> > > You couldn't get toys during the war, so me made most of the stuff we played with.
> >
> > This is the kind of stuff I was talking about. Kids don't do this anymore. They get a buzzing lighting shooting racing exploding thing for Christmas, it breaks a week later, and that's that.
>

This is a big issue for me. When I was a kid, the greater percentage of the toys actually encouraged you, as a kid, to be creative. my brother and I could spend a long time setting up our armies of little, green army men, and then even longer playing out scenarios, creating dialogue, sound effects, everything. However, now I can walk through the toy aisles and see how nearly everything makes it's own noise, or essentially "plays itself" and doesn't really require the child to do much more than push a button. This is so sad.
Yesterday, I had a breif conversation with my daughter about a toy train that we have. This train allows you to either switch it on (then it drives itself, forward, one speed), or leave it off (in which you can operate it manually as if it weren't powered). Initially, she maintained that in order to play with it, you had to turn it on. I then pointed out that it's much more versatile if you "play the toy" rather than have it "play itself". I then related the same concept to her Barbies, and she seemed to almost understand what I was saying.
After seeing one of my kids squeeze the crap out of a mere stuffed animal in a vane attempt to make it say something, it sorta reshreshing to see them playing enthusiasticly with a cardboard paper towell roll.

(snip)
> Today, no kid would be caught dead with a firecracker for fear that he would be.
>
> I don't quite buy that. Laws prohibiting fireworks exist in many places - and keep getting more restrictive - and parents don't want their kids playing with firecrackers, but most *kids* I know are still thrilled to death with them and will sneak off and play with them in secret.

I agree. In my youth we'd make the ritualistic pilgrimage out of state (where the laws are more relaxed) to buy our pyrotechnics.

Tra "now if only I hadn't blown off all of my fingers, I could push the buttons on the toys and make them work" nio