When I was a kid, I owned a handful of green plastic soldiers. I’d send them into battles against soldiers owned by my neighbors which usually involved hitting them against each other. Those little plastic guys were always poised for battle.

Transforming the Little Green Men

I took my family to the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle where we saw how artist Noa Batle also noticed the frozen battle state of the soldiers and did something about it. He didn’t like how they were stripped from their identity of normal lives and every day hopes and dreams. He wanted to acknowledge the humanity of what those little green men represented. After buying several of the soldiers from stores, he remolded them. Now they perform actions soldiers normally perform when they’re not launching into battle.

The Need for Understanding

“In our contemporary day and age, there is an emerging need for dialogue and understanding, especially between disparate groups that stand on opposing sides. The alteration of these toy soldiers from holding weapons to holding and doing mundane things, acknowledges the humanity and life of the individual,” Batle says.

Batle is currently majoring in Design Media Arts at UCLA, and pursuing a career in Art and Design.

I love when artists challenge our point of view and help us to look at our world differently. Do these reshaped soldiers change the way you view these toys?