King & Country Rangers Arrive on Omaha Beach

Añadido: 2026-06-07

[00:00:11][music] [music] >> Hey guys, Vlad here from Operation Toy Box. Thanks for joining me for another video. It's been a while since I posted anything, so I figured my first video back should be something special. And as luck would have it, we're in June and today is June 4th, which means that in 2 days, on June 6th, we'll be celebrating the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy in 1944.

[00:00:48]Why is this a significant date? Well, I'm sure many of you know the history and many of you know it better than me, but let me recap it maybe for some people that aren't so familiar with it.

[00:00:57]On June 5th of 1944, the Allies launched the largest amphibious invasion in the history of mankind and and most certainly the largest invasion in military history.

[00:01:08]Over 150,000 Allied troops participated in this invasion. They landed on Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword, and Juno beaches. So, they had to break through the Atlantic Wall, which was by all accounts considered impenetrable. This invasion marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

[00:01:26]Now, the Allies had a foothold in Europe and they were able to continue their campaign forward and leading to the eventual surrender of the German army.

[00:01:35]To celebrate this very special and very important anniversary, King & Country is actually releasing a series of figures as well. They're launching new figures for their Samurai collection, the Remember the Alamo collection, new British figures from the D-Day invasion, and Hong Kong figures. If you're fan of any of those, please go check them out.

[00:01:53]kingandcountry.com.

[00:01:55]Go and sign up for the newsletter. Don't miss when they have new releases. I'm signed up. I get notifications every time they do, uh, new releases. And, uh, I'm just super thrilled to pick up those British soldiers. I've been waiting for more of those British guys from the D-Day collection. So, I'm very, very excited. Now, of course, this wouldn't be a special unboxing if I didn't have some special figures to unbox.

[00:02:16]There are two sets right now that I'm going to open for this for this particular video that I'm dying to open because I've been just holding on to a special event and as fate would have it, they're right here. I have them in hand.

[00:02:28]And then, of course, some other details.

[00:02:30]But then, there's one more bonus surprise and I'm sure you've seen it in the preview. So, without further ado, let's, uh, let's go ahead and roll the video. Johnny?

[00:02:40]>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:42]>> Uh, Johnny.

[00:02:44]You We're rolling, buddy.

[00:02:47]>> Hold on, I'm posting a TikTok.

[00:02:55]Who said bro?

[00:03:00]>> Listen, this is very unprofessional.

[00:03:03]>> Whatever, bro. You're not my dad.

[00:03:06]>> I don't subscribe to any of that Gen Z parenting crap. I'm going to go over there and kick your ass. So, stop it.

[00:03:11]>> Bro, that's going up on Snapchat.

[00:03:14]>> All right, that's enough.

[00:03:16]All right, guys. Well, this is what I've got to unbox here. So, let's get right into it.

[00:03:29]Now, I'm sure you guys saw the diorama that I was working on. So, uh, it wouldn't be the invasion of Normandy if we didn't have some beach obstacles.

[00:03:38][music] So, I actually purchased uh, three different types of beach obstacles. Now, it's kind of a bummer cuz this is broken.

[00:03:45]Uh, but there are six of them in here.

[00:03:47]I'm pretty sure.

[00:03:49]So, they they feel pretty light. They're they're kind of very uh, they're made of plastic, but I think the color and the the inking on it looks pretty good.

[00:03:59]So, >> [music] >> I'll put these to really good use.

[00:04:03]Here we go. That's six of them.

[00:04:06]Yeah, I think they're going to work out pretty nice.

[00:04:09]All right, let's get rid of this thing.

[00:04:12]Now, these guys are actually King & Country hedgehogs [music] and these are just they're they're two per box.

[00:04:20]And these are actually pretty nice.

[00:04:23]They're made of metal.

[00:04:25]Let me get this foam out of here.

[00:04:27]That's jammed in there pretty good.

[00:04:30]So, I got three boxes [music] of these and these are these are much nicer. I mean, look at them.

[00:04:35]Well, I'm sure you don't want to watch me unbox three of these. So, why don't we just speed things up a little bit and put this into overdrive. Here we go.

