Friday, September 24, 2010

The Bygone Golden Age Of Kids

I've probably mentioned before that the 1950s and 60s was a golden age for kids. We had it easy. We didn't have to work the farm, no depression and there were huge wonderful companies who spent their time thinking up great ways to entertain us.

The Toy companies had genius designers and inventors. Just check out the design and functionality of Johnny 7



We had the best toy weapons ever. I think we were better armed than the Marines. There were lots more like these too. We used to organize street wars with all the kids in the neighborhood and at the end of a Saturday afternoon, the lawns would be littered with our twitching expiring plastic bullet ridden bodies. Our Moms would revive us with wholesome sugar coated cereals.


I guess they stopped making this kind of stuff after the Hippies decided that toy guns inspired us to be violent. But I think we had a lot more violence in the generation that grew up with Barney and Care Bears.

MORE HAPPY KILLING TOOLS

Just from a design standpoint alone, compare Johnny 7 to the kind of design that the 70s replaced it with:
70s soft warrior with soft featureless dim flashlight weapon