WAR TOYS FOR JAPAN’S NURSERIES

Northern Advocate, 7 January 1938, Page 5

WAR TOYS FOR JAPAN’S NURSERIES

Toy guns, aeroplanes and cannon are completely crowding out more peaceful toys in the children’s sections of the large Tokio department stores. There is an overwhelming demand foil imitation weapons and war games, and manufacturers experience difficulty in turning out these products with sufficient rapidity. The most popular battle toy of the moment is a machine-gun with a lighter attached to “fire” in quick succession. Various types of aircraft that bank emphatically while in motion, armoured automobiles, railway cars, and military motor cycles are also cold quickly. Exacting Critics, Children, according to the store managers, are exacting critics. They are not satisfied with water-pistols, cork guns, or inferior imitations of lethal weapons, but want objects which are as close to “the real thing” as possible. An anti-aircraft gun provided with a springboard which makes it possible to shoot wooden bullets, has caught the fancy of Japanese children. A painted cardboard “No man’s land,” depicting trenches and barbed wire entanglements, is much in vogue. Military Flavour. Numerous card and board games with a military flavour have also come on the market. One of these supplies twenty-four pieces as soAliers and two as marksmen. The winner is one who destroys the other side’s soldiers first. A more complicated game, remotely similar to chess in its general principle, is based on the idea of a sham naval battle. Each side has two battleships, three cruisers, two aircraft carriers, and five destroyers, alk of which make their special moves. Poorer children, who are unable to but these elaborate war games, do what they can with toy swords and flags.