Toys for children

[sandbender]

When I was a child I owned a toy machine gun, from memory I think it looked a bit like a Thompson submachine gun, if I pulled the trigger an internal flywheel would cause a piece of metal to tap repeatably at the internal casing to produce a satisfying rat a tat tat sound.

My toy gun didn't seem to be a particularly unusual purchase in 1969/70, other children had similar ones.

Toy guns still seem to selling, over here in the big stores anyway. However I was a bit surprised to see a blister pack on the shelves that not only contained an assault rifle, but also a couple of grenades and plastic bowie knuckle duster knife.

Perhaps it is just me, having your kid pretend to shoot his mates probably seemed like good clean fun in the seventies, these days perhaps not so cool, but having your wee one pretend to stab his mates does seem a little out of order.

By way of contrast, having lived in mainland Europe for quite a while now I have noticed that there are quite a few German toy manufacturers who are quite popular Europe wide, they don't make tanks, they don't make guns, they make toy agricultural machinery. In different scales and covering all aspects of land management.

Here is an example.

I don't know, the Germans just seem to have a much healthier idea about toys should be.

Have a great Christmas everyone.

 

[Goatboy]

Hi Sandbender,

Yes I can see folk wanting to be more PC these days. But give a boy kid LEGO and what'll he make? a gun, sword etc. Heck they'll even do it with sticks. I loved educational toys too and always asked for books. But I did have fun with toy guns too.

Have a great festive season,
Goatboy.

 

[Niels]

Didn't we all play with fake weapons when we were younger? I don't recall pretending to stab anyone but aiming sticks at each-other and shouting 'bam' wasn't at all that uncommon!

 

[British Red]

Yeah - actually we all shot each other for real! remember those spud guns? Brilliant fun!

For all of that though...I still love farm machinery now. Not just tractors, but those huge sprayers and combine harvesters are just COOL. I'm not big on factory farming....but a crawler tractor.....oooooooh

 

[Keith_Beef]

SWMBO is all against toy guns... but if your boys don't have toy guns, then just pick up sticks, like you say, and point them and shout BANG.

And yes, in the absence of toy swords they will pick up sticks and whack each other with them... the difference being that toy swords generally have rounded edges while sticks have sharp bits and splinters.

But that's an argument I'm never going to win, so I think that giving boys some pieces of sandpaper is perhaps a more diplomatic solution.

 

[Goatboy]

Not sure if I should admit this on the net but we used to blow stuff up too. Never maliciously, or somebody elses stuff. But we could make boompowder from farm stuff. I've grown up into a well balanced healthy minded type.

"It's nice here with a view of the trees
Eating with a spoon?
They don't give you knives?
'Spect you watch those trees
Blowing in the breeze
We want to see you lead a normal life"

I can always get a camp fire lit, and a classical education involves literature and the history of violence.

Goatboy.

 

[Toddy]

My young brother was stationed in Germany when my sons were toddlers. He came home every Christmas with the most wonderful toys for them Trainsets and tractors and all the trailers that went with them They're still up the loft; they were/are brilliant toys.
Britains make all the tractors and trailers too though; the farmer's shops have them on their shelves
http://www.farmtoysonline.co.uk/britains_farm_toys/c122-all?gclid=CMavhajZsbQCFW_KtAodxwEAJw
and the Tonka trucks were excellent, especially outside in the sandpit.

My brother and his mate were thoroughly dischuffed though when the boys Action Force toy soldiers had the new rifles before they did


I'm in two minds about this, tbh.

Children aren't allowed to play with guns in playgroup or nursery or schools, yet toy guns are made by the million, and I had no problem with my sons playing, "Sodjers"; indeed it would have been rather hypocritical of me to do so since their Uncle was one, and they knew their Grandfather and Great Uncles had been soldiers during wartime too. (they asked for their medals and were told 'their' youngest Uncle had already asked when he was a wee boy but he could wait until they were deid to get them )

I think I prefer the more realistic models, the Action Force RAF winchman set, kind of thing to fantasy robotic/humanmachine type models.

