Little Green Army Women Are Coming, Thanks to a 6-Year-Old Girl

For decades, kids have gotten a minor thrill from playing with little green plastic army men, a series of posed figures sold in bulk that can wage mass-scale operations in backyards and on bedroom floors. Recently, one 6-year-old girl from Little Rock, Arkansas wondered why there were no little green plastic army women soldiers among their ranks. So she decided to do something about it.

According to NPR, Vivian Lord wrote a letter to three different companies, including Pennsylvania’s BMC Toys, inquiring at to why there were no female versions of their Lilliputian platoon. “Some girls don’t like pink,” she wrote, “so please can you make army girls that look like women?”

It was not the first time BMC had gotten the request. In 2018, the company was contacted by JoAnn Ortloff, a retired U.S. Navy fleet master chief, who was hoping to find female soldiers for her granddaughters. After deliberation and upon receipt of the Lord letter, BMC Toys president Jeff Imel decided to move forward in contemporizing the line. Beginning in late 2020, the toys will include four female soldiers, including a captain and a woman wielding a bazooka.

Imel said the decision had to be weighed owing to the company’s small profile. He is the only full-time employee and making adjustments or additions to the toy line can potentially be prohibitively expensive. He told NPR he was encouraged after seeing the enthusiastic response Lord’s letter received in the media. BMC plans on a crowdfunding campaign in November to accept pre-orders and expand the assortment.

The little green army men date back to the 1930s, when production of the infantry moved from metal and lead to plastic. They were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2014.