What did you play growing up? Please name the time and place.
I grew up in Texas in the 70’s and I don’t recall ever once playing cowboys vs. Indians or cops vs. robbers (traditional American childhood imaginary “conflict/ fighting” games). All of us in the neighborhood had plenty of toy weaponry to be sure (guns of all types from different eras, toy knives and swords, bows and arrows, ect.), but we had different “enemies.”
In the non-fictional category we played:
US Soldier vs. Nazis (no other kid wanted to be Nazis, we had to pretend that we were under attack by unseen forces).
US Soldier vs. Russian (Cold War- we thought that this was really going to happen).
Revolutionary War Minuteman vs. British Redcoat (it was the Bicentennial. Schoolhouse Rock influence us, we did not shoot our Kentucky rifles until we saw the whites of their eyes)
Pirate band vs. rival pirate band
Native American tribe vs. rival Native American tribe
We played lots of fictional characters that are too numerous to mention (Star Wars and Super Friends super heroes come to mind).
We played “The Blue and the Gray” when that miniseries was on tellie in '83.We were easily led, I guess.
then there was Zulu vs Zulu when Shaka was on tellie, although I was too old for it by then, but I saw younger kids playing it.
Suprisingly, “Dutch vs Khoisan”, “Settlers vs Zulus” and “Boers vs Brits” were never very popular
I’m from Arizona. Bloods and Crips of course. With real Glocks, but we weren’t allowed real bullets. There was the one time that Joe got a hold of a clip, but, he didn’t kill anyone. Shawn was fine.
Kidding, kidding. I never played those x vs. y games, but we did do all sorts of toy and play fighting that would look exactly the same to an adult or an observer. We just never had “sides.” Always sorta every man for himself. Not a lot of kids on our block, I guess.
We always played SWAT which was a big show for boys in the 70s. One of our friends would hide in the woods and the team would hunt him down and “kill” him. We had all kinds of cool toy guns which in those days looked like the real ones, no green and orange pistols for us.
South Dakota, early to mid-80s. There was some cops and robbers, but it quickly shifted over to HeMan, Transformers, and G.I.Joe when their shows became a staple of cartoon watching. They just had better weapons.
Oh, let’s see – we had:
Cowboys vs Indians
Japs vs Commandos
Cops vs Robbers
Doctor Who vs the Daleks/Cybermen/Ice Warriors/Quarks etc
Batman vs the Joker/Riddler/Penguin
Thunderbirds vs the Natural Disaster of the Day
And probably some others, depending on what had been on TV.
