Hey, kids have had artificial crap foisted on them since the good old days

There’s an impression, true or not, that kids today don’t have toys of the quality their forefathers enjoyed. Things crafted of substances known as “metal,” instead of molded plastic — you know the drill. I think my generation was the bridge between those two eras, as I remember my metal Dukes of Hazard lunchbox quite fondly (oh how the warm smiles of Daisy, Bo and Luke looked up at me as I prepared to dine…), and how the first metallic Transformers became plastic as the product line grew. The latter was to my chagrin, I assure you.

Let this late 1960s ad, with its leatherette sporting goods, serve as evidence that the good old days weren’t all that halcyon. A minority report, if you will, and something to keep in mind on the living nightmare that is Black Friday. Leatherette, pleather’s inbred country cousin.

(Those were also the days where kids could have thinly padded boxing gloves and hammer each other in the head to their hearts’ content. For whatever that’s worth. And incidentally, what happens when you need to compute into the hundreds of millions?)