Army of Poland and other kin Slavic countries

@Bobko

Czerwone Berety! Legends!

Every boy wanted to be one when I was a kid :) And every boy collected little plastic Czerwone Berety...

... when we played war with friends one Czerwony Beret was always worth ten ordinary soldiers. Aaaaah... the memories. :)

And, of course, let's not forget Edek and Czesiek...

@Torq

Damn. Poles had high quality toy soldiers.

Soviet toy soldiers (that I still had to play with in 90s):

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russian soldiers have no faces, nomen omen.

That's true. I remember that once, when our father took us for summer holidays in Bulgaria in 1989 (he drove us there in an old Fiat 125p), I took a huge plastic bag of those soldiers to give them away to "sojusznicy" on my way there (yes, I was a strange kid). And I did.

It warms my heart until this day to think that there were kids somewhere in Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria playing with Polish knights, uhlans and czerwone berety. :)

Are you talking about the Uhlans below, or some even nicer ones? I saw these before, but they were very rare.


Ah, so even then you were a diplomat.

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The only military toys in "color" that I know were Soviet made, were the Cowboys and Indians. They were licensed from a famous French toy manufacturer. These were made at the Moscow-based "Ogonek" factory.

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Actually, in addition to the French-licensed Indians, there was a series of toys made in Donetsk - which were licensed from the American manufacturer Louis Marx. I'm kind of embarrassed, that we could not make a plastic mold without licensing it from capitalists. See below:

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Those Indians and Knights (especially) were quite nice!


... the best thing about uhlans was that they could be taken off the saddle and put back. That was the whole point of playing with uhlans - they were supposed to charge the enemy, get hit, and poetically fall off their saddles.

EDIT:

Wow! The Donetsk ones were class!

Honestly... WTF. Those toys are crazy in their detail.

This was truly a most generous gift from young Kania, to the brotherly socialist republic of Bulgaria.

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How to know you were the son of a Soviet oligarch? If you had the following toys.

1) Pedal car
2) Basketball arcade game
3) Soviet Gameboy

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By the time we reached Bulgaria I only had a couple of them left. Most stayed in Ukraine and Romania. :)


Those were quite popular in Poland too, and as far as I remember cost quite a lot; a prestige item!