Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 65 Sets: Pt 7 Payton No. 2000 Unbreakable Soldier Set Revisited: Did It Come With This?

When I received my set No. 2000, it was a mixed blessing. The box was the single most important part of the purchase as was the 'K9' (clearly a German Shepherd) which is a bear to find in its own right. My box also contained some Eldon vehicles which I sorely needed for that collection, but was missing the two troop transport trucks. In addition, one of the tanks had a broken barrel, and all the 'unbreakable' figures in my box were...

...you guessed it - BROKEN!

The missing / broken pieces were easily replaced and I was able to make a complete set out of it. However, there was one piece included which stumps me to this day. My set included a blow mold sandbag emplacement which looks very similar to a piece on the box top artwork (which I circled in the picture below). I did not include this piece in yesterday's post because I'm not totally sure it belongs to the set. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

The set as purchased (the sandbag emplacement is buried under the Jeeps in the lower right of the box)

Among the hardest Payton figures to find is the K9

The 'unbreakable' figures included in my purchase

Upon first glance this appears to be a boulder, but upon closer inspection, it does resemble a very crude sandbag emplacement.

Here's what a complete (and unbroken) set would look like with the sandbag emplacement as part of the contents.

Payton Products, Inc. Little Green Army Men - Pt 64 Sets: Pt 6 Payton No. 2000 Unbreakable Soldier Set

Payton wasn't big on 'deluxe' anything and they certainly didn't pump out variation after variation of large playsets like Marx did and this is as close as you'll get to a 'deluxe' set from them. Oddly, it contains their major vehicles except for the motor gun carriage. Also, this is the only set I know of that contained the 'K9' sculpt (unless it came in header bagged sets). Mine came incomplete and included pieces from other manufacturers and it took me a couple of years of on-again-off-again collecting to flesh out the set as shown in the photos.

Ed

Some of the 'unbreakable' figures that came with my set when I received it!