Little girl playing Skeletor. Oakville, Ontario, Canada 1984
Posted by razzbuffnik on June 16th, 2009
Every time I look at this image I can’t help thinking about how unhealthy the iconography of the toys are.
It’s a mystery to me, why a little girl like this, and other children for that matter, think that skulls and satanic symbols are cool. Even more puzzling is buying such messed up things for kids. I know that children pester their parents for all sorts of things but surely no good can come from such capitulations.
More stuff I just don’t get.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Skeletor! The Evil Lord of Destruction and the greatest threat to Eternia will never conquer Castle Grayskull … thanks to He-Man!
Superheroes would be no fun if there weren’t Supervillains.
… but I think this former child has gone over to the “Dorkside”.
June 16th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
The best way I’ve ever heard it put is, “Come to the Dark Side… We have cookies!”
The five year old boy across the street came over to show my son (age 3) and me (older the that) his new toy lawnmower. Gleefully, he informed us that it’s name was “Bloody Skull.” I had no idea what to do with that… and thankfully, neither did Short Stack. Some kids are just drawn to it for some reason. Personally, when I was a kid, skulls freaked me out. I wanted nothing to do with them and avoided any images of them as best i could. That being said, I loved a good ghost story. Go figure.
Excuse me for a second whilst I swing my butt up onto this high horse..*oomph* There. Ahem…
There is NO WAY I would buy this crap for either of my kids. (Dismounts)
We’ll see how I hold up over time with that resolution.
-Turkish Prawn
June 17th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I’m a gamer, so there are things in my house that look quite evil. Collectible game cards. Books. Some video games.
And yet none of my kids are all that warped. They have imaginations and completely understand that fantasy IS fantasy. And except for Hermione Granger, none have ever wanted to dress up as something so ugly for Halloween.
Kids are going to gravitate to images and characters they see. Sometimes it’s because their friends are doing it, and other times it’s because they see it ad nauseum on TV. Another reason we don’t have cable . . .
Offer alternatives. Teach them to read. And their minds will take off . . .
June 17th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Planetross
Dorkside! I love it!
Turkish
A lawnmower called Bloody Skull? Now that’s disturbing.
Tysdaddy
I also used to game. Started of with AD&D and used to play 40K (Eldar). One thing I noticed when playing 40K was that kids loved playing chaos with all it’s satanic iconography and evil ethos. My concern is why are kids so attracted to such dark stuff? I’m fully aware that most kids know what fantasy is, it’s just that I find the childish fascination with evil, gore and death so unsettling and mysterious.
As for now having cable, I’m with you on that but probably for a different reasons. We get 7 free to air stations here in Sydney and 4 of them are very good plus, and let’s face it, cable might give one over 100 stations but 99% of what it offers is crap and I don’t think it’s worth the subscription fee.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I do like that our local PBS station and their various digital channels (since that’s all we can get anymore . . . Aaargh!) do offer some decent programming. We have one that is dedicated strictly to crafts and the arts, and one that airs kids programming, for a surprisingly wide range of ages, throughout the entire day.
Otherwise, we love movies.
I remember as a kid being mortified by the advertisement for the movie “Magic” starring a very young Anthony Hopkins. The trailer along freaked the crap out of me so badly that I had nightmares nearly every night for a time. But nowadays, this sort of stuff seems to be par for the course. Horror is mainstream. Or perhaps I should say Gore, because that’s what much of today’s stuff really is. I shy away from that stuff, and so do my kids. There’s no thinking involved, just frame after frame of CGI madness.
We have a group of guys locally that still do 40k. I never got into that . . . not talented enough to paint all those tiny figures . . .