Title: The Past Is A Strange Foreign Country Source:
YouTube URL Source:http://YouTube Published:Sep 4, 2009 Author:USA Post Date:2009-09-04 20:19:02 by X-15 Keywords:None Views:653 Comments:8
These seem to be circa 1961. The Flintstones commercial remind you of what the anti-smoking brigade meant when it complained that cigarette advertising was being aimed at children. With the cigarette-smoking demographic being killed off by its own product, virtually the only way for cigarette companies to keep up was to induce more people to smoke - and that usually meant getting kids to take up smoking.
The tommy gun commercial is simultaneously cute and alarming. Notice how the kid is wearing suspenders AND A NECKTIE (i.e., he's a GOOD boy, not a little ruffian). Teaches kids that shooting at someone will solve problems without actually doing anyone lasting harm. That handgun that pumped out "safe" bullets probably put someone's eye out eventually.
Guns like these, although supposedly child-sized, looked enough like the real thing that (1) robbers actually used them to hold up people and (2) kids playing with those realistic guns had been killed by cops and others who thought they were facing a real gun. As a result, several states (primarily NY) passed laws that toy guns and squirt guns had to be made in colors or shapes that did not resemble the real thing.
"Teaches kids that shooting at someone will solve problems without actually doing anyone lasting harm."
As a kid, I owned every gun that Mattel made from the fanner fifty with shootin' shells and greenie stickem caps to the machine guns just like that kid has. They were great fun in a fantasy situation like playing war which is actually what they were made for, IOW, they were toys and as kids, we had enough sense to know that they were toys and no one was really getting hurt. We didn't get psyched out, grow a tail or harbor thoughts of actually killing anyone. I can't speak for you as perhaps they affected you that way but we were smart enough to realise that they weren't real.
IOW, they were toys and as kids, we had enough sense to know that they were toys and no one was really getting hurt. We didn't get psyched out, grow a tail or harbor thoughts of actually killing anyone.
most kids didn't and how many were diagnosed ADD and Ritalyned back then?
In my neighborhood we ran around playing Germans and Japs or Rebels and Yanks, bragging rights went to those who died in the most creative manner.
_________________________________________________________________________ "This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”
“The best and first guarantor of our neutrality and our independent existence is the defensive will of the people…and the proverbial marksmanship of the Swiss shooter. Each soldier a good marksman! Each shot a hit!” -Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
