Category: Toys

Some Boomers Are Feeling Old These Days

Are you feeling old these days? Is that what’s gotten you down, bunky? It’s understandable. If you watch TV or read the news, glimpses of boomer days past come rushing into focus. Memories of getting a polio or swine flu vaccine, to watching space launches, have been brought to the forefront with today’s headlines. Once you realize these memories are from 40, 50 or even 60-plus years ago, our currently sequestered minds can wonder, where have the years gone? Mister Boomer’s moment of suddenly feeling old arrived this past week when he heard and read news about two pop culture icons ever-present in the boomer years: Tom and Jerry cartoons and Mr. Potato Head toys.

TV commercials are informing us that Tom & Jerry: the Movie has been released in some theaters and specific streaming platforms. Tom and Jerry cartoons predate the Boomer Generation by a few years, but there was not a time when boomers didn’t have a chance to see these cat-and-mouse chases. From 1940 to 1957, Tom and Jerry cartoons were created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera as movie shorts for MGM studios. In 1963, MGM licensed the cartoon to the legendary Chuck Jones (Looney Tunes, Road Runner), who had left Warner Brothers. His Sib Tower 12 Productions company created Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM until 1967. Various Tom and Jerry movie shorts were then broadcast on TV beginning in 1965. The first new Tom and Jerry cartoons produced for TV didn’t arrive until 1975, and have pretty much been around ever since.

While Mister B can’t say he is familiar with any Tom and Jerry cartoons beyond the 1960s, he does know it gained the reputation as among the most violent ever produced. Tom, the cat, was ever in pursuit of Jerry, the mouse. Despite the size differential, Jerry often had the upper hand. Whacks and wallops with various mallets, frying pans, boards and more, were regular occurrences. Explosions, fire singes, plus meat cleaver amputations and bisectional knife slices and dices of Tom were part of the vernacular. There was never any blood in Tom and Jerry, and the two characters would be at it again in the next cartoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRKOTdpCYK4

Commercials indicate some of the same slapstick violence is present in the new movie, but Mister B wonders how the entire premise will hold an audience today. It was not among his favorite cartoons, as Mr. B preferred his violence as portrayed in The Road Runner. This new movie won’t be on his view list.

In business news this past week, it was revealed that Hasbro decided to drop the gender-specific title of “Mr. Potato Head” on its packaging, to just “Potato Head.” A true boomer-era toy that was invented in 1949, Mr. Potato Head was manufactured and distributed in 1952. While Hasbro claims to want to “promote gender equality and inclusion,” Mister B thinks it was merely a marketing exercise to avoid having to make more than one package for Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head; the company had already said it was going to continue to produce both of the toys, only now it will be packaged as “The Potato Head Family.” The toys themselves are and were, by societal norms, leaning extremely gender-specific. Mr. Potato Head still has a clip-on mustache, not usually associated with female potatoes. And Mrs. Potato Head still has longer eyelashes attached to her clip-on eyes, a feature not regularly associated with males outside of glam rock or Goth. However, boomer children were never required to use specific parts in their potato creations any more than they were required to color the sky blue. Well, that may be a bad analogy and a story for another time, but Mister B thinks you get the idea. The whole point of toys like Mr. Potato Head, like a lot of boomer-era toys, was that the child creates the play scene, using the toy parts (in this case) as the platform for personal creativity.

What does that have to do with feeling old? Think back to your first Mr. Potato Head, boomers. There was no “potato” in the box, only plastic eyes, ears, noses, mouths, arms and legs, plus accessories like hats and glasses. The potato in Mr. Potato Head was a REAL potato boomers had to get from their moms. Kids could use other vegetables or fruits soft enough to receive the plastic parts as well, like peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, peaches or apples. Hasbro first introduced a plastic potato in the box in 1964.

Multiple internet sources repeat the pop history claim that Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised in a TV commercial, but Mister B has not been able to independently verify the claim. Nonetheless, the toy was there, advertised in the early days of TV and the Boomer Generation. Mister Boomer had the version that required real fruits or vegetables. There were several versions of the kit available, with or without Mrs. Potato Head. Mister B’s kit came with Mr. Potato Head’s car. That, my boomer friends, was more than 60 years ago.

Do Tom and Jerry cartoons and Mr. Potato Head bring back happy memories, boomers, or are they reminders of how much water has flowed under the bridge?

