Toys As Essential Tools of Violence

I grew up in an era that prepped kids for the realities of a cruel world. Seventies kids are tough as nails. Our toys were not products of a virtual world with ‘pretend’ violence. Our toys had real consequences and required real stitches. That’s how we learned to survive in a world that’s designed to kick our butts. We weren’t sissies with toys like lawn darts that kept us bruised, battered and skittish. We had Soccer Boppers that gave us permission to punch one another in the face, and Creepy Crawlies Thingmakers to melt our fingerprints off. Easy Bake ovens singed the hair off our arms, and Polly Pockets and Superballs blocked our bowels when we accidentally swallowed them. We even got high off of the fumes from Balloon-In-a-Tube that claimed so many brain cells. But the best preparation for the wilds of living in the adult world had to be Clackers: two large marbles on the ends of two strings attached by a plastic ring. They were designed after the bolo, a South American hunting weapon. If you had a set of Clackers and came away with all your teeth then you weren’t using them right. We knocked our brains out, blackened our eyes, bruised our arms and, when we got lucky, managed to shatter them with spectacular results. I’m a proud survivor of a 70s era childhood. Sure, we’re scarred and hand-shy, but we know how to pick ourselves back up. Not like kids these days who can Ctl-Alt-Delete to start over. Band-aids, ice packs and stitches, man. That’s how kids learn to be tough.

Comments

[Mary-LUE]

I just wrote about Clackers a couple of months ago. Dang! I was scared to death of those things. We lived in an apartment in Southeast L.A. It was the year of the Sylmar Quake. My mom sewed little A-line dresses, yellow with heart buttons for us. My brother, 12 or 13 at the time, threw his up in the air and they wrapped around a telephone wire. No more Clackers. Praise the Lord! I was safe--at least from the Clackers.