Playing at war between stereotypes and iconographic representations. A study of the sources kept in the Central State Archive

Abstract

This paper investigates the meaning of trademarks and models of war toys stored at the Central State Archives. It focuses on war toys produced and sold in the second half of the 20^th century (Scarpellini 2001; Mattioni 2017) and uses a source that the history of education has only recently begun to consider (Meda 2016). As a result, the paper gives an original contribution to the study of toys and play, which have been widely recognized as indispensable sources of history education and pedagogic research as far as it aims at reframing the analysis of education and cultural processes and beginning a new critical analysis of adult imaginaries (Montecchiani 2021, pp. 728-729). Indeed, war play has always been among the preferred form of children’s games because, since ancient times, it has maintained a double value as a form of fighting training and initiation into the world of adulthood (Meda 2014, p. 64).