Hmmm....
Ah, PN, I remember being 4 - my first rocket firing sortie with a Hunter across the Shrubbery Hotel ballroom floor in Ilminster. The springs fired the rockets a surprising distance and they were a bug.ger to find and reload!
As a lad, I vaguely remember a set of lead soldiers from Harrods when I was very small (probably be worth a mint now...), then some Airfix soldiers to dive bomb with aircraft various some years later. Although quite a few got eaten by Labradors.... But the generation of which I was a part took a very dim view of 'dolls for boys', such as Action Man and thought them a bit too girly. As most certainly did our Dads! We constructed and demolished things; my brother had a 'German officer' model, but that rightly met its maker at the end of BSA Meteor .22 air rifle slug which I loosed off across the garden some years later! Eat lead, Fritz!
Favourite toy of the time was an Airfix Lancaster - I modified it with a spring clip liberated from some Christmas tree decoration (another Labrador casualty..) and inserted it into the 'stand' slot - it was just the right size to hold a bomb which could be stuffed with caps (normally used in toy guns - probably banned these days). When released from the Lanc, the bomb would hit the flagstone floor with a very satisfying crack!
I guess the bombs from these InAction Man toy aeroplanes just go 'poof' when they hit the ground?