Remove the saw, and you have a "deluxe" model BSA knife that was by far the best of the otherwise sorry Ulster U.S.A. knives - and stainless too. A quite decent knife.
Until WWII, official BSA knives were made by the top companies. Remington has been mentioned, but there were also New York Knife Company, Cattaraugus, Landers, Frary & Clark, and Ulster Knife Company (NOT Ulster USA).
IIRC, Ulster USA was one of the 2 companies that Baer purchased to combine to make what would be known as Schrade. Ulster USA was known for using their Swinden key construction, but I've not heard of them being referred to as "sorry" by very many people. Would like to hear more about that.
In any event, I think there may be some truth the OP's question but I'm not sure the problem was "boy" so much as it was "scouts". Couple of things....
First, it bears remembering that a) the classic BSA knife is a specific example of the more general "camper" or "utility" pattern and b) all sorts of pattern (including lockbacks and fixed blades) had the status of being an "Official BSA Knife". Never-the-less, we refer to such knifes as "scout" knives for a good reason. No other style of scout knife has the status of being
the scout knife in the same way as the 4 blade camper pattern does. And companies like Ulster USA marketed those knives to scouts very hard in the 60s and 70s. It's worth looking through the old Ulster adds at the Schrades R Us site to get a feel for those old adds.
Second, I suspect that the popularity of the camper knife among adults varies by region and background. I associate the camper knife with the camp culture of New England and the Adirondacks, which includes kids camps, fishing/hunting lodges and even the church camp culture of the 50s through 70s. I'm not at all surprised that this pattern is more associated with New York state or Providence, RI makes (New York Knife, Imperial, Ulster, Camillus) and less with Pennsylvania or western makers (Case, Buck, Western).
Regarding background, we've heard several stories here on this board of WWII and Korean War vets who carried camp knifes and this is consistent with some of the older vets I've been acquainted with. We know that many soldiers bought and carried US hunting knives instead of the military issued knifes and we know that there is close relationship between those designs. In the same way, the 4 camper is very closely related to the 4 blade, all stainless military "Demo" knife and it's not at all surprising to me that vets came home carrying campers instead of demo knives. My brother in law's dad was a Sea Bee in WWII and worked building roads the rest of his life. He always carried a camper style pocket knife.
Related, 4 blade campers have (or had) a bit of a following among the backpacking/climbing boom of the 70s as a non-stainless alternative to the SAK. You'll find references to them in the older backpacking books of the era and in magazine reviews.
But at the end of the day, SAKs have a much bigger following than camper/BSA knives do and while I think "boy" was a part of the marketing success, it was only a part of it.
I think "scout" became just as negative of a word by the mid to late 70s. The 70s saw an explosion of outdoor sports recreation including cycling, backpacking, climbing, cross country skiing and hot-dog skiing. In all of these forms, the ability to head out on your own terms without the constraints of official oversight or competition were a part of the ideal. The formality of scouting ran absolutely counter to that. Please note, I'm not busing on scouting in anyway, just noting that the scouting ideal and the do-you-own-thing ideal of the 70s outdoor recreation boom were at logger heads.
SAK's had 2 things going for them in a positive way regarding marketing. First, they were Swiss and the 60s and 70s saw a flood of outdoor recreation brands come in to US before the US makers responded. In the 60s up through the early 80s, if you were buying skis, bikes, backpacks, crampons, ice axes, hiking boots, camp stoves or tents, you were almost certainly looking at European brands. I would love to talk to the sales and marketing people of the US knife makers from that era but it seems to me that the growing outdoor recreation boom of the 70s was a huge opportunity lost for the US knife makers. If you looked at REI catalogs from the late 70s, or visited Eastern Mountain Sports stores (or their mom & pop equivalents) you would find Swiss Army Knives there along side of Italian hiking boots and Swedish camp stoves but you would not see any US made knives, camp or otherwise.
The second thing that SAKs had and have going for them is their association with the military. And in particular, with a somewhat non-offensive army of the Swiss. It would be interesting to think if Camillus and Schrade could have turned the 4 blade camper into a brand icon in the 70s had they successfully gone after the backpacking market in the US. I think the association with scouting wasn't going to sell well with that crowd and I suspect that had they marketed them as "US Army Utility Knives" and worked to blur the lines between the campers and the demo knives, they would have similarly encountered market resistance to being associated with the US military, which for right or for wrong was problematic for some people in the 70s (I work for the military, so please don't think I'm busting on the military).
Last thing to toss out here is that I don't think quality was or is the big differentiator here. I've broken more SAKs under normal to light use than all other knives combined. Scales fall off, scissor springs break or otherwise fall to pieces and entire knives just fall into bits. Yes, this is almost all with Victorinox knives. Add to this that the vast majority of Victorinox knives I've handled have at least one absolute nail breaker and my general ambivalence to their stainless and they leave me feeling, meh. I'm not busting on Victorinox particularly here. Just noting that they don't stand out as being head and shoulders better than the US camper knifes.
Here's my Ulster camper. It's in my EDC rotation. Great knife. Sharpens up like nobodies business and slices through things with such ease that it makes me giggle like a school girl.
) Great knife.
How the heck have you been breaking SAKS? I think the worst I did was bend a corkscrew once, and I abuse the heck out of mine.