And this may apply to non-Vets as well.

For those of you who served in the Armed Forces, do you find your collection reflects your service? "Service" as in the branch in which you served, but also "service" as in what you did in the military. As for non-Vets, does your collection reflect your job? Are you a professional computer geek, for example, and you lean towards Mainframe, Hi-Tech, Hard Drive, Dial Tone and the like?

I am a Marine, I was in an infantry battalion and was with the Headquarters and Service Company (H & S Co), Motor Transport (Motor T) platoon.

I find my collection, or at least the majority of it does revolve around the infantry and I find myself with quite a few vehicles in my motor pool; VAMPs (of all variations), AWE Strikers, Jungle/Desert/Night Ops HMMWVs, APCs, Split Fires and other, similar Infantry support vehicles.

When I first started collecting, I was going to keep it small (a futile attempt, I know) and only collect the handful of Marines and SEALs, but I find the figures that interest me most are the Infantry and similar characters. Having been in a front line unit, I got to see first hand how the support network worked as well, and know that behind the grunts are the Comm guys, the medics or Corpsmen, transportation and supply. So I make sure I have them as well.

Similar (but still not equal to) are the armor and arty guys, so I have my fair share of MOBATS, Maulers, three Grizzly Tanks as well as Wolverines, HALs and Mountain Howitzers that would offer support to the grunts.

The Marines have their fast movers, but every grunt, Marine or Army, knows that the best air support comes from helicopters, so I have a trio of Dragonflys, four Tomahawks and six Night Attack Choppers (both green and brown). I also have a fair amount of Skystrikers, Conquests and Thunderwings, as well as a Phantom X-19.

I do have a couple of WHALEs, a squadron of SHARCs, a Piranha Attack boat and a Flagg, but to me, the Joes never had a strong Navy presence, at least nothing that could hold its own against a Moray.

I have more or less set up my Joes as I know a front line unit would be set up, because that is what I know. I focus more on the ground pounders, and the small unit operations of a SpecOps team, and less on the air power and big guns, because I know a man with a rifle will win wars, the rest is just support.

Someone who was not in a front line unit may have different collecting habits. If you were in a unit way in the rear, you might focus more on that position. A friend of mine is an Air Force Vet, he focuses on the aircraft. Another is a Navy Vet and he focuses more on the non-SEAL Navy members.

I'm curious if your particular service and you job influenced your collecting at all.

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I'm not a veteran. My collection pretty much revolves around what I had as a kid. If I did not have the figure or vehicle as a kid, it rarely interests me. Which is why I completely skipped the eco warriors con exclusives, but dropped a regrettable amount of money on tiger force stuff this year.

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Yeah, I started the collecting (and customizing) long before I joined the Navy in '93, and adding in that there's not really a big Naval non-SEAL presence in Joe; so no, my collection doesn't have a big synergy with my service. Joe was just the best and coolest toyline for two really awesome runs and I got them because they were great in their own right.

I did make a figure of a Shore Patrolman I named Land Lubber, because I wanted a figure in my San Diego Boot Camp uniform, tho. I greatly enjoyed wearing that dungarees uniform with the spats and sugar-belt, lol.

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No, my collection has nothing to do with my former sevice. My collection has to do with childhood likes.

My story is tangentially related to this subject. My mother remarried when I was about five years old to a Vietnam Vet. I was obsessed with little army men as a kid, (in addition to Star Wars of course) and when the 3 3/4" Joes came out, the first one I bought was Grunt, and it was because he came with an M-16 and had a uniform that seemed somewhat similar to the pictures in my mom's new husband's photo album. I tended to ask him a lot of questions, and at least he was patient with his answers, because I really had no idea about what Vietnam was about. One awkward question that still makes me feel somewhat guilty is that I asked him whether we won very easily because we had machine guns and jets. (As opposed to WW2). His answer was something like "You can't compare World War II and Vietnam" and that was about it. It wasn't until much later that my mom said he had flashbacks and nightmares, and all of my dumb army obsessed kid-stuff came back to me in a flood.

You and me both, Spass. My step dad served Infantry in Vietnam, and I tried to ask him a few questions when reading The 'Nam comic. He didn't like that what he went thru was being 'trivialized' in a comic book, so I didn't ask any more after that. My mom was reading all the memoirs that came out in the 80s, and she looked thru the comic a bit and told me it was nicely done.

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Pretty much what Crowncoke said. 'Course finding a decent amount of Air Force stuff in Joe has always been a little problematic.

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You can augment the Joe HQ with playmobil chairs to more accurately simulate Air Force life.

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OhSnap.jpg!

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and my custom Joe "Downtime" the DEERS Commander who only works 1/3 of the time.

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You could bet if there was a Navy engineer figure i would scoop it up.

This makes me want to follow through with a custom I thought up years ago... "Long John" who is the Airman responsible for bringing donuts every morning.

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I definitely want more support crew figures!

I'm a firefighter and EMT (non-military) I always have a soft spot for Barbecue, Inferno and Blast Off (Smoke Jumper) and all the medics

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