From
the 2" (5cm) variety of plastic army men on up to the world's first, truly modern action figure, G.I. Joe, boys and (even sometimes girls) of all ages have fought and/or re-enacted countless battles, skirmishes and full
scale miniature wars via the world of toy soldiers.
Even the famed English writer of such notable classics as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, H. G. Wells, was a true believer in small soldiers.
Despite being a well known pacifist, Wells actually
advocated playing war games with miniature men at arms as a cathartic way to relieve stress and use the imaginative power
of the human mind as a way to solve problems, rather than resorting to real world acts of violence and all out war.
In
fact, Wells even penned the first modern manual of miniature war game strategy for toy soldiers, a book entitled
Little Wars (first published in 1913).
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