A Conversation with Jeff Imel, President of BMC Toys, Creator of Female Toy Soldiers

by Brooke Galonek

Brooke: I'm Brooke Galonek, content editor at The Fem Word, and I'm excited to speak with Jeff Imel today, from BMC Toys. BMC Toys is based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and specializes in plastic army men. Jeff, you recently made a decision that made international headlines can you tell us a little bit about the decision and the story behind it? 

Jeff Imel, President of BMC Toys

Jeff: Yeah, I've been offering plastic army men on the internet as a retailer, going back to about 2003, and maybe once or twice a year someone would ask me if I had any female soldiers. I would always look around with my suppliers and what else might be on the market. I would have to say, “Sorry, no, I don't have anything like that.” At the time, I was just purchasing wholesale and never really considered it being feasible to make a brand new product like that. I assumed somebody else would do it at some point. As I progressed with the business and started getting more into the manufacturing side of things, I began to think, “maybe we can do some new products.” 

I purchased BMC toys in 2015 and I started thinking about that more. However, I kind of had my hands full re-launching that brand after the owner had passed away. It was probably somebody asking me, “Do you have any female soldiers?” That led me to think about it a little bit more seriously. I mentioned it at the kitchen table and everyone thought it was a good idea, but it was still a future sort of thing because it’s expensive and it's time-consuming. It’s a lot of resources for small businesses like mine. 

I got BMC back on its feet and I started to think about the next phase of the business, which is hopefully doing new products. People always tell me what they want, but I wanted to be able to do some product validation. Product validation is just a way to make sure that you have enough people who are interested in your product to be worth making it. I received an email once again from somebody saying, “Do you have any female soldiers?” And I gave her my kind of standard response, “I don't have any, but I think it's a great idea.”

She wrote me back again with some compelling information. It turned out she was a retired Navy Master Chief, and she'd served in the Navy for 33 years. She enjoyed playing with army men with her brothers when she was young and she was looking for some army women to go with the army men for her granddaughters. She was disappointed that she didn't find anything that she felt kind of filled that niche. She gave me a lot of statistics about the number of women serving in the military and how much larger the role has become. I thought, “alright, we can take this to the next step of maybe doing a blog post and setting up a newsletter and seeing if I can get some art done.” This was the move into that product validation phase, where we see if there's enough interest in a product to move forward with.

That happened in June of last year, 2018. Throughout one and a half weekends, I had my sister do some really quick concept sketches, as she's a pretty well-known artist. I put up a blog post about what I thought the project would be, and set up a newsletter that people could subscribe to as a way to let me know that they want this. That was the official launch of the project in 2018. We had gotten a lot of feedback about the sketches, a lot of military women complained that the hair was too long. We looked at pictures from the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps for World War II and they were not necessarily all regulation hair. It was hard to find good reference photos of women in military uniforms with helmets on. This is something I felt was important, that they had the green army men sort of style. I did purchase a replica of the helmet that I thought would be good for this project because it was the one that used throughout most of the 20th century, and I had my sister do some more concept sketches trying to figure out how to deal with the hair. I was counting on the hair as a way to identify these figures as female. The hair could be one of the visual cues, because when you take a figure and you shrink it down to just a little over two inches, it's harder to tell fine details. It gets a little hectic at times. That was where the project sat in a little bit of limbo, up until I received the email from Brittany Lord, which had a little attachment with her daughter’s hand-written letter. Six-year-old Vivian Lord wrote a letter asking, “Why aren't there girl army men?” She didn't like the pink ones. She had a friend whose mom was in the Army, and she just didn't get why there weren't women in this set of plastic army men. 

I thought, this is good because I have an answer now. I can say, “This is a project I've been thinking about and if you want to support it, just subscribe to the newsletter. When I get enough people, I'll do a crowdfunding campaign.” At that point, I had about 300 people that expressed interest in it. I was hoping to get about two or three thousand before moving it into a stage where I would get serious about doing a crowdfunding campaign. 

Vivian's mom followed up. She had some more questions about why the project hadn't progressed since I did that blog post. That got me to think, “I've got some of this material, I need to do another update on this. 

I'm always up against deadlines. Sometimes it takes a little nudge from someone to make me say, “Okay, I'll get to that now. I've been putting that off, so let's do it.” I started working on an update, just to talk a little bit more about the project, and let the supporters know where I am with the goal.” 

Then, I started to get messages from media outlets who had gotten hold of Vivian's letter. I think it started with just a local newspaper or TV station in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Vivian and Brittany lived. I just answered any sort of requests that came in from the media because I was the one company that had something in the pipeline. I was developing it, so I became part of that story. I got calls from major networks. They didn't all do the story, but CBS Evening News did one, and Steve Hartman came to Scranton for an On The Road segment. Things just went bananas. With that network attention, I realized this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I got moving on it and hired a sculpture to do a prototype, got quotes together for a budget, and started to fine-tune the project.

Those moments don't come along in life every day, where you get to say yes to a request like that on national television. I looked at the budget and what I could do. I made the announcement and that was the official, “we're doing it” sort of phase of the project. 

Brooke: I remember Demi Moore played GI Jane and they had a toy, but since then, I cannot think of another toy female soldier. You're really at the forefront of this. How does that make you feel and do you feel empowered by this? 