[00:04:56]And here they all are.

[00:04:58]These are nice. You know, I've been meaning to build this actual [music] D-Day diorama for a long time and for some reason one of the big things that I envisioned was having lots and lots of hedgehogs. I actually couldn't do the water, but doing a lot of these hedgehogs I felt like made a lot of sense cuz it would make it look more populated. If you guys remember in Saving Private Ryan that uh scene where the camera just kind of cuts across the beach and looks down the beach. You just see lots and lots of these hedgehogs and you see the men hiding in between them, behind them, etc. I thought that was a really epic scene.

[00:05:36]All right. Well, we're not just going to unbox hedgehogs and beach obstacles all night. So, here's our first box. This is DD321.

[00:05:44]I believe this is a ranger set. [music] I have most of the Rangers already.

[00:05:49]So, I don't remember which one of these are, but there are I believe three four-man Ranger [music] sets in the series.

[00:05:57]Okay, here's a tartan box. Let's pop it open and uh see what's inside. I really like that pattern.

[00:06:05]Uh what?

[00:06:07]Uh okay.

[00:06:09]>> [music] >> This is not This is definitely not three Okay, this guy is This is DD99.

[00:06:16]I mean, the sticker says [music] it.

[00:06:18]It's So, I'm confused.

[00:06:22]Although, I did buy this a long time ago. So, uh And I do remember it being cheaper.

[00:06:28]Okay, so this guy's definitely DD321.

[00:06:32]Uh [music] this guy is definitely not.

[00:06:34]He just has his M1 carbine, and I have that set actually. [music] And the last guy is DD321.

[00:06:42]Okay, interesting.

[00:06:44]I I do think the fourth guy in the set is also kneeling. He's in a very similar position. So, maybe the guy got confused. I don't know.

[00:06:52]Um Anyways, uh this is uh this is a Ranger from DD321.

[00:06:59]Uh and the paint I've complaints Well, not really complaints, but I I've noted in the past that I've I wasn't quite happy with the paint [music] on uh some of these Ranger figures.

[00:07:11]I don't I don't know if it's the color choices. I mean, the color choices are historically accurate, [music] but the paint just isn't as detailed, I feel like, compared to some of the other models in that same time uh time frame uh when these were painted.

[00:07:26]Well, I'm not going to harp on this uh any longer, but uh here it is, DD321.

[00:07:31]And uh I mean, it's still a great set, and it's definitely going to fit my D-Day diorama.

[00:07:37]All right. Well, I wasn't going to do this, but uh let's do a some quick analysis here. Here are some Waffen-SS guys. These are Hitler Youth. These are fairly recent. They're about the same time frame [music] as these Rangers. And look at this paint. Look at the paint on these guys. It's it's really remarkable.

[00:07:54]And then looking at one of the Rangers, the paint just doesn't doesn't quite compare. I don't know. I feel like the brush strokes are a little bit more simplistic. Uh but when you look at the patterns on the Germans and and the camouflage and even the pants, just a lot more cloth-like. I just really really think it's a bit of a miss.

[00:08:12]Again, I'm not going to harp on this too long. They're still great figures. I mean, there really still is nobody else that does anything better.

[00:08:19]Uh but I can compare King & Country to King & Country. I feel like that's a fair comparison. Anyways. [music] Okay, guys. Here's the first big enchilada, DD306, Saving Private Ryan set number one. There are two four-man sets representing uh all eight characters all eight main characters in the movie.

[00:08:39]And [music] here's the first one. I actually bought both of them at auction on eBay. One of them I stole pretty much. It was very cheap. The other one I had to work for a little bit. But anyways, let's uh let's take a look inside.

[00:08:54]Can we just take a minute to appreciate this laser-cut foam business that's going on here? I mean, like this is so crazy. It's so perfect.

[00:09:03]It's perfectly cut. It's so satisfying to just pluck these out and look at them.

[00:09:10]Okay, let's pull the first guy out. So, let's see who who we can see.

