Gunpei Yokoi was a genius. Having joined Nintendo in 1965, he went on to create the Game & Watch handheld games, the Game Boy, and produced a large number of successful Nintendo games.

Yet the modern family-friendly image of Nintendo – who are reluctant to feature violence in any games for their systems – seems a long way from one of Gunpei’s early patents under Nintendo: the Nintendo Land Mine Toy.

Considering this was filed in 1969, when the number of US soldiers in Vietnam during the Vietnam War peaked at over half a million, it seems a little crude and insensitive by today’s standards, especially it’s juxtaposition with other innocent toys:

“The toy of the present invention may be used [...] as a kind of frightening device like a jack-in-the-box“

The toy was recently quoted in a patent application for a “Anti-personnel device for war gaming exercises“. It seems now, as then, the simulation of the horrors of war is in demand.