>>96415875
pretty much this. Someone mentioned Army Men for practice. You cant buy them individually to my knowledge, and a bag of 50-100 only cost you 5€. So the lost money isn't going to hurt that much.
But what you get is some soft plastic miniatures, with usually horrible mold lines and often very soft details.
Sure, you can struggle to get the mold lines clean, and then try to make the primer stick, and then try to actually paint them with techniques not meant for miniatures like that.
Using shitty miniatures like that to train will ruin your fun at miniature painting for sure.

Just buy a box of regular wargaming minis that you actually like. And then paint them. Do 30-40€ really hurt that much as a hobby expense from which you benefit for years to come?
Is the 25-30€ potential "savings" worth it to struggle around with shitty army men when you instead could use something sculpted by the Perries, by Victrix or Northstar instead?