Sandra Dodd

This started off to be about critical thinking, but ended up being
about Smurfs. All this reading has warped my fragile little mind.


-=-Violence has increased 720% since 1982.-=-

That's the whole sentence. Doesn't specify what kind of violence or
in what part of the world. Just states plainly as fact, no data, no
reference, Violence has increased 720%.

I don't think that increase is domestic violence. That seems to have
been much worse at least where I am before it was so illegal. I
don't think it was violent executions. Those have become clinical
for the most part. It's not violence to kids in public school,
because very few places will allow swats anymore.

Maybe he means violence on TV, but if so it's probably an absolute
number of instances per week or something, without allowing for there
being hundreds of channels instead of three or four.

When something can't be made to mean something, it just means
nothing. It's an absolutely meaningless statement.

Here's another from the same thing (a transcript of a radio show):
-=-The Toy Industry as we know it today began in the early 1930's,
during the depths of the Great Depression. Manufacturers realized
that parents simply did not want to deny their children Christmas
gifts, even in times that were very, very difficult. Parents would
save all year long for the Christmas gifts for their children.-=-

That doesn't make sense to me. But he didn't define "as we know it
today." Maybe he's talking about the founding of some companies that
still exist. I don't know. There were certainly toys made before
that time, and even in factories. Is anyone here a history-of-toys
buff and know where that statement might have come from? If parents
couldn't afford potatoes for dinner, I doubt they were saving for
Christmas anyway, so I think the whole thing just came out of the
guy's imagination.

And speaking of imagination, I know lack of TV is supposed to make it
magically arise, but this guy says toys are evil because they affect
the fertile and active minds of children.

-=-Let us begin our discussion by examining what really happens when
a child plays with a toy, any toy. In their minds, children become
one with the toy, interacting with it and assuming the properties of
it. If the toy is a figure, the child imagines that he possesses all
the powers and abilities of the figure. If the toy is a Western gun
set, the child imagines himself as being a cowboy or gunfighter. If
the toy is a spaceship, the child imagines he is the captain of the
ship, and assumes all the characteristics of the captain-=-

Toys are evil, to this guy. Papa Smurf is a White Witchdoctor. My
Little Pony displays a Satanic phenomenon: they fly. And (claims
this guy) the popularization of unicorns came about because of My
Little Pony. That is incorrect. I had friends (good Mormon girls in
SLC) collecting unicorns in the late 1970s. Daniel 8: 4-5 is
supposed to describe a unicorn, something about the Anti-Christ.

I didn't know the Castle Greyskull was demon possessed. I guess I
didn't watch enough Masters of the Universe. I'll ask Kirby.

Oh! I had seen this article before. It was starting to look
familiar. Captain Planet is classic Satanism too.

Well I'll leave it to individual readers to see how Ninja Turtles
and 101 Dalmations were designed to harvest your children's souls for
Satan.

Maybe that's a humor page. Maybe it's someone just making mean fun
of fundamentalists.

-=-http://www.cuttingedge.org/ce1021.html-=-



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Joyce Fetteroll

On Aug 10, 2006, at 5:43 PM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

> The Toy Industry as we know it today began in the early 1930's,
> during the depths of the Great Depression. Manufacturers realized
> that parents simply did not want to deny their children Christmas
> gifts, even in times that were very, very difficult. Parents would
> save all year long for the Christmas gifts for their children.

When I was a kid (early 60's) the only store we regularly shopped at
that had toys was the drug store. Probably half an aisle of Barbies
and board games and paddle balls. Pretty much like the big chain drug
stores today but that was without Toys 'R Us.

At Christmas time Penny's would clear out a big section of their
downstairs -- which normally had furniture -- and bring in a wide
array of toys. When Christmas was over, the toys were all cleared out
and lawn furniture would appear.

There must have been small toy stores that sold toys all year round
but I can't remember any. I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh so it
wasn't like we were out in the middle of cornfields ;-)

Joyce

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Sandra Dodd

-=-I grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh so it
wasn't like we were out in the middle of cornfields ;-)
-=-

We were in the middle of... apple orchards near the river and cactus
above the irrigated area. <g>

We had toys at the mercantile [Catholic statuary sold by the only
Jewish family in town, rope, buckets (lots of feed store stuff, but
no feed), storm lanterns, cowboy clothes) or at the department store
(which was two long quonset huts side by side with clothes, hardware,
dishes, records, and some books. That was the best place for toys.
They had one side of an aisle. That store was called J.W. Owen's,
and Mr. Owen used to drive to our house and give each of us four
girls $5 every Christmas for a few years, because he also owned a
burger drive-in and my dad had made the awnings that the cars parked
under. We girls all helped him do it, and Mr. Owen thought that was
so sweet and charming he paid us a bonus every year for several years.

That awning and the burger place are still there, but both of the
stores have been razed. Owen's was on land leased from Santa Clara
Pueblo on a 99 year lease, that was up in the 1980's sometime. The
other place was just too old and ugly for Espanola. They should've
kept it, but they didn't.

And the grocery stores had little sections of cheap toys, as stores
still do. Balsa wood airplanes, marbles, jacks or tops or whatever
was the seasonal thing. Jump ropes. Replacement Yahtzee pads.
Checkers and checker boards sold separately. "Barrel of Monkeys." <g>

But none of that proves or disproves anything about the toy industry
in the 1930's.

Oh! Albuquerque did have a real, fulltime toy store called "Toys by
Roy," at Winrock mall. It was a NICE store. That's where I saw the
Spanish castle blocks we couldn't afford before Kirby was born and
that I later found for $5 at a thrift store. Toys by Roy used to
sponsor one of the afternoon kids' shows that had a studio audience
and showed some cartoons, or re-runs of old serials that had first
been shown in weekly installments at the movie theaters.

I love life sometimes.

Sandra

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