The reality is the we do have armed services, and we do have servicemen serving at the front line, and children do watch the news; and they do see the funeral processions too

I made my sons wooden swords and shields......when a pacifist friend called me cruel, "Those will hurt!", I told her that was the point; if you hit your brother with a sword he'll hit you back. It's a lifetime lesson, but skillful use of the tools will make it a lot harder.
Besides, the imagination comes into play, and the roof of the coal cellar became a castle , the fences were the battlements, and the bikes were horses and the bin became the dungeon (don't ask ) though the scaffolding on a building being reharled was a bit of a hairy playground when they decided to 'scale the walls' :yikes:
It's a different world now. I skelped their backsides for that one; not only could they have been injured, but the men who built up the scaffolding would have been blamed for it. I'd get done for child abuse now even though it was indignity not pain that got the message through.

Come to think on it though; it might have stopped them climbing the scaffolding poles, but it didn't stop them climbing the castle walls.....literally or ice climbing, at night or using airguns or bows and arrows either as they got older.

I think variety is healthy, I really do. I still find Son2's wee toy soldiers when I'm digging in the garden. He got a ton of sand every Easter holiday for years. It was a brilliant resouce in a heavy clay garden, but for two wee boys it was about the best present they could play with WW3 was fought out there with wee green and brown plastic soldiers forever posed in the bayonet charge, or firing a rifle or throwing a grenade, tanks and field guns and sandbag machine gun nests, and then slowly dwindled away as they grew up. I still find the farm animals and zoo animals and dinosaurs too however, and I dug up a wee plastic harrow a few months ago.

I didn't buy fake knives for them though; they were given Swiss army knives early on; they're good tools and I wanted them to see knives as good tools, but then they were bought real tools too, for wood, for electrical and mechanical.

As I said, I'm in two minds about it. I don't like those incredibly violent computer games that somehow dehumanise suffering, that make bloodbaths acceptable, because everyone can just get up and try again, can't they ? and I don't like films with gore just to get a reaction, or bullet wounds that don't incapacitate or hurt.

I do like those toys though Sandbender

cheers,
M

 

[Toddy]

reply to goatboy......my bother got the sharp side of my tongue for showing my two how to blow up their sand pit using match 'bombs'
He promised he wouldn't do it again because the five year old had watched with unholy glee on his wee face, but the six year old worked out how he did it and was going to try it for himself

The 'must not' list grew exponentially every time he came home on leave

M

 

[Jared]

Seem to remember a few decades ago being told Germany had restrictions on toy weapons ?

 

[Goatboy]

Hiya Toddy,

Excellently put and you sound like a proper Mum. Kids are preprogramed to a degree, though we should be allowed to express ourselves without harming others too. It's only through all that play and imagination that we can figure out where our little jigsaw arms fit into the bigger picture of adult life. It's funny when you meet folk you haven't seen in 20-30 years and see how they've turned out. If they're lucky they've opened out into the full sized bloom of the bud you remember as a child. Though there were the odd wrong-uns.

Goatboy.

 

[Toddy]

It's an awkward one this; but if I had grandsons I wouldn't buy them toy handguns, but I would buy them toy rifles.
I've somehow got the idea that rifles are useful tools, whether for hunting or for pest control, or for soldiers; but handguns just kind of send the wrong message
Yet, Scotland has a huge knife assault problem in some areas, while firearms crime (what little their is) is falling.

Sorry, Sandbender, totally taken this thread OT.
I'll delete my posts if it's not sitting happily ?

M

 

[Goatboy]

Just saw your latest post Toddy. Yes we have to show responsibility when teaching kids stuff. Hence why I was taught how to look after a knife and a firearm PROPERLY. never to even think of theatening someone with them.

 

[British Red]

A friend of mine (a medic) had a son who had a penchant for blowing stuff up. He insisted on driving him to a lonely spot to do it (the military did it there too!). That son is now a very successful man - who blows stuff up for a living (mining engineer). Most thing have their place - its all about learning to do things responsibly - and not to get your learning from the TV!

