JumpStart by Robb Armstrong for November 17, 2024

Of course the games back then were violent. That’s where the fun was often found. Battling Tops, Clackers, lawn darts, BB guns and on and on. I walk through sad-looking toy departments these days and just think “You poor kids.” One had a whole aisle dedicated to Hot Wheels, a second to Barbie and a third to Lego. So little to chose from now.

The world has changed from non-techology environment to the present time?

Is she wrong though?

Before the 2000 the major TV networks had an informal policy. Each election they would give the Dems and the GOP a color for the year. In 1996 the Dems were red and the GOP was blue. In 2000 with the ongoing problems the Red and Blue were enshrined in the public mind.

“Back in my day games weren’t violent!” Now, where’s my copy of Wolfenstein 3D again? Maybe under that Duke Nukem 3D box? No? Ah, I remember, I put it next to Doom.

Ah, the good old days of a toy store.

My thoughts were in sync with the guys’ in the last panel, so Marcy really cracked me up!

Clearly, the blue robot is a Montague and the red robot is a Capulet.

The red/blue delineation wasn’t a thing decades ago.

Do Parlor Tricks NOT Politics. Stay safe and healthy my friends.

Red and Blue are classic team colors even on international games. The other choices are purple and yellow/orange.

Red is historically the color of radicalism and communism. The modern American red/blue stuff comes from the election of 2000.

red and blue are boys favorite color, don’t think our division goes back to 1964 and they were called Red Rocker and Blue Bomber, though we had way too many other issues at that time that are still not resolved, he is hoping that the powers in Washington can do their jobs and take care of its own and work for us, and not themselves

Oh, Marcy, you naughty lady!

Just let kids have fun and stop making things political.

That’s okay, Marcy. People are reading anything into everything nowadays. You’re just keeping up with the times!

Rock Em Sock Em Robots came out when I was a kid. Toys were extremely violent then. Many of them were also very dangerous. Typical playthings were toy guns, toy soldiers and war machinery (tanks, war planes, battleships, submarines, etc.), BB guns, bows and arrows, firecrackers, and on and on.

My brothers and I played a card game called “Nuclear War,” the object of which was to kill the entire population of another country.

There’s not even room to discuss the dangerous ones. That’s a subject for another day.

Nope todays kids are into stealing cars and going for joyrides to commit other crimes. There is no parent involvement anymore when your kid misbehaves. They get arrested and they go right out the revolving door to commit crimes again. Just arrest them and give them hard labor and it just might fix them (might is a big word)

So many political tirades recently are made-up too, so this fits right in,,,

That game would last barely one solid fight before breaking apart.

Nowadays, we have Street Fighter 2!

Maybe they got the idea for Red/Blue politics from the robots!

Rock-Em,Sock-Em a classic 60’s toy where you can literally knock somebody’s block off—-that was the appeal.

Me,I wish I had my Robot Commando back.

And an old Mattel board game called “Lie Detector”

Ohhh, Lie Detector…. I had the game (though like most games it was hard to pay alone or with my sister who was too young to play it). But I can see the box with all inside floating across my parents’ basement after Hurricane Donna with most of my other toys as the basement flooded – enough so that my 7 year old self could not go in the basement due to concern I might drown in the deep water.