Jeff: I feel like Santa Claus, in a way. I've gotten requests saying, “I would like to buy these for my grandkids.” I started to get messages from women of all ages, letting me know that they wanted to have some plastic army women when they were kids - back in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. I went through some things when I was a kid, and my sisters as well, where there was a toy that you wanted and just couldn't get. You get fixated on it, and drive your parents crazy. I identified with it from that level, and realized that this is wish fulfillment on a grand scale. Even though they're adults and have grandkids now, they are able to close a circle on that childhood wish. They can share them with their family for an intergenerational closing of that circle. It’s great to just be a part of that, and is very humbling. I never expected anything like the response that we've gotten about this project. It's been surreal and amazing. 

Brooke: Besides getting the hair right and budgeting, what were some of the challenges you faced during the initial development of this project? 

Jeff: We're still very much in development. We've completed two of the sculptures so far. I've committed to doing at least five different poses and I'm hoping to expand that. So the challenge is, we want these figures to look like women. I feel that's really important - that they are easily identified as women, but don’t venture into pin-up territory or exaggerated comic book anatomy. I want to be respectful about it while still maintaining the fact that these are female figures. And again, once you get down to that smaller scale, it becomes a little bit more of a challenge. Especially when people are looking at the pictures of them online where they're blown up to the size of their phone or their screen. When it is much larger, they don't look the same as when you have them in your hand. 

It's a really fine line and I'm trying to be respectful to women. I’m asking lots of women, “What do you think of this? How do you feel about this?” I am doing different body types within the figure range as well. I want as a group for a little kid to look at them and go, “Oh, there's a soldier that’s a woman.” For kids today, it's just kind of the way things are, as opposed to previous generations were women in combat was not as prevalent. 

Brooke: So what's next? How are you moving forward with the project? When do you think these plastic army women will hit the shelves? 

Jeff: My timeline is to have them available for Christmas 2020. That puts us at about one year from now having them available to purchase so that they can give them under the Christmas tree. I'm very comfortable with that timeline - it's generous, but I still might need it depending upon how things go. I've budgeted three months to have the sculpture done, three months to have the tooling done. Then there's production and shipping and all that stuff. I'd like to get them sooner. If I could have them for this Christmas, it would have been amazing, but you'd have to throw a lot of money at it. I don't have that, so I'm taking it one step at a time.

I want to do a good job. I want to put out the best version of the product I possibly can. That does take a little bit of time, and a lot of thought. It's such a simple thing, a little plastic toy soldier, but there's a ton of decisions that go into that. I want to make good decisions, and not everyone will agree with them all, but that's okay. I'm just trying to make something that people can connect with. As long as most people are happy with it, I'm satisfied. 

Brooke: Awesome. How do you think this project will affect the toy industry as a whole? Do you see this as a catalyst for more toys like this? Is that what you're hoping for?

Jeff: That's a pretty big question there. I don't know what sort of long-term impact it will have. It’d be great if it did have a positive impact on the toy industry, and that they started looking at these things a little bit differently. I think it's already changed a lot. A lot of toy manufacturers have made mistakes trying to make versions of toys for girls, over the years. I think that most of those companies have learned from those mistakes. But how it will affect the toy industry as a whole? I have no idea.

Brooke: I think it's amazing, and I think it will have a positive impact. I'm excited to keep following this story to see how it takes off. 

Jeff: The media attention on this is just mind-boggling. I'm also getting so much feedback from people. I’m getting postcards, and emails, and letters telling me, “thanks for doing this.” But also stories about how this is something that has impacted them. Whether they want to have this figure as something to give to their daughter who is a cadet right now, or in one case, I was just at the Chicago Toy Soldiers Show, which is a lot of old toy soldier collectors. They were telling me that some of the women in their family contacted them about it. One gentleman told me he had not talked to his niece in six years and she called him to say, “Hey, did you see this story about the plastic army women?” She knew it was his passion, and it was something she could connect to. I thought that was really nice, to bring people together. I did not expect any of that at all. It’s such a simple thing and to have just hundreds and hundreds of media stories, and all these people just saying, “This is great.” It's just mind-boggling. 

Brooke: Right, it's so amazing and I feel like that's just going to continue.

Jeff: I work on keeping the goal in mind of making sure that the little girl in Little Rock, Arkansas has a set of plastic army women by next Christmas. That's my primary goal, is to make something to give kids a little bit more variety. To give kids something that they connect to. Every kid wants to be the hero of their own story. Little girls in the past, and today, who don't connect when they just see all men soldiers when they're playing with their brothers or their friends. I want to help them be the hero of their own story at playtime. 

It’s turned into something beyond that. The outpouring of support from military women. It goes beyond just helping the kid be the heroes of their stories, it’s connecting people to heroes they never really even thought about. Women's role in the military has always been there, but it was always suppressed in a lot of ways. Now, it's expanded tremendously over the past couple of decades, and they feel under-recognized very often. This has a really deep meaning to them. It seems to me, from the messages I'm receiving, just a little bit of recognition for their contribution. It helps connect a whole range of people to the fact that there are so many women serving in the military, and so many have served with distinction. It's a group that has felt unrecognized, and this will, in a small way, say, “yeah, we appreciate you.” That's become our secondary mission. To do a little bit of education about women in the military, their history, and their contributions overall. The mission has expanded somewhat, but I don't want to lose sight of my initial goal, which is to make sure that little girl has her set of female toy soldiers at Christmas. 

“...this will, in a small way, say, ‘yeah, we appreciate you.’ That’s become our secondary mission. To do a little bit of education about women in the military, their history, and their contributions overall. ”

Brooke: Thank you so much for talking with me today Jeff. I am so excited to follow the story. Again, this is Jeff Imel from BMC Toys and Brooke from The Fem Word.