Prometheus 6

This is bizarre, to say the least.  At what point does a child question this sort of amusement, if ever?      

Sad but true,

I actually got into a Jart fight with a neighbor kid and won. I didn't start it either...,

This same kid and I would routinely shoot our bb guns at one another, as well - all in good fun..., Irony of the Darwinian threshing floor, he's an engineer with HP, married with children and thriving....,

Atomic science made easy..., 

my 5th grade science teacher, Miss Anne Jones had these and we did all these experiments circa 1973-74...,

learning how to make WMDs in 5th grade? 

This is bizarre, to say the least. At what point does a child question this sort of amusement, if ever?

Don't forget that the target audience for this toy were future Civil War reenactors. The manufacturer was thinking ahead. I suspect that this toy was made in some sort of loose product tie-in with the television series "The Rebel" starring the late Nick Adams that ran from 1959 to 1961. Adams played a disaffected former Confederate soldier who roamed the West trying to do good. It was all part of the continuing myth about the South and the romance of its Lost Cause. Remember Clint Eastwood in "The Outlaw: Josey Wells"?

At what point does a child question this sort of amusement, if ever?     

I don't think you ever do.

How many people ever think of The Winning of the West as a war of conquest and genocide? How many see the cavalry that rides to the rescue as shock troops?

I know I generally don't. Doesn't matter that I know better. 

my 5th grade science teacher, Miss Anne Jones had these and we did all these experiments circa 1973-74...,

I had a chemistry set once...

A group of mothers in my hometown formed a group to get the Flexy Racer No. 300 banned. A few months ago I talked to a guy who grew up in the same city that I did whose mother actually burned his in the fireplace after he crashed and knocked out a tooth. If the hill was steep enough you could get up to about 35 or 40 miles an hour while lying flat on your stomach. Nobody thought it was important to put a helmet on kids in those days. I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I now own four of these including the one my parents gave me when I was kid. We lived in a housing project that had great wide steep streets and minimal automobile traffic during the day. I had a lot of fun!

The point about Civil War reenactors is interesting.  Anyone read the book Confederates in the Attic?  

Too booj-wah. We stole supermarket shopping carts, took the wheels and made box cars...crates and boards nailed together, wheels nailed to the boards.

But you remember those pedal cars? We had a couple of them, until I got the first "sting -ray" bicycle.

I guess there were better ways of having fun than playing with Confederate battle gear. 

"Too booj-wah."

In the spring after kite season was over we used to "liberate" ball bearings from the Southern Pacific trainyard and wood from new houses being built in the greater neighborhood to build coasters. I once saw a friend of mine fail to negotiate a right turn at the bottom of a long hill and hit a pole with his left leg stretched out thereby breaking his hip.

He was lying on the ground screaming and writhing in pain when his oldest brother, who was in high school, arrived on the scene. Thinking that his brother was faking he began hollering at him to get up off the ground. Finally, when his youngest brother failed to heed his command he grabbed him by the arm and twisted it so badly that he actually broke his younger brother's arm. We still laugh about this incident when we get together.

It is a wonder that some of us didn't die when we were kids. The dying came later.