Boomers Entered the “Violence in Entertainment” Debate

The holiday season is upon us once again, as thoughts turn to what gifts to get grandchildren, nieces and nephews. These days, those reflections are bound to include video games. After a recent conversation with a co-worker, Mister Boomer realized what a dilemma this is producing for many boomers, especially when it comes to the level of violent content in these games.

In our boomer youth, parents did not have to worry about violence in our games. Most of our games were either sports-related or board games. Possibly as violent as they got was, Operation, or maybe Clue (the butler in the pantry with the candlestick). Today, there is realistic violence portrayed in gaming that encompasses shoot-em-ups of people and aliens, bloody dispatch and dismemberment with assorted weaponry, and flesh-eating zombies who in turn get sliced and diced to the Netherworld. It’s a far cry from our day … or is it?

The truth of the matter is, the debate about exposing children to scenes of violence — how much and when, especially — has been a hot topic since the dawn of entertainment. Before World War II, movies were filled with violence (and, horror of horrors, sex!). Historians point to the Roaring 20s as a time of a sense of unbridled freedom for individuals, which was echoed in their entertainment. More than a few eyebrows were raised at what was thought to be the abandonment of morals, and talk of government intervention was already being debated.

After the War, the Boomer Generation produced more children than the country had seen in decades. The perfect storm of more children and the popularization of television were bound to throw a few logs on the debate fire. While proponents of the First Amendment argued the rights of TV writers and producers were unlimited by law, others wondered aloud whether it was time to take a look at those laws.

In 1952, the National Association of Broadcasters adopted a code of ethics as a way of self-regulating, to avoid further involvement of legislators looking to protect children from the evils of the world on this new medium with a proposed Advisory Board. Though there were no clear-cut paths to enforcement or punishment, the code was far-reaching. Included were:
• prohibition of profanity
• prohibition of nudity
• no portrayal of irreverence toward God and religion
• no portrayal of drunkenness and addiction
• no portrayals of cruelty or crime details

.. and perhaps more controversial:
• no negative portrayal of family life (i.e., “family values”)
• no negative portrayal of law enforcement
• “decency” guidelines that stated how performers were to dress

Is it any wonder, then, that boomers watched shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver? The TV westerns of the 1950s showed a great deal of violence, but it was sanitized for viewers. When the bad guy was shot, he’d inevitably grab his chest and fall over, whether that was off his horse, off a roof or balcony, or merely to the ground. Turning his head and closing his eyes were the indication for boomers that this character had met his Creator. There were no wounds present, and boomers never saw a drop of blood. That was the case, whether the show was about westerns, the War or cops and robbers.

In 1976, the broadcaster code was ruled to violate the First Amendment by a Los Angeles federal court. Nonetheless, some semblance of the code remains today.

The path that movies took was similar, but also different. The studios adopted their own set of standards as well, but abandoned it by the middle of the boomer years. Some say French Cinéma Vérité in the 1960s influenced American moviemakers to want to portray more realism in telling their story. Others point to the Vietnam War as influence — called the first televised war because violent scenes of action and trauma and a nightly death toll were displayed on our TVs. Others still look at the the Boomer Generation itself, and a decade of civil unrest and protest, as a contributor to a backlash against regulation of violent content. Compare the war violence of a movie like The Guns of Navarone (1961) to that of The Deer Hunter (1978) and the difference between the ’60s and ’70s is apparent. Despite the added arguments against these depictions, movies of the 1970s are now looked at as a new Golden Age of American Film, exactly for their raw portrayal of life.

As boomers aged, video games appeared and were popularized. The first to appear were video versions of two-player games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Table Tennis; that evolved into Pong around 1972, the one that most boomers will recall as their first serious foray into the genre. There wasn’t much room for violence when the monotone screen had nothing more than dots and lines on it.

The questions surrounding the depiction of violence are still debated. The question of whether the viewing of such violence has an effect on the child viewer, and if so, to what degree, is still unanswered. However, many point to the sophistication of today’s youth in understanding that what they are watching is not real. Something that comes to mind for Mister Boomer is remembering how comic books were thought of in the same way for our generation. Not only that, but rock ‘n roll was going to be a big disruptor of the American way of life.

Meanwhile the holiday gift list awaits. Naturally, the parents have to be consulted in any decision, but maybe this is the year to reintroduce the children to Monopoly and Uno?

What hard decisions have you had to make, boomers, regarding the violent content of video games for your children and grandchildren?