Times was pretty widely used on mass produced things of that era because it was one of the standard Linotype machine options. I’m not sure anything in the times family helps narrow down ages that much.
Heh. Forget keeping my Transformers, I should have kept my old Lego sets. I had both of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/271674875489?item=271674875489&lgeo=1&vectorid=229466
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Judging from the amount of lab equipment built from Lego, e.g. here, it seems it’s not possible to grow out of it. Unless you lose creativity and become a middle manager in finance.
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East Germany did not establish full diplomatic relations to many Western European states until 1973/74, j. Until that, the official language, promoted in the western press, was that there was only one Germany, partly occupied by some illegal communist entity in the east.
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Agree totally - all my Lego from the 70’s was compiled into a plastic box and passed onto my cousins. After doing the rounds through two other families it came back to me when my eldest was born in the mid 90’s. Now it’s with his ten year old brother.
Every now and again a new or second-hand set is purchased, built as per the instructions once or twice and the parts go into the box. Sure, there are now 70’s Lego folks with round heads mixed in with Harry Potter minifigs and maybe an ewok or two, but what gets constructed is always something else altogether. In fact, these days constructions tend to be on the back of some mindstorm creation that will hunt you down and fire coloured balls at you if you don’t repeat the password.
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It’s based on unanalysed assumptions. A kid surrounded by nothing but toy spaceships might dream of playing with a dolls’ house. Not gender-comparative either; what’s more ‘exciting’, a tablet pc or a spear? Depends who you ask.
Not much of a conspiracy!
I just thought it peculiar the copy echoed present-day problems with the mainstream equality debate.
Not necessary. Just click next picture and you will see the back side.
A sociological standpoint would begin by stripping away assumptions, whereas the copy here seems to have sprung from them.
I think the word ‘egalitarian’ above got me started here. It’s more a case of Boys/Girls/Whatever, Just Buy Our Stuff.
Those damn capitalist butter cookies! (that’s a racial slur for Danes apparently - The Racial Slur Database)
But you didn’t leave them sealed, did you? Tsk, tsk tsk.
Sometimes a Lego is just a Lego.
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I’m not sure your first sentence makes sense, and not quite sure what the last two of the first paragraph are actually saying, but as to this:
Hand holding a paper in front of a bricks strewn across the floor?
Seems like whoever took the shot was playing with some old lego collections, stumbled upon the piece of paper in with the collections, then took a photo. Anyone who has ever played with Lego knows it ends up all over the floor if you’re playing with it, seems an entirely reasonable scenario to me. Either that or the photographer simply thought scattered lego made an appropriate backdrop to the shot, regardless of the papers authenticity.
What present-day problems? Gendered toys? That one’s being going on a while…
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I’m disappointed that the vast majority of comments here are all about the notes’ authenticity, as if something this juicy, this appropiate to the gender conversation must have been faked.
OK, yes! It’s genuine. Remember Anita Sarkeesian’s two videos about Lego and gender? They’re even more timely. As far as plastic building systems go, there’s been a huge step backwards.
Another disturbing trend I’ve noticed around gendered toys- a few years ago the thrift stores started making a separate section for “girl’s toys” and “boys toys”, so if ever a kid was tempted by something not designed for them, it’ll be even more obvious how theyll get teased.
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FWIW, io9 comes down on the side of it being real. I think at least some companies were trying to appeal to the feminist perspective of the early to late 70s, and given that this was a Western European state that likely had cradle to grave stuff, its entirely possible that they’d promote a gender neutral toy in this manner.
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I think proportional spacing started out with Gutenberg and kerning came not too much later.
A typesetter’s tray includes not just letter blocks in various sizes, but a nice selection of shims. I don’t know exactly when they decided that the ‘r’ block could deviate from rectangular to let its corner stick out, but kerning definitely came before digital typesetting.
Schoolboy error.
Hell, full justification did too. People make a lot of false assumptions about historical printing, not realizing just how much work went onto it.
Hey!
