How To Neutralize G.I. Joe

By Melissa Ludtke

The scene is familiar in countless households where children, especially young boys, are at play. A fitful four-year-old has just finished watching the latest episode of the G.I. Joe cartoon show. Still in a high state of excitement, he sets up his G.I. Joe Strategic Long-Range Artillery Machine, hollers commands and launches missiles across the room. "A direct hit!" he screams. A few feet away, his older brother sits in front of the TV, joy stick in hand, mesmerized by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video game. Bouncing in his seat to the beat of the programmed music, he keeps hitting the ATTACK button. "Yeah!" he finally cries. The enemies are all dead, and the game is won. All is well.

Or is it? Little boys have always played fighting games, but never before have they been egged on by such an overwhelming barrage of electronic violence. Never before has make-believe mayhem been such Big Business. The typical child takes in four hours of action-packed TV a day and watches countless commercials from the toy manufacturers that sponsor the shows. No wonder sales of war toys in the U.S. rose more than 200% during the past decade and exceed $1 billion annually. When the kids grow bored with the cartoons and plastic soldiers, they graduate to the electronic battlefields of Nintendo, Sega and the like, where the violence continues.

For several years, educators and parents have been concerned that the proliferation of war toys and games is making children more aggressive and desensitizing them to violence. Educators Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Diane Levin explore that troubling issue in their new book Who's Calling the Shots?: How to Respond Effectively to Children's Fascination with War Play and War Toys (New Society Publishers; $12.95). According to Carlsson-Paige and Levin, the damage being done is even worse than just making kids want to fight. TV- based war toys, say the authors, can destroy a child's creativity by luring the youngster into a pernicious pattern of imitating video characters. The book makes a strong case against today's war games and offers advice to parents on how to cope with the changing world of children's play.

In interviews with parents, teachers and day-care providers, Carlsson-Paige and Levin found that the strong-arm tactics of the Transformers, He-Man, G.I. Joe and other cartoon characters spill over into real life. Kids imitate the aggressive behavior without always realizing that they may hurt their playmates. In the cartoons and video games used as models, there is a lot of punching and shooting but very little emphasis on the pain such actions can cause. Thus children lose touch with the consequences of violence. And when they do hurt someone else in their imitative battles, they may not accept responsibility. "They can injure another child and say, 'I didn't do it. He- Man did it,' " says Carlsson-Paige, an associate professor of education at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass.

The authors believe commercial links between toymakers and TV are robbing kids of a precious part of childhood: the opportunity to explore their world through imaginative play. "Imitation really undermines play," says Carlsson- Paige. Not only are contemporary war toys precise replicas of what kids see on TV, but most of them are designed for one specific, well-defined use. The toy's mission is spelled out on the box, just as it is on the show and in commercials. The kids may use the toys only to reproduce what is on TV.

Ordinarily, children use play to make sense of what they see and hear around them. In playing house, they copy their parents' patterns but invent a dizzying array of plots and a surprising cast of characters to embellish the scene. When children imitate what they see on TV, however, they do not sift the play through their own experience. "The boys end up imitating violence they don't even understand," says co-author Levin, an associate professor of education at Boston's Wheelock College.

So what is a parent to do? In their book, Carlsson-Paige and Levin, who both / raised sons who were attracted to war-related toys, offer tips for combatting unimaginative play. Among them:

-- First, parents can limit their child's exposure to action shows and related toys. But even the most diligent mom and dad are likely to be defeated if they try to ban war play altogether. Too many children in the neighborhood will have the toys.

-- Parents should watch how children use their toys. Then they can encourage them to add more imaginative props, including such common household items as plastic strainers, cardboard tubes, fabric remnants and toys like Lego blocks and Play-Doh.

-- The play can take creative new directions if parents ask children questions about their action figures: "What did G.I. Joe have for breakfast?" or "Does Cobra have any children at home?" Mom can even suggest giving He- Man a bath after a particularly tough battle.

Parents who feel strongly about the issue can also lobby for more Government regulation. A bill now before Congress, the Children's Television Act, would limit the number of advertising minutes during children's shows. In a few countries, including Sweden, Finland and Norway, toy manufacturers have gone so far as to eliminate voluntarily the advertising and sale of toys depicting modern warfare. There seems to be no chance, however, that U.S. toymakers will forgo the billions they make from selling soldiers, tanks and planes.

Even so, war toys do not have to take over a child's mind. Parents can become more involved in their children's games and encourage their young to use all their toys in more creative ways. That, in turn, will help the kids rediscover their natural instinct for imaginative play.