (except they'd sold out of the zombies) And of course the army men.

Each team comes in its own colour, making identifying which team they're in incredibly simple at a glance (unless you're colourblind, then you have to look a bit more closely). The poses are all appropriate to the individual groups, whilst at the same time being 'army men-esque'.

The plastic is a lot better than you'd expect, a lot better than the old army men I used to play with and almost as good as the Toy Story ones. Most of them stand very easily, though I did have an issue with one of the cavemen poses - but hey! The whole point of these is to knock them down!

There is one group that stands out against the others: the army men themselves. While the others are mold-line free, there are excess flashes of plastic all over the army men. It makes me suspect that the manufacturers have saved themselves a bit of money and simply bought an existing mold for that faction and created all new ones for the rest.

The figures come in packs of two teams. The original selling price was £1.49, which was pretty darn good. There're currently available for 50p which, well, let's say you'd be stupid if you didn't immediately rush into the shop and push small children out of the way to get hold of these. They're perfect as a cheap toy for kids to play with, or, should you desire, something to paint up and make pretty. In fact, at this price, you could do both!