[00:09:14]So, first up, we have which character [music] is this?

[00:09:20]Oh, look. It's Vin Diesel.

[00:09:23]So, this is Caparzo.

[00:09:26]One of the guys that uh spoiler alert, he dies in the movie. Okay, I'm I'm sure if if you haven't seen Saving Private Ryan by now, you're never going to see it.

[00:09:33]Anyways, Caparzo. And it looks like they do make an attempt to make uh the faces match the actors, which is incredibly difficult, I bet. But look at the paint on these Saving Private Ryan models.

[00:09:45]They're They're better. They're a little bit more detailed. The sculpt is also a little bit more refined.

[00:09:51]They're just kind of like a ranger figure on steroids. So, a little bit extra attention extra attention to detail there, which is nice. And here's Wade, the medic.

[00:10:02]I'm not going to spoil this one for you.

[00:10:05]But >> [music] >> he doesn't end up having a very good time in this movie.

[00:10:09]And then we also have Sergeant Horvath with his [music] M1 carbine.

[00:10:15]I I I think I mentioned the story before, but he was supposed to have [music] the Thompson, and Miller was supposed to have the carbine, but >> [music] >> Tom Sizemore, the guy that plays Horvath, complained about it. And so Tom Hanks ended up giving him the carbine and and took the Thompson.

[00:10:34]And here's Jackson.

[00:10:38]Okay, switching gears to our first German figure. This is WS241.

[00:10:43]I figured I might as well unbox a few of my German guys to put on this diorama.

[00:10:51]All right, open the sketches ziplock bag. It's unfortunate that I don't get the box with this guy.

[00:10:56]Well, can't win them all.

[00:10:59]So, here's our prone MG 34 gunner.

[00:11:03]God, these these classic Germans that are part of that 200 range WS series are just some of my absolute favorites.

[00:11:10]This paint is just incredible looking.

[00:11:13]The skin tones, the pants, the uniform, [music] the weapons, everything is just absolutely perfect. Definitely some of my favorite favorite figures in the entire lineup.

[00:11:23]All right. Well, let's give him a buddy.

[00:11:24]This is WH037.

[00:11:30]Okay. Oh, yes. This is the guy pointing the way.

[00:11:35]So another classic German. I figured it would fit really nicely with the with the D-Day.

[00:11:40]Diorama there.

[00:11:43]So look at the paint here. So you can really tell that this is this matches all those other classic Germans.

[00:11:50]This being WHO 37.

[00:11:53]He's going to match a lot of the WS figures in the 280 range. So you can see this fits really well with this machine gun right here.

[00:12:01]He's pointing over here. Here, here, shoot here.

[00:12:05]Rubber band. I'm just kidding. All right, here we go. This is WS 238.

[00:12:11][music] And I think I know which one this is.

[00:12:16]Look.

[00:12:17]It's crouching German hidden grenade.

[00:12:20]>> [laughter] >> Anyways, again, so this is the 230-ish kind of range between and the WS >> [music] >> between like 230 to up to like 280 are some of my favorite classic German figures and they all fit really well [music] with those early WH series like the 30s and and on classic Germans. They're kind of in that same sculpt era.

[00:12:44]So very comparable.

[00:12:48]And looking at them side by side like this, so we can see the guy on the left is WH, the guy on the right is WS, but they look very very similar in paint [music] and style and and position and and facial sculpt and everything. So they definitely fit together.

[00:13:06]And the grand finale DD 305. This is the second four-man set from the Saving Private Ryan collection again in the nice tartan box.

[00:13:19]I wonder if the founder of King & Country is from Scotland. Hmm.

[00:13:24]Oh man, there's a hole in my foam.

[00:13:27]I need to file that complaint.

[00:13:33]And here's [music] more of that nice laser cut foam. Let's pluck these right out of here.

[00:13:38]I can already see Captain Miller over there on the left.

[00:13:42]Okay, here we go.

[00:13:45]Let's start on the right, actually.

[00:13:48]Oh, look, it's Fish or or Mellish.

