First commandment of marketing: Know thy buyer.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Boston Garden/North Station just as the crowd was coming in for Frozen and Encanto: Disney on Ice. As I paced around, getting in some steps before getting on the train for Salem to visit my sister, I paced by this fellow. I couldn't help but notice that he was wearing what appeared to be a light-up toy version of an AR-15. Nice!

I asked if I could take his picture, and he smilingly posed for him.

I told him that I thought his choice of toy to showcase was a bit on the strange side, given the show and given how people - at least most people in Massachusetts - feel about such weapons of mass destruction. He jauntily replied that this beauty was pretty scarce, since they aren't making them any more. And he only had a few, a precious few, left.

He also had a couple of general purpose colorful light thing-ies, but most of his stock was light swords. And the few, the precious few, AR15s. 

I wanted to stay and chat for a bit and ask him how business was, but my train was coming, so...

As I walked off, the vendor pressed the button on his AR15, and it began making electronic AR15 noises. 

The Garden/train station area was packed with Disney on Ice goers, and my rough estimate was that 95% of the kids in tow were little girls between the age of 3 and 7. And that 95% of those little girls were wearing some sort of Disney princess-y dress. Quite a variety, but, given the theme of the show, a preponderance of Elsas and Mirabels. 

(There were very few little boys, and the one that stood out was a little guy wearing a Paw Patrol outfit. Have costume, will travel.)

Some of the the little girls already had their souvenirs, and they were of the general purpose colorful light-up thingy variety. Nary a one was carrying a light sword, let alone an AR15.

I don't know how much of toy choice is learned vs. innate, but I do know that from a young age, kids typically gravitate towards either "boy toys" or "girl toys." 

A lot of this is pink-and-purple nonsense. 

Boys should have dolls to cuddle. Girls should have cars to zoom. Toys shouldn't be gendered, let alone color-coded. Much as I love the colors pink and purple, a "girl's" bike doesn't have to be either. 

And yet...

I suspect that, although most little girls - and most little boys - have at one time or another picked up a stick and used it as a weapon, most of the saucer-eyed kiddos thronging into Disney on Ice were fantasizing about being Elsa or Mirabel. And not about mowing down their enemies with an automatic rifle.

Anyway, it's appalling that, given all the people who are mass-murdered in this country, that anyone would think a make-pretend high-powered rifle would be an appropriate toy for a child is beyond me. The average age of the children in that Sunday audience was the same age as the average age of the little ones slain at Sandy Hook. A bit younger than the kids massacred at Uvalde.  

I grew up when kids played cowboys and Indians. My brothers and all their friends had guns. No name cap pistols. Davey Crockett rifles. Maverick six-guns. Roy Rogers six-guns. Air rifles. No name "shot guns."

One of my brothers had some sort of plastic belt, the belt buckle of which had a tiny gun embedded in it. When you paunched out your stomach, the tiny gun "fired." I think it was a Yancy Derringer model.

Cowboys and Indians. Cobs and robbers. World War II.

Us vs. the bad guys. (Sorry, but back in the day, we thoughtlessly and ignorantly considered the Indians to be the bad guys, shooting up wagon trains and scalping blue-eyed devils, etc. All we learned in school was Manifest Destiny, and that Native Americans just got in the way.)

Us vs. the bad guys. That's what kids played, and not just boys.

There were a ton of boys in my neighborhood, and when my girlfriends weren't around for jump rope or a game of jacks, I played with my brother Tom and his friends. Sometimes, when we played war, I was the chaplain, dispensing Necco Wafer communion hosts.

But mostly bang, bang.

So I'm proof (alongside my brothers and their friends) that every kid who plays with guns doesn't grow up to be a mass-murdering psycho.

And yet...

Who in their right mind thinks handing a kid a gun they can play mass murder with is a good idea?

No, they don't look like the "real thing," but who (i.e., what police officer) in a tense situation replete with commotion, noise, and fear, is going to stop and consider that the commotion-making, noise-inducing, fear-making item pointed at them is real or not?

And who in their right mind thinks that Frozen and Encanto: Disney on Ice was a good venue for this type of merch?

Marketing 101, bro. Know they buyer.