A 6-year-old girl has provided a strong kick to a campaign to create female versions of the iconic green Army men figures after sending a powerful letter to several toy manufacturers.
After getting her hands on the 2-inch-tall toy, Vivian Lord of Little Rock, Arkansas quickly realized there are no women figures — not even in the pink set.
“I saw the pink ones but [those] aren’t girls and [people] in the Army don’t wear pink,” she wrote in her letter, as reported in Military Times.com.
One of the recipients of the letter was Jeff Imel, an executive with Scranton, Pa.-based BMC Toys, who quickly responded with an “overdue update” of an ongoing project to fashion the female figures.
“The general concept is a set of female combat toy soldier figures in the style of the plastic Army men from WW2-Cold War era that would blend in with existing figures from a variety of manufacturers and look like what the average person thinks of as ’little green army men’ that just happen to be women,” he wrote.
Women in 2016 made up 14 percent of the Army’s enlisted ranks and 18 percent of all Army officers were female.
While several manufacturers produce the green Army men featured in such movies as “Toy Story,” Mr. Imel said that he is developing the female figures “as toy soldiers that are an extension of the generic ’Army Men’ universe of pop-culture rather than historically accurate hobby models.”
It is all but certain the toy would be created in the standard Army green, but it remains unclear whether his version would be manufactured in pink — which may not be warmly received by the 6-year-old soccer player.
“Some girls don’t like pink,” Vivian argued. “So please can you make Army girls that look like women.”
She wrote that, if the female plastic soldiers are produced, she “would play with them evry day and my freiends would too!”
• Lauren Toms can be reached at lmeier@washingtontimes.com.
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