Simple Character Animation

So with the help of some very cool people. I got my simple cubic character up and running. I was able to implement a good bit of what I was wanting to accomplish. Now I'm at the point where I'd like to add some basic animation. Right now I have a face on the cube (made up of simple polygons).

First thing was for me to make a simple jump animation where the character opens his mouth. What I ended up doing was have two polys for the mouth with one rigged to an armature. Then I scaled the linked poly in the middle of the animation to make it look like his mouth was open. Unfortunately, it animates correctly in Torque, but in game (when the animation is played) you only see the bottom of the poly textured.

It's basically one thin tube poly and a cube for the mouth. The cube is linked to an armature. The cube scaled to practically nothing in the root pose. Then when you get to frame 10 I drop the cube down a couple units. This makes it look like the characters mouth is open (it's just a black poly getting streched). And then it comes back up on the last frame. But when I export it, just the very bottom of the cube gets textured and it looks like a line going up and down when it should be one solid black poly moving. Any thoughts?

I feel like I'm not doing the animations the best way possible. Can I achieve animations without using armatures in Blender (and still export ok)? I wouldn't think you would use armatures in face animations. Thanks!