At one point a toy machine was sold that melted plastic and pushed it into a mold that made army men but it did not work very well. How can you make plastic army men of the cheap green variety?

Answer 1

You're already on the right track, as the process for making these little guys is called injection molding. You'll need molds, and a machine that takes feed stock (plastic pellets) and feeds them through a "pipe" using a screw inside. The "business end" of the pipe has a an electric heater around it to melt the plastic, and then the screw forces the molten plastic out and into a mold. Doing this "cheap" involves getting your hands on molds. You cannot make them cheaply. Then you'll need the extruder, and they can be had surplus. A number of online vendors sell them. But all this costs money. It is doubtful, in this day of "dirt cheap" imports from China, that you can beat them at this game. Even the "dollar stores" have bags of the little dudes for a buck or so.