A toy gun that encourages kids to stick the barrel in their mouth

What-were-they-thinking? toy of the week: a toy shaped like a gun with a whistle on the end.

You can see a video here on the blog boingboing.net

Comments

[jeff]

ha ha ha stupid co.

[Mumoftwo]

Hilarious post, Jane and too true. My husband is definitely of the 'a few bruises never hurt anyone' school of parenting, however, he does supervise them whilst they climb up the 'big childrens' adventure areas and various trees (they are two and four!) It's a good antidote to my more 'cautious' (read neurotic') type of parenting. Although this particular toy is crazy, I do let my children look at books from their father's homeland (an Eastern European country) which have animals carrying guns as part of the tales. Their fairy-tale books also have the correct endings in them unlike our sanitised versions; so the old woman gets pushed into the fire and burns in Hansel and Gretel, the wolf falls into the boiling water in the cooking pot under the chimney in Three Little Pigs. Political correctness has yet to hit many of the old Eastern Bloc countries...my husband hoots with laughter at the way the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood make friends on the Cbeebies version!

[jane]

Ah, but then, of course, I'd never let my kiddies play in a puddle unsupervised....!

I agree a debate/chat/session on just where 'reasonable precaution' turns into 'unnecessary paranoia' when it comes to parenting, would be an excellent one here - and probably arousing just as strong feelings as the FTWM/SAHM debate!

I am, myself, far more of a paranoid mum than a 'let them learn about gravity by falling off a cliff' mum, but one of the things that 'gets me' about all this 'we never let our children play outdoors anymore' carping is that it seems to assume that the only way children can play outdoors is by chucking them out of your front door and not seeing them again for six hours....

To me, and I would expect lots of mums, a whole lot of time with my offsprings was spent out in the woods, up in the park, off on our bikes, etc etc, usually with other mums and kids. A favourite one was the 'picnic on the common' where a group of mums would meet at our local woods/common (lucky to have one close by), all the mums would sit around on rugs and goz and drink coffee, while kids zoomed around on bikes, played footie/cricket/frisbee etc, or, if we were in the park, hung out on the playstuff. They were all doing real, old-fashioned 'kids stuff', BUT we were keeping an eye on them. No child-rapists sneaking up on our kids thanks very much!

Now the kids are older, at secondary school, it's a question of gradually letting them go off on their own - BUT, with rules. Always stick with a chum, take your mobile and keep it on (they can track you via it), agree with me where you are going and stick with that and if you meet other mates and they want to go somehwere else then PHONE me to let me know (etc etc etc). It's all not rocket science stuff and, so far, it's working! Even more important, don't just 'hang around aimlessly' like I see too many of their contemporaries doing in our local town, who have, pretty obviously, just been chucked out of their homes, and told to get on with it as Mum is busy.....FAR too busy to get off her backside and drop them off at the swimming pool/hockey ground, whatever.

[Lazy Mummy]

Jane - that's the funniest comment I've ever read on this blog. It really sums up what's wrong with current attitudes towards children, childhood and child-rearing, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now, a really sensible thing to discuss (as I'm mulling over what Margot said in response to the "yummy mummy" post) would be: how can we possibly change this juggernaut of paranoid, over-protective parenting/schooling and give our children some freedom to play, screw up and learn the way we did? And actually, it would be more interesting than resurrecting the tired old cliches about SAHMs and WMs.

[jane]

"what happened to playing in a puddle?"

Banned for the following reasons:

(1) A child might fall in and drown
(2) A child might jump across it and break their leg landing
(3) A child who tried to jump across, and failed, landing in the middle of the puddle unexpectedly might be so psychologically traumatised by the experienced they required intensive psychiatric treatment for the rest of their lives
(4) A child jumping in might causes splashes of water to land on a passer by, who might (a) sue the parents for damanges and (b) suffer severe pscyhlogical trauma from the ordeal
(5) Jumping into puddles was what John (who had a great big waterproof coat on, etc) did in AA Milne's hopelessy white middle class - ie, discriminatory - book, Now We Are Six (a title that is also discriminatory against immigrant chidlren who can't count to six in English and against lower class children who can't count to six in any langauge whatsoever.)(but who do possess the considerable skill of setting fire to cars in the street and hitting people with bricks who object to them doing so.)

There - now you know!!!!

[J]

All I can think of is that they designed it round the easy grip and the big yellow trigger thingy, which you can pull with your thumb if you are small. It is exactly ,ike a gun, but its also the easiest mechanism for very small children to get the daft thing to whizz round. They probably didnt even really see the resemblance.

Other big question of course is what on earth is it FOR, I mean cant they just have a whistle? dos everything have to be bright red and plastic and whizz about? what happened to playing in a puddle?

[Lazy Mummy]

Probably considered the first step in firearm education in some parts of the world. Remember: "guns don't kill people; people kill people" (the NRA said so, so it must be true).

[jane]

Honestly, what to we have health and safety laws for? Were all the toy inspectors asleep when this one got through? Maybe they were all in meetings with the Rottweiler and Pit Bull Terrier breeders being told of course the dogs aren't dangerous, it's just the owners....

[rilly super]

crikey, cue fake gun whistle version of the theme from 'The Deer Hunter'

[Claire King]

*baffled*