Dangerous Incursions into Toyland

From the time their first T-shirt is snapped beneath the crotch of their diapers, it is possible to surround children in the industrialized world with images of war. Tanks, fighter jets, and soldiers are available to decorate the bumpers on infants' cribs and the mobiles over their heads so that some of the first images their minds absorb directly support militarism.³ Peace-minded parents can only shelter their offspring for so long; as soon as children mix with peers or gain access to media, the images of war begin to flood their conscious and unconscious minds.

Concerned citizens have spoken out against turning children into soldiers by means of war toys since the nineteenth century. Toy guns were the earliest focus of this attention as demonstrated by the 1933 Washington Post headline “Pacifist Mamas Ban Toy Soldier Wars.”⁴ GI Joe, the U.S. toy made infamous to toyland pacifists by its long run and vast array of product tie-ins, was met at its inaugural New York Toy Fair in 1964 by Parents for Responsibility in the Toy Industry, who carried signs that read “Toy Fair or Warfare.”⁵ From 1964 to 1968, a particularly successful era for the GI Joe product line, activists encouraged parents to purchase toys that would stimulate children's creativity, like the Swedish brand Lego blocks, rather than Hasbro's toy soldier, which would train them to imitate national militarist ideology.⁶ While individuals were willing to speak out against violent toys, the most well-known organization in the United States dedi­cated specifically to promote demilitarization and antiviolence in the toy industry was the Lion and Lamb Project, founded in 1994.⁷ For almost ten years, Lion and Lamb produced an annual list of the “Dirty Dozen,” the year's most violent toys as well as a list of twenty creative nonviolent toys. Although the Lion and Lamb Project is no longer active, its founder, Daphne White, has published guidelines for how their lists were developed in an 2004 issue of Mothering magazine so that parents have some rules to guide their toy purchases.⁸ Supported by little else other than this 2004 magazine article, parents are for the most part on their own when trying to negotiate healthy boundaries and practices for their children's play.

Despite the fact that militarism continues to offer children of all ages toys with increased complexity and spectacular effects, the strategies and alterna­tives provided by peace-minded activists have not advanced apace, and no organization in the United States has stepped up to fill the place of the Lion and Lamb Project. Thus, the issue of war toys is brought to the public's attention perhaps once annually, during the winter holiday toy-buying sea­son, and those who protest toy and play violence have a hard time being taken seriously. Much like the healthy new-age toy store in Joe Dante's Small Soldiers, the Inner Child, toy marketers have not developed nonviolent products that can compete in today's marketplace. When I think about the “No War Toys” movement in my own community, I am reminded of Nancy Regan's “Just Say No” antidrug campaign. For many years the local peace and justice community held an alternative toy fair in December, but the goods were as boring and lackluster to contemporary children as those in Stuart Abernathy's the Inner Child toy store. Saying no to addiction, whether chemical or militarist, is indeed crucial, but there is no “just” about it—unless of course we mean to call upon the adjectival form of “justice” rather than the adverb meaning “only.” Increasing the strength and status of justice worldwide would indeed do much to tame the violent scenarios chil­dren act out with their militarist toys. However, there is nothing simple or isolated about even imagining such an undertaking. Far more simple and lucrative than to create a new world of justice or resist the present world's many injustices is to imagine, develop, and market new products that exploit the injustices and dangerous power differentials plaguing our world.