 

[Toddy]

Just saw your latest post Toddy. Yes we have to show responsibility when teaching kids stuff. Hence why I was taught how to look after a knife and a firearm PROPERLY. never to even think of theatening someone with them.

That is such a vital part of it, it really is
We had a member who joined and then later on added an avatar of himself pointing a rifle straight at the viewer. It set my hackles on end, it was just 'wrong'.
He was asked to find a different one, and to his credit he did so without complaint, but I thought at the time, "Did no one ever teach him not to do that? ".

atb,
M

 

[sandbender]

"...Sorry, Sandbender, totally taken this thread OT.
I'll delete my posts if it's not sitting happily ?.."

No Mary it is fine.

I used to blow up stuff in the sandpit too.

"...but a crawler tractor.....oooooooh..."

I prefer older tractors but that pic does it for me too.

 

[British Red]

Aaaah you would love my neighbours hobby - he restores vintage tractors - he finished an MF35 recently in red. I called it "Noddy's tractor" - cos it looked like a tractor version of Noddy's car.

Above all I like his Fordson Major though. Its not a restoration job - just an old workhorse that he keeps running - I describe it as having a two tone paint job (Blue and rust!)

Just for you though - here it is shifting a brush pile after we had been doing the trees in my paddock


1953 Fordson Major_1 by British Red, on Flickr

Lovely thing - 60 years old in a few weeks and still going strong - used all the time

Red

 

[santaman2000]

Toddy I think you got it right in your first post. Kids want (and really need) a good variety of toys. From toy tractors, to toy guns, to toy fire trucks, to toy airplanes, to toy labratory sets, etc. They'll figure out the limits of their imagination and hopefully their life's work.

I don't mind my grandkids playing soldier or cops & robbers. What would worry me though would be if he, the oldest (the youngest isn't old enough to play yet) wanted to be the bad guy in those games. I seriously want him to have a sense of right from wrong.

 

[John Fenna]

I had toy gunsand toy knives as a kid , spud guns you can srill get : I used to play with explosives and real knives from about the age of eight. My sister nearly lost an eye to a cane arrow shot from a cane bow (a pal shooting it - playing William Tell) a mate nearly lost an eye when shot by a BB from a catapuly. Both recovered.
I never realy played with cars or tractors but made weapons from wood (swords, spears , knives etc) and built dens ("forts") in the woods.
Did this warp me?
You tell me!
I have a diploma in Fashion Design, have never stabbed or shot anyone and at the moment most of my time is spent as a support worker for Mencap.
The one harmful "toy" that has realy harmed me was the "sweetie cigarets, pipes and baccy" which lead to me becoming a smoker (if you think that toys lead to mimicry in real life).
"Weaponry" style toys do not warp folk (IMHO) it is parental/socialogical attitudes, violent movies/role models.
Who wants a child to end up as an adult obsessed with poluting noisy machinery that promotes a petrochemical/ chemcal/drugs based industry that is stripping the land of its natural fertility, variety and beauty? Would you teach your child to assosiate with those who regularly flout traffic laws, driving unroadworthy vehicles in unsafe ways - like the majority of farmers around here seem to do?
Stick to toy guns and swords!

 

[sandbender]

"...Above all I like his Fordson Major though. Its not a restoration job - just an old workhorse that he keeps running..."

That is great, it is amazing how some of these machines can keep on going long after some of newer ones give up the ghost. I do own my brothers old Mamod Steam Traction Engine...

[video=youtube;9H30yKId0iU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H30yKId0iU[/video]

 

[Mesquite]

Yeah - actually we all shot each other for real! remember those spud guns? Brilliant fun!

For all of that though...I still love farm machinery now. Not just tractors, but those huge sprayers and combine harvesters are just COOL. I'm not big on factory farming....but a crawler tractor.....oooooooh

That so does it for me Hugh... I used to drive tractors when I was a groundsman and my favourite job was gang mowing the playing fields and to tell the truth I do miss that job

Sad as I am one of my bucket list wishes is to have a day out driving those big farm tractors... I'd have a whale of a time