Sunday 15 June 2014

"Ethnic Cleansing Playset" (Scartoys, 1972)

Scarfolk parents thought it was crucial that their children play with educational toys. This was to help familiarise youngsters with the everyday items that would be indispensable to their adult lives: Vacuum cleaners and kitchenware for girls, for example, and for boys the M1941 Johnson Light Machine Gun, or the M4 Sherman Tank with the 75mm M3/40 cannon.

Toys like the 'Ethnic Cleansing Playset' from Scartoys also taught children invaluable life-lesson skills, such as how to defend oneself against marauding foreigners whose homeland you have decimated for either selfish economic gain, or for parochial, sanctimonious, religious reasons.

Most importantly, over time, such toys inculcated in the child the belief that though the righteousness of their actions was self-evident, they needn't be mundane; they could also be fun.
Click to enlarge

9 comments:

  1. Perhaps the ultimate tragedy here is that the Scarfolk children should have been learning about how to manage a pinpoint-controlled release of Small Pox instead of wasting valuable horse meat in pointless close-quarter combat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It looks more challenging than my Indigenous Australians Morning Massacre set.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The council would like to thank Mr Hugh Walter for the above photograph from his collection of fun massacres
    https://www.blogger.com/profile/10689023221814673819

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mr Hugh Walter would like to thank the council for their sympathetic restoration of said item!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, can we see an Aztec Indian playset that depicts the hearts of tens of thousands of captured victims being ripped out to please a sun god; or how about an eastern European villiage being decimated with its civilians being dragged off to slavery by Mongols; or a set that lets a child pretend they are just one of the countless Renaissance Europeans who died from syphilis brought back from the New World, or who even today (like people all over our planet) are dying from the smoking of tobacco which the Indians introduced to the world; or finally a set that allows a child to reenact the non-stop bloodshed (7th century to present) that is Islam.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Don't be silly, Duke. We don't want children imitating any of those awful foreigners. The proper English way of genocide is shooting them one at a time in combat, It's no fun if they can't fight back. That's why we bombed the Germans; they cheated.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Is there an accompanying set showing weeping and wailing Islingtonians?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have quite fond memories of my Ethnic Cleansing Playset, but my mother gave it to my brother when I moved out. Does anyone know where I can get the updated version for my own firstborn?

    ReplyDelete