Cowboys and Indians

Yesterday when I was at my day job, you know, that one that actually pays the bills, I was stocking the shelves as it is a common occurrence. This time of year toys are a prime object. Most of the time I don't give much notice to what the toy is. More often than not I have no connection with whatever the toy is to my past. You must remember, most of what is on the shelves these days wasn't around when I was a young lad.

One toy however did give me pause. Like the skillful merchandiser I am, I deftly slipped my regulation safety knife under the cardboard flap and within the blink of an eye had the box open. Of course one has to have a regulation safety knife because everyone who works in the industry these days is too stupid to use a real razor knife without doing themselves some serious harm...but I digress.

Inside the box was a 'replica Black Canyon' western rifle set. It came complete with a rifle just like Chuck Connors had in the old Rifleman television series, however it was orange, not sure Chuck would have approved of that, as well as a pistol and holster for said six shooter. It got me to thinking, do kids these days play cowboys and indians? I'm thinking that's a fantasy that has long since passed into the history books. Even in my day, North of 50 and I never really played that even though we were only a few generations removed from that era. Yeah, I'm a bit old. We were more into playing 'war' being we were fresh off the World War II era.

North of 50 on the left, me on the right

with our trusty rifles

The funny thing about that is we really didn't play good vs bad and make one be the Germans or the Japanese. I guess we didn't think along those lines. Now, the era of cowboys and indians is so far removed from the public mindset that this toy seems like an antique. Not to mention the politically correctness of it being, just not. I suppose unless one lives in the plains states or what would have been considered the 'old west', it isn't something kids gravitate to as that era is well over one-hundred years past.

Even if some kids thought of this these days it would likely be called 'Oppressive White Man vs Native Americans'.