The Last Generation

I've been giving this some thought and realized something a few months back.  I'm 27 years old and I realized that my generation was the last generation to experience toys that required an imagination, playground equipment that is now considered deadly, and Saturday morning cartoons.  Follow me on this:

TOYS: For those of you my age or older, remember the toys we had?  Remember getting an action figure out of the box that came with a ton of small parts that we could easily eat and swallow, but never attempted to, because plastic tastes like butt?  G.I. Joe's were awesome.  However, they always came with little plastic guns or helmets that today would require a warning label stating how it was a choking hazard.  Are kids today that hungry?  Also, remember how the action figures required you to make noises for fun, instead of always requiring batteries to produce the sounds for you?  Kids today don't have much of an imagination.  To put into perspective, I had all 4 of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, well my brother and I shared them, and they all came with their individual weapons, but were all colored the same light brown.  Well, we never had villains from the series as toys, but if you took Lazer Viper, from G.I. Joe, and took off the helmet and lazer backpack, he looked like an evil ninja.  I can't tell you how many times I had Michaelangelo do a roundhouse kick to the face, and not only that, GI Joe figures' heads moved.  The kick could be given hard enough to where the head would move with the kick and make it seem authentic.  Nowadays I see toys being sold that seem to take away the imagination required to play.  Maybe I'm overthinking some things, but it saddens me seeing kids not making sounds when playing with their toys.

Playground Equipment: When I was in grade school, our playground equipment was being transititioned into what the equipment is nowadays.  When I was in 6th grade, the slide was the twister-like plastic slide that gave you tons of static.  Before that, we had the metal slide that had a hump halfway down.  If you were going fast enough, that hump would send you sailing to the bottom, if you were light, or rolling head over heels to the not so soft gravel that awaited your arrival if you were fat.  Also, and this is for those who are too young to remember the metal slides, when the sun was out, that slide would bake in 1,000degree heat and would feel like it was taking the skin off of the back of your legs.  It didn't matter.  We all braved it.  We all went down the slide with shorts on and short sleeve shirts.  The most fun game was trying to run up the slide while someone was coming down.  Usually ended in someone, or both, going over the side to the 19ft drop below causing the back to be tore up from the gravel.  Remember the long ladders we had to climb?  It was a journey just to get to the top.  Swings back then were different.  They were wooden, sometimes plastic, planks that you sat on that didn't mold to your butt to keep you on them.  You held on by the rusty chains that kept the swing attached to the rest of the rig.

 I don't know if anybody else had this, but at my grade school we had this thing that was made out of wooden telephone poles.  Two pieces were in the ground that stood straight up and had two other pieces attached to it at an angle towards the ground.  At the top was a horizontal pole that attached the other 4 together.  See diagram at left.  On the part that was slanted there were truck tires arranged to allow people to climb at that angle to the top where the 4 pieces met and the part that was straight had rusty chain netting that let you climb to the top as well.  We played Cowboys and Indians on that thing.  The indians were supposed to climb the net and the cowboys were to lay down at the top and push the indians off.  If an indian got over the top, he was to push a cowboy through one of the tires which dropped down to an empty area behind the net.  This was the prison.  There wasn't any kind of gravel to break the falls, but there were rocks to ensure the maximum amount of pain was handed out.  I was always an indian, mainly because everyone knew that I was big enough to not get pushed off, but able to push others.  I was always the biggest kid.  This was what we called fun.  This is what we called a game. 

Saturday Morning Cartoons: For those of you, my age or older, you remember that whole week when we had to get up for school, it was like pulling teeth to get us out of bed by 7:00.  However, Saturday mornings, we were up at 5am, and we snuck downstairs so mom and dad wouldn't hear us, and we would pour the biggest bowl of cereal ever, and go and watch TV.  The shows my brother and I watched were Ghostbusters, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, etc...  Afterwards was WWF.  Then Cartoon Network came into existence.  At first it was like, "THIS IS AWESOME.  I GET CARTOONS ALL OF THE TIME!!!!"  After a while it became boring.  Cartoons weren't special anymore.  There wasn't a reason to get up on Saturday mornings.  Needless to say I was about 10 years old when Cartoon Network came around.  Then I look at the animation of the cartoons for kids today.  Horrible, primitive, and no effort drawings.  Where are the cartoons that were drawn well?  What happened to those cartoons where the animators actually cared about what they were doing?  It sickens me and saddens me. 

I was part of the last generation who rode their bikes without helmets.  Remember a time where wearing a helmet got you teased or bullied?  Those kids were called pansy, girly, weakling, etc...  The only ones who were socially allowed to wear helmets were the skaters.  Anybody else, strictly forbidden. 

Anyway that's my rant for the day and hopefully those who are the same age or older remember what I'm talking about, and those who are too young to know, learned something.