[00:13:51]>> [snorts] >> So, again, they attempted to sculpt the face to match the actor's face, which is really cool. Really appreciate that.

[00:13:59]Looks nice.

[00:14:00]He also doesn't fare too well in the movie, but I won't tell you won't tell you how.

[00:14:06]And here we have Reiben. Let's see, does he have the Yep, there it is. Brooklyn, New York, USA. That's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool that they preserve those little details.

[00:14:16]Okay, and then we have Oh, yes, everybody's [music] favorite.

[00:14:21]Here's that 29th Infantry Division patch.

[00:14:25]And uh it's [music] Mr. Upham himself with uh severe RBF over there.

[00:14:33]Favorite favorite character, right?

[00:14:35]Everybody's favorite character?

[00:14:38]I mean, can't be too hard on the guy, right?

[00:14:41]This paint [music] really pops though.

[00:14:42]This is so well done.

[00:14:44]Again, comparing to some of the kind of regular Ranger figures, >> [music] >> it's almost night and day.

[00:14:53]And here's the man himself, Captain Miller, Tom Hanks.

[00:14:59]I could kind of see a little bit of a resemblance there with the face.

[00:15:04]Yeah.

[00:15:05]It's pretty cool.

[00:15:07]I really love the way that they did the shading on this. Why couldn't they do that with all the other figures, honestly?

[00:15:13]All right.

[00:15:15]Well, after the unboxing, I like to just line them up and get a nice close look at them. These figures are really really great. Uh I'm so glad I picked them up.

[00:15:24]Let's just line them up here, all right.

[00:15:25]So, we got Miller, Ryban, uh we got Caparzo, Wade, and then we'll uh stick up them right there with Mellish on the [music] end.

[00:15:36]And then we can just uh take Jackson, put him right there. Here they are.

[00:15:41]The magnificent eight.

[00:15:44]All right. Well, let's have some fun now.

[00:15:49]Well, all right, guys. This is what I got prepared for you here. Take a good look. Uh I've been rushing to kind of get this uh bunker complete. I didn't do any water, but I got a nice water backdrop here.

[00:16:01]And uh we have our Rangers who are ready to storm the beach, lined up on this side. They're going to be in {quote} and {quote} landing craft. And then we uh also have our beach obstacles that we just unboxed. This is real sand, by the way.

[00:16:18]So, when I uh when I built this, I wanted to kind of build a little bit of that little uh hiding position here with the elevation difference, like in the movie when they were kind of huddled up behind here, uh when they set up the Bangalore's and and all that stuff. Uh and then overlooking the bunker, complete with our German defenders.

[00:16:38]This is a good number of them here. I I can't fit too many figures on this cuz uh the bunker takes up quite a bit, but I've already put some machine gunners in here.

[00:16:47]So, you can see they're already machine gunnering in there. And then there's also a couple of extra little spaces where we can kind of set up some more soldiers here, and they'll just be a little bit closer. Uh not super historically accurate. Uh I don't think there were really any Germans on the beach defending, but uh you know, we're we're we're just making it work, right?

[00:17:08]This is all pretend. Pretend play. We're playing with toy soldiers. Everything's possible, right?

[00:17:14]Okay, here we go. So, let's start setting up. So, first we're going to Well, let's set up our German defenders first, right? Because that would that would make sense. So, I have this little nook right here, and I think what I was really thinking is uh we have a cameo here with some of these SS guys, so we could put them up uh behind this uh this cover so they could be over there uh machine gunning.

[00:17:39]And we can maybe have a guy bringing some ammo in the back. Thought that was really cool. And then maybe there's uh one guy already shooting and kind of helping.

[00:17:50]Then, what I was thinking we could do, we could put this gunner right here flat on this patch of grass here. I think that would work really well. And then, we could have our uh grenadier crouching German hidden grenade over there.

[00:18:05]And uh this guy is uh just going, "Okay, so is a grenade."

[00:18:10]So, he's uh over there assisting doing doing uh German things, German defender things.

[00:18:16]And uh then maybe we have a guy with an MP 40 here. I thought that'd be that'd be pretty cool.

