"Try This One, Partner": The Evolution of Toy Gun TV Advertisements
A video history of the selling of make-believe firearms
Since this time of year is good for reflection and nostalgia, we thought we’d rerun this piece from last year (with a few additions) that takes a look at our history of the selling of toy guns through vintage TV commercials.
By: Eric Davidson
With the holiday season upon us, memories of childhood gift lists comingle with grown-up concerns about which toys are appropriate for kids. Many parents around the country are no doubt wrestling with seeing a toy machine gun listed on their child’s letter to the North Pole.
This article is quite obviously not meant as a scholarly study, but rather a nostalgic look back at the way the marketing and socio-cultural messages of toy guns have evolved via TV commercials.
Not unlike the way the NRA has morphed their message over the years — from home-spun, dad and son hunting and safety tips to a fear-seeped, tactical battle cry of the culture wars — the toy industry has played around the edges of that development, going from little squirt and cap guns to massive, shoulder-propped military imitations.
Having just come out of WWII, young baby boomers were offered a number of military-style, G.I. Joe, et al toys that seemingly came from a place of patriotic heroism. The cowboy craze of the 1950s led to an endless supply of finger-spinning six-shooters and rifles that might’ve come with a cowboy hat or Lone Ranger mask.
As time would reveal, this was the Golden Era of toy gun production and marketing — or should we say White Era, as the values espoused were primarily products of a predominantly white, suburban, post-war consumerist fantasy that skimmed over the negative connotations of fighting “Indians,” promoting violence, and, y’know, bleeding.
Stylized laser blasters rocketed out of stores during the “Space Race” craze, while TV G-Men and gumshoes had their toy moment too. Then by the later 1960s, the spy movie trend had kids playing mini-James Bond with sleek silencers.
By the early 1970s, some of the new “Age of Aquarius” counterculture parenting styles had seeped into the mainstream; as had the more viscerally violent crime movies and TV shows of the “New Hollywood” that more realistically showed the truly brutal effects of gunfire, rather than the sanitized bang-bangs of ‘50s cowboy flicks.
That and the overarching spectre of the increasingly deadly and futile Vietnam War — images of which flashed on TV screens right next to Gunsmoke reruns — no doubt led to a simmering reassessment of the moral implications of buying make-believe weapons of war for Johnny as a gift on Jesus’ birthday.
Formerly assumed “innocent” kids stuff like candy cigarettes and toy guns were falling out of fashion. The only major outlier being the massive success of Star Wars and its many imitators, which meant another blip of sci-fi-inspired laser guns by the end of the decade.
Evolving, conflicted, and often surreal notions of tough guy playtime morphed the toy gun landscape for a bit.
The growing conservative movement and Cold War revival of Reagan’s 1980s brought back a macho cultural mood, as toy guns became fashioned more in a military manner again.
As the Cold War subsided but more unpredictable fears of global terrorism arose, “pretend” shooting once again became a suspect choice for parental consumers by the turn of that decade. The Cyberpunk trend added futuristic laser tag games to quell little Billy’s destructive side.
Enormous water “soakers” became the popular toy gun of choice into the 1990s. Whether inspired by silly film franchises like Teenage Ninja Mutants Turtles, or just major advances in water propulsion and green slime, these types remain popular to this day.
The Nerf company — having been satisfied with successful spongey footballs and bedroom basketball hoops since their 1969 inception — mutated their dart-flinging handguns into increasingly convoluted shoulder canons and whatnot throughout the end of the Millennium.
Admittedly, the fetishistic size and tactical references of these “safe” toys come with their own odd, violent implications. Though their wild coloring and kooky designs show an awareness of most consumers’ desire not to be “too realistic.”
Given the lethality of weaponry available in our current real gun culture — and the increasingly tragic outcomes and frustrating lack of resultant regulation — toy guns continue to be an extremely debatable gift proposition. Hence, toy gun TV commercials seem to be going the way of the VHS.
Mirroring the statistical proof that the majority of Americans are uneasy with the current state of firearm proliferation and want more regulation, the major makers of the toy industry seem to be following the market on this avenue of “child’s play” — at least as far as hyping it.
Toy guns are still out there of course, many as incredibly realistic simulations of some of the most deadly real life weapons. Though a cursory glance through Amazon seems to say that Nerf’s wide-ranging collection of puffy-bullet blasters are the popular choice, if you just have to.
Given that kids today gather their playtime tips from the infinite recesses of the internet, toys aren’t much marketed via afterschool TV commercials anymore.
Of course the toy industry has developed into a predominant dependance on video gaming. So be glad this article doesn’t continue into the explosively violent hellscape that is the video game industry, which has followed its own avenue out onto a rocket launcher into another dimension of insane “make-believe” carnage.
Who knows if the second Trump era and its glorification of machismo will mean a toy gun revival — it seems the next President’ gun lobby backers would rather you purchase the far more expensive real thing.
