For purposes of blogging, I'll assume these are real ads, and not just linkbaiting comps. Creative Review says the stills from this ad campaign for Mattel's Matchbox collection come from Ogilvy & Mather's office in the happy happy, good news dictatorship of Singapore.
So I'll also assume the reason they didn't go balls out and use actual child soldiers from the Congo is because those stories have been carefully sliced out of all the Economists in town.
Playing War [creativereview.co.uk via dt reader rolf]
I've been of two minds with regards to this type of thing. When my son was on my lap as a 2 year old and we were reading Richard Scary's 'Cars and Trucks and Things That Go' I was surprised by how disturbing I found the page with all the military vehicles. I didn't know how to describe the purpose of the vehicles being shown. I quickly skipped on to pages of less destructive planes, trains and automobiles. Now, a year later, I'm still not sure how to handle this page. And we're talking about a Richard Scary book here...about as cuddly as it gets. But at the same time I think back to my childhood and how it was jam packed with guns, tanks and GI Joe and I don't know if there were any ill effects. (Others, I'm sure, would disagree.)
I guess at best this kind of thing is harmless. At worst, it furthers our fascination with weapons and aggressive use of military power that has been an unfortunate aspect of humanity throughout time and will likely continue to be with or without images of kids piloting Blackhawks.