History of Vietnam Gaming

The Marx Guerilla Warfare Miniatures Play Set, made in Hong Kong, 1966:





I'll bet these are probably the earliest VC figures ever made. They came hand-painted.

Close-ups:

https://2warpstoneptune.com/2012/10/15/marx-guerrilla-warfare-play-set/

That's interesting; I've never seen that one before. Guessing that I'm just young enough that it wasn't available by the time I had interest.

I would have loved that as a kid.

In 1970, my mum gave me some US toy soldiers, made in Hong Kong. They were about 32 mm tall, hand-painted. I asked my mother what war they were from. She said "the current one". I said "there's a war going on?" (I was only 5 at the time...). She pointed to my Shell Map of the World: "It's in Vietnam."

They were made from quite brittle plastic and got broken over the years - never seen any more like them, even on the Internet.

I don't remember seeing any VC though - I would have loved this box as a Christmas present.

I'm maybe a year older than you, toy army men became a big interest to me between age 6-7, but toys related to war were already losing popularlity due to Vietnam. GI Joe started to switch over to the "Adventure Team" and whatnot.

There were very few post WWII toys around, Marx made that set of plastic army men with M16s and Bren guns, and there were M48s ad M35 trucks, but never saw a reference to Nam in the plastic army range of scales.

I would have loved that set though.

Chopper! Chopper! Vietnam War diorama set, manufactured by MPC, 1960s:



Airfix WWII US Marines being used as early-war stand-ins.

Photo by Eric Boeuf, of an item from his collection.

Very cool!

Vietnam War dogfight double, first released by Airfix in 1971:



An odd pairing: perhaps a speculative assumption about the air war over Laos?

Agreed. Very odd.

Interesting. Several of you guys were too young for that item. I was too old

I had already gone into military miniatures and left the Marx stuff behind. I sure did love it though before I discovered Bussler Miniatures 54s, then later wargame figures.

Tom

We didn't have Marx figures in NZ, although I did have some US Vietnam figures as a 5 year-old - I'm still looking for them on-line. They were made in Hong Kong.