Know Your Missiles!

All those old enough to remember Monogram models raise your hand with me.

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Just seconds before he's vaporized Little Johnny peeks out from under his desk, points upwards and says, "Oh, look everybody, a Russian Pooflov Boomavitch 4!

No, that's not me in the ad. I'm too busy putting together my other models and blowing up things with that Edmunds chemistry set.

Ahhh, I remember trying to show Little Suzy my missile collection. All she wanted was what was in my pants!

Okay, it was just a Snickers bar, but I see where you're going.

(raises hand)
I'm pretty sure I saw an ad f0r a later version, which was for rockets to send people into space, not rain down in their thousands and destroy them. I like how it includes a Little John, the un-guided nuclear missile that a panicking colonel could fire at approaching Russkies. That's the way the world ends, not with a president or premier launching the megaton city-melters, but some low-ranking officer pooping his pants.

I don't know, Bill. There was a thing in TV the other day about Hiroshima. It's not been nearly 20,000 years since they got nuked and they're looking really good! That big shaker that took out a couple of nuclear power plants over there a couple of years ago hasn't (so far) produced a Godzilla, Rodan or Mothra so... maybe all the gloom & doom of a nuclear holocaust/winter is a bit exaggerated.

Bill: and sometimes, it's a lower-ranked officer who prevents the end of the world. Look up Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov.

Cue Tom Lehrer singing "So Long, Mom (I'm off to drop the Bomb)". It's not surprising that these were advertised in Boy's Life, the official magazine of the paramilitary youth organization of choice for mainstream Americans in the postwar era. But why settle for mere models of missiles, when two pages later in that issue, you can ask your dad to give the gun all can shoot Christmas morning, for fun shooting in and around the house.

Well, Fritz, we all had BB guns or (as in the ad) pellet guns and we didn't need to have orange tips on them and we learned how to handle them safely. I've seen 5yo farm kids with more gun sense than some citified 'hunters' that were never taught properly.

I remember nuke drills in school. Like hiding under a school desk would save you, pffft.

Expat, I agree that BB guns were common when we were growing up, but not all kids used them safely. I personally knew two kids who were shot in the eye by kids playing with those guns. One completely lost his eyesight in that eye, and the other was wearing his eyeglasses, which shattered and cut his eyeball. Fortunately for him, the cut was on the side of his eye and he only needed a couple of stitches, and no blindness resulted. My rural cousins used their BB guns to terrorize the local wildlife, such as birds, squirrels, and frogs, and also delighted in shooting each other in the legs and behinds. Boys will be boys, I guess.

"Terrorizing birds" on a farm is varment control. We went out on night and killed over 1,000 birds on one farm alone. If you saw some kids shooting each other the fault was not with the kids as much as it was with their parents and absolutely not with the guns. The only time I had a BB gun pointed at me was by two teens in the city.

I agree that parenting is a major factor. Let's just say we had different experiences growing up and leave it at that. I like your comments too much to quibble with you over things that happened almost 60 years ago (at least in my case).

Sounds like an idea to me Old Timer. ;D

My brother-in-law's dumb ass brother shot him with a shotgun with bird shot at a significant distance. Between the distance and my bil's heavy coat he was not hurt. But man, how stupid do you gotta be?? The same family used to play was with roman candles amongst the cousins around 4th of July.

Did anyone else notice a couple of pages down they were advertising to teach boys how to mount birds and animals.
Wait...what? Taxidermy? Oh, never mind.

I took a pass on this item when it came out. It looked like it would be too boring just sitting there on display. I skipped over to the rockets that I could load with a fuel mix and launch from the back yard. I don't remember ever smashing a neighbor's window with those rockets, either. That made them successful -- or not -- depending on your point of view.