John's Blog

RADAR brings us The most dangerous toys of all time which is an interesting look at some of the toys we grew up with. Unfortunately meddlesome government regulations have removed these from the marketplace. Don't get me wrong, I'm usually in favor of the guiding hand of government when it concerns matters of the environment and safety, even if this is something we haven't seen much of the last few years.

But on some level there is a part of me that yearns for these toys and the risk and uncertainty that they represent. It's a dangerous world out there, and what better way to teach the lesson to kids than by factoring a bit of that into their toys? My generation seems to have survived the challenge, and it could be argued is better off for it, if you are willing to ignore those kids impaled by the lawn darts, but I blame that on irresponsible parents and bad supervision.

Today's children get a whimped out version of "The Thingmaker" which I'm sure produces an inferior version of the classic Creepy Crawlers. They will never know the joy of smelling the bubbling, smoking plastigoop searing itself into a gross-out bug creation over the open-face hot plate. Or the rewarding pain of prying the bugs out before they had fully cooled, which is when they were at their best!

It could be said that I may lack objectivity, and find my point of view overly influenced by boomer memories which like many recollections are far better than the reality. But apparently I'm hardly alone in this prejudice, since I recently saw a survey asking adults if given a choice between today's toys and those they grew us with, which did they prefer? The survey gave an overwhelming victory to the old toys! Danger and pain wins out over PS3? Go figure.

Tags: pop-culture, pointless rambling