A recent family gift – another bag of what Ross Macfarlane of Battle Game Of the Month blog once called “the crudest cheapest plastic toy soldiers I’ve ever seen” or what I now cheerfully dub my “penny dreadfuls”!
I had not seen before in store these unusual new flag (sticker) designs. I usually pop into town every couple of months and check the toy shelves at Poundland UK pound store to see what Toy Soldier delights survive.
The latest curious design of flags in the Battle Squadron 100 Soldiers Playset – camouflage pattern flags!
Equally remarkable, this is still remarkably sold as 100 Pieces – for one pound. They have returned to their pound coin value days before the storage tubs version saw the figure content drop to 70, 60 or even 50.
Figures are roughly 30mm+, 32mm to 36mm, depending how you measure them.
The ‘Battle Squadron’ branding continues with the military design of Battle Squadron ‘dog tag’ and chain, camouflage style shapes or patterns, sergeant’s three stripes, flag or officer rank stars, target crosshairs and barbed wire design elements. 
The latest design of flag – two types of camouflage pattern.
Does this make hiding or defending your secret base camp / flag pole / headquarters easier?
A change from when the battle flag or standard was a colourful rallying point or in the case of ECW and Covenanters (and Spanish Civil War?) sloganned with intent.
As playsets go, I have mentioned before that the front and back scenes show elements not included in the set, which is potentially misleading or cheeky.
Whilst a flag (with intriguing green and white star design) and green soldiers are shown and included, there are no helicopters, plastic ruin walls, sign posts or plastic foliage (or sand). It is perhaps the “serving suggestion” of how or where you could deploy and play with them. Garden, sandpit, indoors …
What makes this a playset?
It has none of the curiously out of scale accessories.
However it does have:
Two sides of figures (same design or poses, different colours – here green and silver)
Two flags
Two flag bases featuring boxes of supplies or bricks and rubble
These two unusual flags have these block of supplies to capture or defend as their base?
An unimportant question – does each flag count as one of the 100 promised pieces? I bothered enough to count and can report that in this pack (packs may slightly vary) there were 53 silver and 48 green figures with one mismould casualty plus the two flags and two bases.
These figures were noticeably flash-y or flash-ier then previous batches.
Is it my imagination or are these semi-flat figures becoming thinner and semi-flatter over time?
If you want to look at some of the conversion possibilities for these basic Penny figures, I have featured some of my work on this post here:
They can even mix in with modern 30mm soldiers like Mark’s Little Soldiers 30mm metal:
Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 29 / 30 January 2024
B.P.S. Blog Post Script
For those who love these things it’s 5 PP type of plastic Polypropylene – and the CE UK CA credits are on the back of the flag like weird battle honours. Poundland PLDZ – Born On / batch date 1/12/2022
Made in China but also sold in Poundland’s other Dealz stores in Ireland (ROI), Poland – and now Spain, as well as offshore islands like Isles of Man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dealz
Pound Store Plastic Warriors 
Those “spaceman” figures make me think of early Allied paratroops, who wore something akin to football helmets rather than the more obviously military type. The guns even look like period SMGs.
Was in a Walmart yesterday hunting down something else and thought of you when I found a small canister of toy soldiers with terrain bits for five dollars. I was sorely tempted. The flag base looked exactly like the one here!
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Ha ha – give in to the cheap plastic tat urge! You won’t look back …
I see what you mean about early paratroop helmets – they also have an early American ‘tankie’ helmet look to them. They would paint up well enough as WW2 figures.
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l love the idea of a camouflaged flag. Someone thought it up as a cunning plan ( if it is camouflaged the enemy will not see it ) and then had a realisation that their men couldn’t see it either!
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You can’t “capture the flag” if you can’t see it (nor indeed rally round it!)
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I have a load just waiting for me to dress them!
I will go for the space theme - which reminds me, the green faced orange suited figure could just be a Treen as in the Mekon’s soldiers – I must try to paint some like that, & I think it would not be too hard to model the Mekon himself, maybe based on some old figure with green-stuff (!) to make his head.
The other theme might be Flash Gordon of course…
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That’s the green skinned Mekon Dan Dare 1950s or Flash Gordon 1930s vibe I was looking for. Enjoy!
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I swear, I’ve seen 54mm sized versions of some of the poses in your photos. Particularly, the charging rifleman, the marching rifleman with his gun slung over his shoulder, and the rifleman with his gun at rest in front of him.
They used to also come in pound land stores. Their faces were usually preprinted. I’ve been hunting them for years! I had 100s of them but somehow lost them all over years of playing war…
Regardless, love the post. Thank you for sharing.
P.S. I am attempting to reach out to you about a question regarding toy soldiers. Would you kindly give me an email address I could message you at?
Thanks!
– Luciano of ToySoldierCentral.com
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Thanks. Yes there are once 54mm scale versions of some that have slowly shrunk (pantographed down) over the least 20-30 years through 40mm to these 30mm-ish figures.
P.S. My usual contact is via this blog.
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I love your conversions of them though!!
I’ve seen some even cruder and thinner, and as far as I concern I don’t think they should be on sales at all due to their poor quality. I did not buy them
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I’ve seen some (second hand charity shop) versions that were virtually falling apart through thinness or brittleness. I didn’t buy these.
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