Johnny Seven was one of the top toys of the Sixties.
It was the mother of toy guns and still owning one now has made me think that kids nowadays probably wouldn't be able to go outside with anything like it. Or are toy Nerf rifles allowed in the street? I doubt it these days of heightened awareness.
Kids in the Sixties played out with toys and toy rifles. Look at this old print of kids in Salford with a Johnny Seven [pic: Shirley Baker]. Where we foolish to do this? Gung ho even?
It was the mother of toy guns and still owning one now has made me think that kids nowadays probably wouldn't be able to go outside with anything like it. Or are toy Nerf rifles allowed in the street? I doubt it these days of heightened awareness.
Kids in the Sixties played out with toys and toy rifles. Look at this old print of kids in Salford with a Johnny Seven [pic: Shirley Baker]. Where we foolish to do this? Gung ho even?
But kids these days witness violence in video games in their rooms on a hourly basis don't they. So which generation was and is more militarised? Us Sixties kids or today's generation?
Or are we beyond comparison? Is there a better question and does it matter?
A wonderful Johnny Seven archive pic Woodsy. The Johnny Seven is a childhood zeitgeist of its period... it sold in a technologically and socially optimistic era, when kids perception of combat was shaped mostly through the sanitized and censored mediums of cinema, TV and comics, Todays Xbox combat games are also a product of their own period... created and sold in a technologically advanced and socially changed society, whose defining characteristic is, unrestricted, uncensored, mass media access and consumption. Objectively, I'd suspect that regardless of generation, boys are biologically hot wired and socially conditioned to have an attraction towards military toys, games and guns. Subjectively, my salute goes to the legendary Johnny Seven, a true spirit of its time.
ReplyDeleteRegards Tony K