> > > > 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.

And now for the voice of a younger generation. I wasn't much for the toys that "played themselves" when I was a little. I was more into Legos and sets of little plastic animals and people who'd have epic adventures in the little cities I built for them in the piles of junk in our storage room. Most of all, I think I liked inventing these elaborate role-playing games that I'd play with my friends at recess. We made up characters and everything.

Cheez "Just letting you know the kind of recreational creativity you're talking about still exists... or at least it did in the late '80s/early '90s" Liz
>
> (snip)

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

P.S. This time-honored tradition is still going strong as well. The kid down the street is at any given moment just inches away from blowing up his brother's car by detonating his out-of-state explosives in the driveway.