[00:18:21]All right. Now, now obviously, these guys aren't just going to hang out on top of the bunker here, so maybe we can have uh you know, this guy going, "Okay, fire."

[00:18:32]etc. And then maybe we have this guy communicating, you know, saying stuff like, "Well, you know what? Dog one actually is open, and we're in trouble."

[00:18:42]Or you know, something to that effect.

[00:18:44]This guy here could be positioning himself to help over there.

[00:18:52]And this guy we also have another little nook right here, so we could have him kind of setting up maybe here, and uh this guy, the officer, is just kind of looking over and saying, "Well, the war is over."

[00:19:07]Um and uh cuz I can't imagine what they would have thought on that day other than than that.

[00:19:15]And uh here we have the guy pointing forward and he's saying, "No, no, uh they're coming from this direction, okay?

[00:19:22]So, make sure you're shooting in this direction."

[00:19:25]It's uh that's how how I kind of imagine that. So, uh this beach defense is a little crowded here, but uh you know, we're working we're working with something, all right?

[00:19:37]Cool. Now, let's begin the invasion.

[00:19:42]So, first up, let's uh let's land the guys on this side here.

[00:19:48]So, we're going to have them coming up and and hiding maybe behind these these beach obstacles.

[00:19:54]And uh this guy is running already. He's getting a good head start on everything.

[00:19:59]Oh, I have a lot of rangers here.

[00:20:01]It's going to be uh There's a lot of guys shooting.

[00:20:07]Looking pretty good.

[00:20:09]Here's the prototype Captain Miller from uh DD002.

[00:20:15]Yes, it is 002. I always add the extra zero.

[00:20:19]Um and then, you know what? These crouching guys, let's set these aside because I have a special assignment for these boys.

[00:20:25]Uh and here's our medic. He's uh he's running around.

[00:20:29]He's uh running after a wounded man.

[00:20:33]And uh trying to stay alive.

[00:20:37]Excellent. And we have another crouching guy. All the crouching guys, I think I'm going to put up on the wall there.

[00:20:45]And then our prone guys are also going to be looking, so uh let's put more guys up front.

[00:20:52]So, here's he's uh breaking through.

[00:20:53]He's charging charging through and gather weapons and ammo. This is the guy with the with the ammo.

[00:21:02]And this one's going, "Oh my god, everybody's shooting at me."

[00:21:06]And uh actually, let's put him right here.

[00:21:13]And this guy's just very confidently walking forward. He's not concerned.

[00:21:17]He's not going to get hit.

[00:21:20]He's got main character vibes.

[00:21:22]And uh more more ammo being brought up there.

[00:21:25]And this guy is getting ready to to shoot the bazooka.

[00:21:29]Shoot the bazooka.

[00:21:31]And uh here we have another captain.

[00:21:35]He's not a Miller.

[00:21:36]Maybe he's a Brewer.

[00:21:38]Captain Brewer.

[00:21:39]Captain Brewer and Captain Miller.

[00:21:42]Okay. Actually, let's put him back here.

[00:21:47]It's a little thin back there. Let's get more men over there. And now, I think it's start time to start building out this little um this little trench here.

[00:21:58]Can set up the BAR guy shooting.

[00:22:03]And one of these guys is crouching down.

[00:22:07]I actually have two of these sets, the DD 320.

[00:22:12]The predecessor to DD uh 321 or the the partial 321 that I had.

[00:22:21]Okay, and we have another bazooka here.

[00:22:24]Okay.

[00:22:25]So, let's pan out and really get a good look at the overall picture that's forming here. So, now we have some of these crouching guys, right?

[00:22:36]And of course, we have our radio operator.

[00:22:42]It's not the same radio as the one in the movies, but again, well, we're going to take a little license, you know, because we're it's it's pretend play. And we like to have fun.

[00:22:52]Here's a guy with a crouching guy with a Tommy gun.

[00:22:55]Yeah, this is really coming along. Oh, and we have uh this is a partial that I have from DD17007 or 017 rather.

