Up to the end of the 19th century, children were given little consideration within society and in the emerging mass market. On the contrary, at the start of the 20th century children stared being considered as potential readers and consumers of goods. This gave rise to the birth of the first children's comics and mass production began of the first toys which were a huge success. It was therefore somewhat easy, in 1915, to give a patriotic dimension to these two innovations so as to involve even the youngest section of the population to participate in the First World War.
The "Corriere dei Piccoli", probably the most popular children's newspaper in Italian history, gave its contribution. Various pictures showed children intent on sleeping in their small bed while dreaming of participating in heroic actions on the front or else hugging their toy soldiers. Inside this newspaper they could also read stories such as the one about "Cirillino, a true pest who was very hard to please and who was extremely naughty, only calms down when his father, after having withdrawn all his savings, goes to buy two million bonds of a national loan." (Antonio Gibelli, La Grande Guerra degli Italiani, BUR, Milan, 2009, page 229). It is obvious that a cartoon such as this one was meant to captivate not only the young ones but also their parents.
Another example is that of postcards with an invitation to follow the example of children who appeared on these cards. As good young Italian citizens they did not play with skipping ropes so as not to wear too much the soles of their shoes or else they tried not to stain their sheets with their pen in order to avoid waste. These postcards also urged them not to eat anything between meals and not to use sugar since this commodity was scarce throughout all the years of the war.
Even toys and group games changed in 1915. In the shops it was no longer possible to find teddy bears but instead there were imitations of mortars, large siege guns and rifles. Even the young Ettore Bulligan recalls how "I had made friends with children of houses nearby and used to play with them, naturally war games, and I had a helmet, cartridge cases and a gas mask but I did not have a rifle" (Giacomo Viola, Storie della ritirata nel Friuli della Grande Guerra, Gaspari, Udine, 1998, page 23). The First World War had indeed involved everyone.
