I know my mother would argue innocence, charging that it is only the filthy mind of our brave, new America that would draw any inappropriate conclusions from the design of these toys and, to a certain degree, I would have to acknowledge the sagacity of this argument but, I ask you, was there no point that, in the designer’s minds, they didn’t at least question the proposed placement of certain functional parts?
In the instance of the Batman squirt gun, I must concede that the position the character is forced to take to mimic a gun, while corresponding to the possibilities of the natural human shape, left little alternative to the designer. Further, the fact that the toy was produced in an earlier, and thus more innocent, time explains why the overall design wasn’t chucked out the window as potentially disturbing, though you and I both know there were many, many minds – both child and adult – that meandered over the potential implications of the placement of both the trigger and the refill … porthole.
Now, the Wolverine blowup? C’mon!