[00:23:06]Um and uh I don't have the full set of this yet. So, uh whenever I have singles, I give them unique IDs so that I know that they're partial.

[00:23:15]Okay, and we can put him over here. He's reloading.

[00:23:19]You guys remember that part in the movie when Reiben comes up on the beach up to Captain Miller and they're hiding in this like little trench situation here and he goes, "Uh Reiben, where's your BAR?" And he goes, "At the bottom of the channel, sir. The tried to drown me." That was a great part. Great cinema right there.

[00:23:36]Here's another guy running. This is DD006.

[00:23:40]Storming the beach. Here they are.

[00:23:44]Here we go. We got the ocean in the background.

[00:23:48]We have the French countryside over here. It's looks a little alpier than than usual, but uh again, we're just working with it, right?

[00:23:57]So, that's it.

[00:23:59]Let me pan pan around a little bit. Here we go. We can just imagine just imagine the fire.

[00:24:10]Looking up at the fortress.

[00:24:15]And then looking down, what does that look like?

[00:24:18]I think if you were a German defender on that day, you were probably were thinking I think we're I think we got to throw in the towel.

[00:24:28]I think we're done for here.

[00:24:31]Yeah.

[00:24:33]So, we got uh some barbed wire there.

[00:24:38]What do they see?

[00:24:40]Lots of Rangers lined up.

[00:24:43]Lots of brave men charging across the beach.

[00:24:48]Excellent.

[00:24:51]I'm really having a lot of fun with this. This was This was really, really fun to build.

[00:24:56]Uh this is a foam cooler, believe it or not.

[00:25:00]And to get the boys in there, I have to cut a hole in the back here.

[00:25:05]And, uh, that's how I got them in there.

[00:25:08]They're standing on a box inside.

[00:25:10]Uh, we also have a a sniper over there, so he's taking aim down range.

[00:25:18]And here's a close-up. So, underneath here are is that thick insulation foam, which is what the bases made of as well. And then I took actual dirt from my yard, and I mixed it with glue and brown paint, and then later on I gave it another coat to give it all these different various discolorations to make it look a little bit more realistic.

[00:25:42]And then also painted the stones to make them more stony.

[00:25:47]And, uh, yeah, this is actually a very heavy very heavy diorama. And then I did various vegetation. I honestly, I think I overdid it with the vegetation a little bit.

[00:25:56]But, uh, I still like it. And again, this is an imagining. This is kind of like my version of it.

[00:26:04]And, uh, it was quite a lot of fun to do. I highly encourage you to make your own little dioramas. This is This is, I would say, a very very amateur diorama, but it it does the job for me, right?

[00:26:18]Like it's, uh, I get to play with my soldiers, so can't beat that.

[00:26:22]Look at all these guys. Cool. Well, there it is, guys. I hope you really enjoyed this. Uh, I had a lot of fun making it.

[00:26:31]Uh, you know, if you're new to the channel, do subscribe and, uh, support the channel with a couple of like buttons.

[00:26:38]And, uh, you know, drop me a comment.

[00:26:40]Let me know what you like, what you don't like. Engaging with the video definitely helps me to push it out, and, uh, uh, YouTube likes that because it it sends it out to newer audiences and tries it out on newer people. So, we definitely want to spread this hobby around and uh, get people that are into it to show them another side of of these toy soldiers that honestly not enough people know about.

[00:27:04]So, there it is.

[00:27:06]Omaha Beach, the invasion of Normandy, 1944, June 6th.

[00:27:12]The intrepid Rangers charging up the beach against insurmountable odds, heavily defended Atlantic Wall.

[00:27:21]Here the Germans were so eager to defend the beach that they stormed out onto onto the beach themselves to to meet the enemy.

[00:27:30]Here they are in the trenches.

[00:27:34]This is a nice picture right there.

[00:27:36]All right, guys.

[00:27:38]Thanks for joining me on this video and I hope you enjoyed it. Have a good one.

[00:27:42]I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.

[00:27:45]>> Oh, that's fire.

[00:27:49]I'm vibing. I'm vibing. I'm vibing.