Cute toy

Via email from Joey D:

When was the last time you saw toy guns advertised on T.V.? Many people would consider it evil.

Not many people alive today will remember Roy Rogers. But once upon a time he had a radio series, a television series, was in numerous movies, and was a model for honor, honesty, and clean living.

Times sure have changed.

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6 thoughts on “Cute toy

  1. My brother and I had all kinds of Mattel lever action rifles, and my prized possession was a Mattel six-shooter that used “Shootin’ Shells” with “Greenie Stick’em Caps.”

    My brother had a shooting toy named “Hands up Harry” – you’d shoot at his hat, etc. If you hit his belt buckle, his pants would fall down, “for heap-big chuckle!”

  2. “TV ads for kids’ toy weapons like this 1964 spot for “Johnny Seven OMA (One Man Army)” were so much more barbaric in the 1960s–but gun violence numbers in America were lower back then. Go figure that one out.”

    You have to laugh at the use of the word unbelievable and especially “barbaric.” Boys pretending to destroy things? Unbelievable! Firing a plastic missile at a tank/wagon is the height of barbarism. Yeah, this is what they think of you.

    • I was the target demographic for that Johnny Seven OMA, but I didn’t want one. I thought it was too gimmicky. I had read and re-read the CB Colby book “musket to M14”, which portrayed the M14 as the ultimate development of firearms technology, and had a plastic toy M14 instead.

  3. The original ‘first generation’ Transformers were remarkably similar to real devices. Soundwave and the cassettes were juuuust about the same size for microcassettes and their recorders.

    The real winner, however, was Megatron, who turned into a P38 Walther with various attachments. Granted, he was a little clunky, but he looked surprisingly real in gun mode. Supposedly the first production run could even fire soft rubber pellets, but that functionality was removed in the U.S. IIRC (probably the safety nannies threw a fit).

  4. “[O]nce upon a time [Roy Rogers] had a radio series, a television series, was in numerous movies, and was a model for honor, honesty, and clean living.”

    He still has a mixed drink named after him. Cola and grenadine. Like the Shirley Temple (Sprite and grenadine), it’s non-alcoholic, but quite tasty.

    Clean living, indeed.

  5. “Musket to M-14”? I thought I was the only one who remembered those “Colby Books”. I probably wore out that very volume from the local library. As for Roy Rogers, well he was on our side but I was a John Wayne fan from the word go.

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