Steve Shapiro
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Military insignia is supposed to be badass and intimidating, but every so often somebody in the armed forces graphic design department catches brain fever brought on by mercury poisoning and comes up with patches that are so ridiculous, they would be better suited for mail order offers on the backs of comic books than representing a group of battle-hardened combat veterans.
Ladd Air Force Base at Ladd Field, Alaska, was responsible for cold-weather testing of aircraft and equipment during the Cold War. Their insignia is a giant polar bear with a dislocated shoulder doing an end zone victory dance with a cartoon rocket ship while farting out the Land O'Lakes sunrise. However, the frosty snowcaps do lend the image a quiet dignity.
We're sure this is racist, but damned if we can tell why.
The official symbol of the Wisconsin Army National Guard is a badger with Disney eyes that had its upper palate removed after springing a rusty bear trap outside of the Green Bay Country Club. It looks vaguely like Eddie Munster desperately searching for toilet paper in a Walmart bathroom, and as such it is unlikely to intimidate anything that isn't clinging to a werewolf child's sphincter beard.
The official insignia of the Spetsnaz is a portrait of a lynx in the middle of viewing a Cheers marathon. Either that, or some droopy-faced Russian commander was shaking a bag of Whiskas just beyond our field of vision while the artist snapped a reference photo for this threaded masterpiece.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force selected a kiwi, New Zealand's adorable national bird, to serve as their insignia, even though "adorable" is more "Facebook search criteria" than "rallying battlefield totem." Also, the kiwi is a flightless bird. We feel that neither of those two descriptors sends the appropriate message.
Belgian Army via Tricolore Surplus
The Belgian Army Lion looks less like a lion and more like a Berenstain Bear wearing a flower costume to sell breakfast cereal to small children. Any closet it endorsed would open onto a busted battery recharger and old running shoes instead of the wintry forests of Narnia. There's a reason Belgium is known as Europe's battleground, and that is because Chuckles the Unibrow Lion is unable to discourage other armies from invading.
We're gonna guess that's not tobacco.
The Brazilian Expeditionary Force sent troops to assist the Allied forces during World War II, and as the result of an idea that clearly never made it past the first-draft stage, they decided that their patch should feature a snake smoking a pipe, as if it's about to tell its 12-year-old son where babies come from or locate the source of a counterfeit stream of 10-pound notes in 19th century London.
Brazil's dictator at the time was Getulio Vargas, who was so committed to Brazil's neutrality that he proclaimed, "It's easier for snakes to smoke than for Brazil to join the war." When the war inevitably came to Brazil, the BEF embraced the irony and went with the smoking snake, essentially making their insignia a political cartoon. This is despite the fact that political cartoons are terrible, and any joke that requires a history lesson is about as funny as a St. Jude's commercial.
