Biological Warfare for Children

Super Soaker cannons on each side provide long range artillery support as the foot soldiers engage in close quarters combat. Water balloon grenades are lobbed at well protected positions. The water battle proceeds as scripted with both sides taking heavy soggy casualties until finally one kid says screw it, grabs the water hose with a jet spray nozzle and thoroughly soaks the opposition and much of his own team. The heat is defeated, and all of the children are damp and happy.

Hasbro is the main weapons dealer for water artillery, cornering the arms market with their legendary line of Super Soaker water gu-, er, toys. Despite their gun and pistol like appearances, the Super Soaker website goes to great length to keep from referring to these items as such. They are instead referred to as "blasters," a term that apparently still maintains a favorable connotation with parental advocacy groups. The original topic of this column was to be about how today's culture goes to great lengths to shield children from words like GUN and SEX yet 90% of the television shows during primetime involve guns and sex. Despite my aim, every time I start on that subject line I get the overwhelming urge to purchase war bonds, listen to Paul Harvey, and yell at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.

Hasbro's reputation as the primary arms dealer of weaponized water has been quite honorable up until this year, but I think they might have finally crossed the line of good sportsmanship. As I browse their website and view the Super Soaker line of blasters, a new weapon has been added to their arsenal that's going to start a lot of fights this summer. It's called the Oozinator, a water blaster that not only blasts your opponent with water, it also equipped with a canister and nozzle that shoots out snot like gobs of ooze. From the product description:

Sneak up on your opponents with a surprise bio-ooze attack! Just when they think you're coming at `em with water, blast `em with a shot of icky bio-ooze! Shoot out globs of gooey bio-ooze and then drench `em with water!

Bio-ooze? Is this what weaponized water dispensers have given way to? The Biological Weapons Convention in 1975 strictly forbids the use of biological weapons on the field of battle, and even though the battlefield is a city park in Little Rock and the combatants range from 11 to 15 years of age, these rules of engagement still apply. If any person engaged in a water battle is ever subjected to biological attack at the hands of a kid with an Oozinator, the rules implicitly state that, as an enemy combatant, the ooze recipient is well within his rights to punch that kid in the face.

With Hasbro blatantly defying the ban on biological weaponry, it's only a matter of time until fed up combatants get sick of being splatted with goo by Timmy and his the Oozinator and decide to unleash chemical weapons onto the soggy battlefield. A perceptive child will realize the water reservoir on his Super Soaker is fully capable of holding a myriad of other liquids. So the next time Timmy shows his face, it's going to get doused with a half gallon of Mountain Dew.

In a world where Ooze and Mountain Dew are commonplace ballistic options on the field of water battle, the nuclear option of running to get the waterhose no longer has the same effect. That too will have to be escalated to keep up with the growing demands to maintain dominance over the rival water militia. A black market for used fire hoses will be established as kids hook into the hydrants to mow down advancing troops. That is, unless the rival army figures out how to tap into the water main to create a geyser in the middle of the street. Oh the liquid carnage, it will be massive!

On second thought, that sounds like a lot of fun. Just as long as they remember to stay off my lawn.