Copyright 2002 T. Sheil & A. Sheil All Rights Reserved
What with news footage of nuclear tests, "duck & cover" drills and signs for fallout shelters on every public building, the Atomic Bomb was before us all the time. So it should be no wonder that a little of its influence tricked into the realm of toy soldiers. Lindbergh made a kit for the Atomic Cannon, an experimental artillery piece designed to fire a nuclear projectile. Tim Mee advertised a toy version. Though nobody made a toy "atomic bomb," there were cap rockets and other oddities that had the word "atomic" on the blister card.
The Atom Bomb thrilled us and scared us. Just how many science fiction movies featured the bomb, either as a catalyst for creating mutant dinosaurs or a weapon to use against marauding alien spacemen. We saw it used in War of the Worlds. We saw the giant ants supposedly created by nuclear tests in the movie "Them." Let us not forget the British import, the Giant Behemoth, or the Japanese nuclear-mutated "Godzilla."
The military had its own take on the bomb. It loved releasing films of tests, including tests where troops were present. We saw photos of Marines and GIs having a fine time watching the bomb go off. Wow! According to the Army, the radiation wasn't than big a deal.....and of course, the Army was wrong on that one. People didn't understand radiation all that well at the time. Even the scientists got it wrong a few times.
Playing with Army Men required a limit to the destruction. We could abide tanks and Saber Jets and heavy artillery, but nukes were out. They would wipe out an entire plastic army, and that meant the game was over. The first place with a total nuclear ban was the plastic battlefield.
That being decided, nukes were strictly a spectator sport. There were the new clips of atomic tests and the science fiction movies, which in the 1950s and early 1960s were brimming with nuclear fireworks.
Of course, our fascination never quite diminished the terror that the Atomic Bomb evoked.