Obviously the charm of the game has to do with the objects being inanimate. For that reason you don't feel compassion for the losing object. You feel free to use the verbs (like bashing) and don't really feel sorry for the scissors that get bashed.

Conversely, if you made the game out of animals like, say, turtle, badger, wolf......hmmm...

1) wolf outruns badger but can't break through the turtle's shell
2) badger can rip the turtle out of it's shell but can't catch the wolf
3) turtle confounds the wolf but not the badger

...somebody's going to feel sorry for one or the other of the animals. Usually the sympathy edge goes to the furry ones. Thus, no kid is going to choose the turtle because it's not as cute.

Not to mention, it's a game of uneven consequences -- the turtle presumably gets eaten, while the bagder and wolf merely get outrun and frustrated respectively.

Well, I suppose that's true of Scissors, Paper, Rock. The Scissors get smashed (rendering them usesless), while the paper and rock merely get cut and covered respectively. And one might even argue that, while the paper is cut (maybe painful at the time), through that process its number is actually increased...

...So that creates a new problem. Whenever you have to do a "best two out of three", for each successive contest the paper is increasing in number (and thereby, presumably, strength), while at the same time, though the rock stays the same, the scissors are in no shape to do battle again. They are smashed.

re: briefs and boxers - at my age "briefs" aren't.