Re-Arm with Brickarms: 54mm Plastic Army Men

Recently I looked into Brickarms, the miniature weapons line designed for Lego minifigs.  I have little interest in collecting Lego figurines and doubt that I would have at 7 years old either, had something like that even existed back in the 1950's.  Aesthetically, they just don't appeal to me.  The weapons do, however.  Chunky in proportions but capturing the essence of the real thing.

http://www.brickarms.com/

I wasn't sure about how they'd suit 54mm, 1/32 plastic figures, but ordered some examples to find out.  The idea was to test how they'd work out using cheap clone soldiers as the guinea pigs for conversion.

Let's see what we've got here.  First up, our subject comes from Toy Soldiers Depot, "Modern Plastic Figure Set #2".  These are US-styled troops, something of a mixed bag in scale and style but plenty of useful guys in this set. The Combat Storm rules specify MP5's for Special Forces squads, so here goes the first attempt:

Original left, conversion right. Shimmed the base for stability. 

Next up, TSD's bizarre set "Modern Style Rambo "Punk" Soldiers. What you get here is 50 guys in 5 different poses, molded in green and gray plastic. The sculpting varies from decent to comically bad, often on the same figure.   But, at 10 cents per man, not a huge investment.

Bulked up the weak left arm and hand a little.

The mini SMG works out rather well for Cpl. Hair Gel

Okay, how did I do here ?  While somewhat oversized, the Brickarms didn't turn out too bad. Particularly as the Rambo figures are cartoonish anyway.  I used Green Stuff (my first experience with it) to build their hands around the weapons and bulk up certain areas of the figures. The beret conversion on the Mohawk guy wasn't a success, his head is rather oversized to begin with and what I did just accentuated the flaw.

And the final result:

"Mullet Squad, move out !"

All in all, I think the result is satisfactory. I'll be able to make an acceptable squad of Tan Army soldiers out of these.