ELITE FORCE

I was checking out Dollar Tree's toy selection, keeping my eyes peeled for any Star Wars knockoffs, when I came across these Elite Force army men action figures. No, I'm not just overreacting to the use of the word "Force", it's the way it's written. Recognize it?

It's from the logo for the video game Star Wars The Force Unleashed! They just took out the silhouette with the lightsaber, sort of italicized it, and added bullet holes!

These action figures don't have anything to do with Star Wars or even science fiction! Was it really necessary for the maker of these toys to rip-off a Star Wars logo? That's it, they must know there's people like me out there who buy this kind of stuff. In fact, I entered the Dollar Tree with intentions of buying the not-as-exciting Alien Action Figures, a line of figures using the classic Star Wars font.

Well, let's get a good look at these guys. As far as I know, there's only four figures in the Elite Force series. First, there's a firefighter guy with a mask.

Next is a black haired guy who has the same kind of body as the masked figure and very similar accessories.

Here's a yellow haired guy who has the same kind of body and similar accessories as the orange haired guy that I showed at the beginning of the post.

Here's close ups so you can see their wonderful paint jobs.

On the top right of the card's front it says, "4 inch articulated action figure with equipment & weapons".

Unexpectedly, the back isn't blank like many other knockoff, dollar store kind of toys. Nothing to get your hopes up, though, like pictures of Chewbacca or a Stormtrooper or anything like that.

It has the Elite Force logo along with the phrase "Collect all styles!". I hope I collected all styles, the store didn't have any others.

We can see the logo for Golden Wheel, the company that I'm guessing made these figures.

At the bottom right it says:

Imported By / Importe par

In US: Greenbrier International, Inc.

500 Volvo Parkway, Chesapeake, VA 23320

In Canada: DTSC Imports

Burnaby, BC V5G 4P3

Made in China / Fabrique en Chine

There's also this picture of a soldier with some tanks in the background. I don't recognize this picture, but it's probably taken from a Medal of Honor video game box or something.

I found this next figure at a later trip to a different Dollar Tree, and I was really excited to see that it was missing its biggest gun! "Gasp! An error!". There's no openings in the bubble and it sure doesn't look like there's been any resealing of any kind.

Anyone who's read my missing saber Luke post knows how much I like errors, and anyone who's visited this site knows how much I like knockoffs. Put the two together and... I'm a happy camper.