One-image psychological test

As James Lileks says "I'm not saying it's the be-all / end-all of ideological tests, but you can tell a lot about a person by their reaction to this ad.

That was then, to understate the case. Nowadays we've done away with these dangerous violent antisocial pseudo-guns, and replaced them with merry-makers like Nerf guns and Supersoakers and other items whose makers encourage you to point them at your friends.

This does not seem like an improvement, if you ask me.

Some of the ads are hilarious . . . proving that the past really is a different country. (It does have the Red Ryder BB gun, but it's not quite the way Ralphie described it.)

The Red Ryder BB gun was prominently featured in the popular 1983 film A Christmas Story, in which the main character requests one for Christmas, but is repeatedly rebuffed with the warning "You'll shoot your eye out". The movie's fictional BB gun, described as the "Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time", does not correspond to any production model nor even a prototype; the Red Ryder featured in the movie was specially made to match author Jean Shepherd's story (which may be artistic license, but was the configuration Shepard claimed to remember).