It does stink as a collector, but I can understand it. Looking at my G1 Megs, I am actually suprised that my parents let me have it as a kid. As goofy as the robot mode looks now, it sure is amazing how well they made it look like a gun (IMO). As much as I enjoy our gun rights, I can see how guns like Megs (especially the MP Megs) are a bad idea. What cracks me up is going into a store and seeing something that (one would think) could never be mistaken for a gun with an orange barrel plug. About a year ago, as I was driving away from my mom's house, I saw some wierdo neighbor kid (probably 12-14 years old) walking down the street wearing camo with a rifle over his shoulder. I am pretty damn sure it was a toy/pellet gun, but I sure had to do a double take. I can't wait for the day where we need orange tips on lightsabers so that people don't think that it is a real lightsaber.
Well, yeah. I know they don't mention drugs. But I think many people seem to think it's all psychodelic and stuff as if they were smoking something. However, when I was a kid I thought that was one of the coolest SS skits ever and I loved seeing it when SS showed it. But needless to say, it's skits like that and so many others that SS refuses to air on tv now because they just don't think it's okay for kids anymore. I think that's stupid because other "kids" shows like Billy and Mandy is far more messed up than Sesame Street and Transformers ever were.
BB Guns and Air Rifles...thank god they aren't readily avaliable noways. I'd have a heart attack trying to teach my kids to not point them at each other. But it sure as hell was fun back in day.
There is a story about a kid getting shot in NYC while holding a G1 Megatron back in the early 80's. Now I cant tell you if the story is 100% true or not. But back in the 1984/85 school year our school handed out notes to all the parents about the dangers of bringing a G1 Megatron to scool, kids back then liked bringing toys to school. In the note, they claimed, a child from a different school was shot, by a cop, when holding a G1 Megatron toy. P.S. I have AS too.
I was born in '75 and had several fairly realistic toy guns as a kid, cap gun pistols, plastic rifles, etc. No orange tips, no concern over them looking like real guns. We weren't allowed to bring them to school, but the realistic look wasn't an issue. What I recall as setting off the change in toy gun safety regulations was when a kid holding a Lazer Tag gun was shot by a cop because he mistook it for a real gun. This happened sometime in the mid-late 80s. I couldn't find any reference to this without spending hours on Google (quick search didn't turn up anything useful), but that's what I remember.
I also heard a story that this wound up being more strict not for children, but for adults. A story about a guy either robbing a building or holding a TV station hostage because he was armed with a toy gun and none of the staff could get a good enough look to tell. Alas, since I have no links it will remain as such. "A story I heard somewhere".
Sure you are not thinking of the movie Airheads? j/k Kidding aside, I too remember hearing soemthing like that as well as a cop accidently shooting a kid with a realistic toy gun because it was dark and the kid aimed at him. Although I may be thinking of Die Hard? But that was always the reason I thought for the toy gun laws to change to the blaze orange. A kid was accidentally shot by a police officer so in order to protect kids playing with toy guns and not to mention the police officers etc. Heck it went as far as Nintendo changing the Zapper from grey to orange.
I believe there were several incidents across the country that first caused state laws to be passed in multiple states to try to halt it then later federal toy safety laws put a halt to it entirely and other safety issues and required various things including the orange cap on toy guns and the "infamous" drop test that was the death nell of Fort Max in the US and an all grey Nintendo Zapper is somewhat of a collector's item
Fixed. It could also be said that kids weren't gang banging with AK's and HK's, trying to earn stripes, but now they do. Kids weren't taking guns to school back then. (back when? 20 years ago? 30? 100?) Kids weren't given the freedom to express themselves violently, now they are. a lot has changed. A LOT. parents used to beat their kids for doing wrong. The neighbors used to beat each others' kids when they caught them doing wrong. I bet more kids ran around town with cap guns back in the 40s and 50s than the kids that grew up when i did and the reason why you didn't hear about kids getting cop-shot was simple. Kids were home by dark. not at 830, 1130 or when they felt like it. forgive me, brr-icy, but your statement, IMO is almost laser narrow in focus. a lot has changed. and with it, the laws changed to protect everybody. it may be only my opinion, but really, legal disclaimers should read: "if you run around at night with this product and point it at people, you will get shot and we won't care because it isn't our fault you are a Darwin Award winning fucktard." To the OP, the simple answer is this: years ago, kids were allowed a lot of things you don't see today because kids were kept in check by a stricter, community based society. Kids were even allowed to risk skinned knees and bumps and bruises. Kids were allowed to be kids without every protection being given under the sun by the courts or government. and G1 Megatron's red tip he has to have now is less about child safety than corporate protection from liability claims. if i had a son of 9-10 years old, i wouldn't mind getting him a Megatron to play with and let him have it all day, every day. as long as he played with it in my house and yard, during the right times, it is safe and ok by me. /rant
Because now police will shoot first and ask questions later. My summary answer: From an increasing culture of fear that comes partially from justified concerns of an increasingly complexified human world and partially from peoples' increasingly phenomenalistic imaginations.
it's okay, hell, I even got a bit of autism so it;s cool, also, in 04(?) when classics meg's came out they realized what they did in the 80's so they made it a nerf blaster which was kinda lame, they should have used a phaser from star trek or the kind of guns they use in star wars, a nerf blaster is stupid
I have to agree with you on most of what you said. But you forgot to mention of modern parenting. I would like to call it the wussification of the next generation. Look at the schools today. Kids today only heard of dodgeball from a movie. They will never know how much fun the game really is. As for G1 Megs.. Yes it is realistic. But I believe that part of the toy law is because parents today so against gun toys of any type. I once saw a parent got upset because one of their children got one of those space gun toys that fires those foam disk.
And can you prove this without listing Dirty Harry, Death Wish or Miami Vice as a source? I absolutely abhor the bigotry against the 99.98 percent of law enforcement who would rather take a shotgun in the chest than pull a gun and use it on anyone, especially a child. a lot more kids these days don't care about anybody or anything- it is all about what they want and want to do. they want it 5 minutes ago or else. and they get it. It puts the cops into a bad place. listen carefully. They put the cops in a bad place by what they do. Not the cops. if anyone knows a cop that shoots people all day for a living (hey look! he's eating a hot dog! SHOOT HIS ASS!) i will retract my post. And yeah, it is sad we don't have dodgeball anymore. the only damage that game ever did to me was point out i was a fat, slow kid. But i never went to my locker, grabbed an Uzi and hosed down my classmates after two or three lumps to the head. Why? My parents used to beat my ass for saying "no" the wrong way back at them. I was too scared to conjure such "romantic" revenge plots. man oh man, i wonder. what childhood will be like in 4 or 5 generations?
i don't. but imo social trends are inevitably some kind of backlash against the previous one so with any luck by then we'll be on the Summer of Love part Deux.
I must say again, you guys all make great points. I wasn't expecting so many responses. It is a shame that Megatron has become so offensive since then. I'm wondering if that's the reason why the later TF cartoons and anime don't show him as a gun anymore. Now he transforms into either a tank or a jet. I wish he could be a gun again.
