New $1 find at Target

OK, I was at Target and browsing through the Dollar aisles at the front and found these two packs of cheap plastic army men.  At first I picked them up (thinking the vehicles had some potential use with my 20mm modern troops.) and then put them down again, and even walked away.  However, I had to go back to rule #2 of gaming acquisition: If you see something that will work, buy it now because when you go back for it, it will be gone!  I've violated that rule too many times to not heed the warning.  So, I went back and picked up a bag of each.

Here are the two bags.

Bag #1 (Left) has 28 pieces that included a truck with an absurd weapon on the back, an undersized plane, and 26 figures. I thought all of the plastic men were useless until I saw the four kneeling figures with a 30 cal. MG.  I'll probably cut these off to use with my Car Wars vehicle conversions or for use with the helicopter as a 50 cal. MG.

 Bag #2 has 22 (Right) pieces that included a tank, a helicopter, and 20 figures.  Again, I thought all of the plastic men were useless until I saw the four kneeling figures with a 50 cal. MG. I'll probably cut these off to use with my Car Wars vehicle conversions as they are too large to use with the helicopter as MG's.

 Here are the four vehicles with 20mm modern contractors (not completely painted yet) for scale.

Truck: I'm going to cut off the hideous weapon (that will leave a big gaping hole in the cheap plastic truck) and add a utility/transport bed made out of plastic styrene.  This will serve as a transport truck for one of my smaller modern contingents in need of transportation. (I.E.: 20mm Grenadians, Argentineans, Cubans, or Somalis.) 

Small Plane: I may cut off the bottom struts/wheels and use it as a UAV/drone. I'm not sure yet.

Tank: At first I thought it was too small, but after looking at it, I think it will be turned into an armored,  infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), sort of BMP-2-ish.  The turret needs to go, or at least cut off the main mantlet/gun and the rear portion and replace with bits of plastic and a new, smaller caliber, main gun.  Similar to the truck, this vehicle may be put into service with a variety of the smaller, modern contingent countries in need of a little armor.

Helicopter: The main reason for getting the pack was to turn this into a good/cheap replica of an OH-58 Kiowa. You can never have too many of these. I'll need to remove one of the sets of blades and maybe use a bead or something on top of the rotors for the optic sights to make it a scout. It will certainly come in handy and will be well used by my contractors employed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots around the world.

Here's the Kiowa glued together, mold line trimmed and sanded, and primed with some Krylon Fusion black paint. The 20mm contractor is shown for scale.

Here's the IFV glued together, mold line trimmed and sanded, and primed with the Krylon Fusion black paint. Again, the turret needs to go.  The 20mm contractor is shown for scale.  The hideous truck is in the background.  However, by the time I get done with it, it won't be an ugly duckling any longer.   Now that I think about it, I may have to either make some type of emplaced gun position out of the hideous gun, or just relegate it to the parts box.