Toy Story Soldiers Costume

One of my favorite Disney movies is Toy Story and I wanted to come up with a great group costume, so instead of the traditional characters of Woody, Jessie, and the gang, I decided we should be the Bucket O Soldiers - 5 green toy soldiers.

We bought used Army fatigues, belts, and boots from the local Army Surplus store, and found an original paratrooper jumpsuit at the local thrift store; toy guns from Good Will, old binoculars from a Craigslist ad; and various toy army accessories from the Halloween costume shop. We then took everything into the garage and used 6 cans of spray paint on the accessories, boots, and helmuts; 2 gallons of green latex paint from the hardware store covered our 5 outfits. I glued a trimmed Styrofoam wreath from (from Michaels craft store) to the top of the paratrooper's helmet and spray painted it. For the Bazooka, we got various PVC pipes and fittings to suit our vision, and glued them together, then spray painted thoroughly.

We used Ben Nye's face makeup matched to the color of the paint for our face and hands. (I would dye gloves to match if I were to do it again - very hard to keep hands painted green!)
For the bases, we bought foam insulation boards from Home Depot's insulation dept. and cut them in the desired shape with a jigsaw. We spray painted the edges of the foam boards, then rolled several coats of the same latex paint we used on our clothing over the top of the base. We only carried the bases around and whenever we stopped to wait for our trick-or-treating kids, we would throw down the base and stand in position.

This costume was a HUGE hit! My biggest regret in the prep work would be to use PRIMER on EVERYTHING before painting!