Space Marines=Death Toys

[Ohma]

The Space MarinesG.I.Joe come equipped with all of the latest sneaky back-door techniques of conditioning children to accept war and total obedience to authority, complete with telling them to extract pride from doing so and to see themselves as superior beings with the unquestionable right to kill, on command. All in a fun package guaranteed to go mostly unnoticed by distracted, harried parents

Really, how could this paragraph not apply to any military-themed toy out there?

To be unnecessarily fair, they probably do think GI Joe/Transformers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Legend of Zelda all are super insidious tools to turn our small children into vicious killing machines. Warhammer probably just caught their attention for some reason.

[SAMAS]

On the small children issue, I often see kids in my local GW shops, either painting or playing. I'd say they are around 12, some of them younger even. I suspect some parents find it very convenient to have their kids being taken care of by the GW Staff.
In fact, there's a policy in the stores regarding foul language, meant explicitly to prevent kids from hearing it.

I blame that huge-ass Blood Angel most GW stores seem to have in their window. I used to work at one, and every five minutes (or less), you'd hear some kid commenting on it.

[PainRack]

Oh, you could recognise that it has something to do with 40K from the distinctive Raven Guard symbol on his sig...if you are good with 40K fluff, that is.

And i have met a lot of kids 10+ playing 40k. I started at 13 myself. Most of them suck at tactics, but hey, they are kids.

Hey! I was GREAT at tactics! Sure, I only played against 10 year olds, but that doesn't mean my excellent use of cover and dual shoot didn't make my Space Marines invinicible!

Of course, my genius younger brother soon realised how to turn that against me in Epic by unleashing the power of meelee orks and wiping out my predator squadron in Epic Wh40k:D

But seriously, there're a couple of GREAT players out there who are just mere kids. And I loved how trying to become a better game player meant I became aware of the concept of risks, odds and even planning for the long term vs the cheap shot.

Hell, my friend even taught me how to plan and teach moral concepts via games, such as not to be greedy for short term oppurtinities, not to overreach yourself and always support yourself. Sure, that's a secondary lesson taught from having a large resource base for CCG so that you don't rely overmuch on luck to get enough resources to deploy your cards, diversion away from the primary gameplan(your job is to kill his deck, not his creatures!) But it still counts:D

[Oskuro]

To be unnecessarily fair, they probably do think GI Joe/Transformers/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Legend of Zelda all are super insidious tools to turn our small children into vicious killing machines. Warhammer probably just caught their attention for some reason.

I somehow suspect that they don't care that much if the small children are being brainwashed into the doctrines of their country/political ideals/religion/culture.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I remember parents who didn't want their chidlren exposed to "wartoys" no starwars action figures, no capguns, no water ballons, etc. They did however allow the boys LEGOS, which they promptly used to make starwars x-wings, toy guns, and starship enterprises, which they promply smashed together in an orgy of destruction.

oh yeah our parents loosened up after that.