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Answering Life’s Biggest Questions
The Short &
Sweet Toy Cycle
By Abigail Fischer and Katie DeLand
Dear A+K:
I am starting the spring cleaning process and mistakenly started with
the toy room. I am overwhelmed and want to throw everything
out. Do my kids choose the worst toys on the market or are they
all equally as annoying?
Sincerely,
Toy Trasher
Dear Toy Trasher,
We have been at this toy thing for awhile and can honestly attest that
there are VERY few toys that pass our test. Basically, if it
doesn't fit in any of the following categories, it stands a small
chance of survival:
Craft Sets: These things look great all packaged up in the
box. Little compartments of uni-colored beads, the yarn all
perfectly laid out and looped in a bow, paint capped in tiny little
attached buckets. Look at the smiling mom and daughter!
Think of the memories and the nostalgia that pot holder will bring for
years. At $12.99, you buy that kit with joy. And then
the box is opened. The plastic tray separating all of the pieces
is instantly broken, one million rainbow loom bands are flung in the
air, and your kitchen table looks like someone rampaged JoAnne
Fabrics. You and your daughter look a far cry from the duo on the
box as you grit your teeth and try to read the instructions.
Weave which piece where? Who drew these illustrations?
After fifteen minutes, you finally have the hang of the over-under
maneuver, but you have lost your daughter to the theme song of "Hey
Jesse" and you find yourself putting those finishing touches on your
own mini scarf alone and weirdly at peace. You will wear this
6-inch weave with pride.
Legos: See above, except scrap any soft surface and insert the
world's most evasive blocks to ever have existed. The only way
you ever find that two-stacker white piece is when you walk over it
barefoot and it lodges so deep into your heel that you whimper like a
small child. Again, most times, you end up finishing these
projects yourself and, afterward, grow awkwardly territorial over
letting your kid anywhere near Elsa's castle. You worked too hard
on that glass balcony to actually allow it to be used.
Train Sets: Once you hear the sound of those clickable track
pieces come crashing down out of the bin that you thought you had
hidden, you resign yourself to a quick ten minutes of set-up.
When you get the thing assembled, you can jet back to the kitchen and
finish the disaster that is dinner. Except... why do all of these
toys have to test your lack-of-engineering skills? We get it, we
would be failures as mechanical anythings, but shouldn't a Fisher Price
train track actually only require the brain cells of the average 3+
child, as CLEARLY advertised? You are so close to completing that
Figure 8, and you have even added some creative elements and twisted it
around a table leg. But a left-curve piece is nowhere to be
found, and your son stares at you and the gaping hole that prevents his
choo-choo from completing the loop. Nooooooo. You try to
reconfigure, but now you are one straight-piece short. Try as you
might, you cannot pull the two ends together without making everything
strained and jacked up. Your son loses all faith in your
locomotive design ability and leaves to wreck havoc elsewhere.
Board Games: Allllll literal fun and games until you peel back
the plastic, shimmy off the box top and realize that the trivia game
that promised "Hours of laughter and challenge!" contains 60 tiny
tokens, four separate stacks of cards and a game board so filled with
various pathways and obstacles that you get dizzy just looking at
it. You clutch the game instructions with your life and
reference them every thirty seconds. Wait- no, the player to the
left was supposed to pull that card. Actually... that particular
dice roll entails moving back five spaces and losing the next
turn. Tears are shed. Feet are stomped. You are left
confused... and again, alone, fairly confident that you messed up the
rules and have no idea what the end goal really is.
Ball Poppers/Drum Sets/Karaoke Machines: If it contains
batteries, your homeostatis will forever be changed. Firecracker
bursts from the fake vaccum will fill your mornings, and the cracking
static of a Disney princess microphone will consume your evening
peace. Attempts at hiding these evil machines will be in vain,
and just when you think you are safe, you will hear the unmistakable
sound of the bellowing hippo singing his tune about learning the
alphabet. Noooooooooo. What is even worse is when these
toys are motion-activated and/or when the batteries start going low and
you finally relaxing in the recliner at night, and out of now where
comes a slowwww, garbled voice floating out from the toy box.
Creepy.
Take solace in the inevitable: these toys will all soon be
broken, lost or forgotten. When you move your couch to tackle the
landfill that you know lies underneath, you will discover a world of
miniature cars, game pieces and that one Lego wheel that you spent an
entire lunch hour searching for. The cyle of toys is short and
sweet, we promise. Until then, hide the Easy-Bake Oven on the
highest shelf you can find and stack cans of soup in front.
Sincerely,
A+K
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