Down with the kids

Every time one of my kids has a birthday I visit one of the major toy retailers and go through the same process. I wander the endless aisles becoming more and more confused and dazed. My feelings move from bewilderment, to frustration and finally to rage!

So much plastic, such high price tags! I end up leaving, purchasing nothing and find myself at our local educational toy shop - browsing beautifully crafted toys, designed to encourage a child’s imagination, and built to last.

I just returned from shopping for Big Sis’ birthday and it was no different! The word that kept springing to mind as I worked myself into a fury was “cynical”. Yes, the toys were cynical - like some kind of parody of childhood, put together with the cheapest materials and without care, in the cheapest labor markets available. I got as far as the Bratz shelf before I’d had enough.

I should state here, for the record, that I am not a Barbie hater. I preferred the Malibu Stacey designed by Lisa Simpson, but I don’t think it matters that much. Kids are far to smart to take their role model from one plastic doll. However, those Bratz dolls, those heinous little tarts, they are another story!

Gazing at the shelf I almost expected to see a tiny little cocaine mirror and purse, what’s next, a tiny pink Ferrari with a little police officers to arrest the party girl for DUI? An attorney dressed for court to bribe her out of prison? These dolls resemble the kinds of kids I don’t want Big Sis hanging out with in High School, so why give her the plastic versions to play with as a preschooler?

Bratz is not just designed to ignite the consumerist juices of the average 4 year old (though clever accessories and major marketing budget assure this), they themselves physically represent the little consumers the marketers hope our kids will grow into. Kids get to role play empty, meaningless, sad lives with lots of bling, lip gloss and clothes. So its double jeopardy, get your kids addicted to collecting all this plastic for ugly little dolls. The ugly little dolls themselves parodying the real behaviour of lots of ugly adults in our post modernist, consumerist world!

So what did I buy in the educational toy shop? An old fashioned flower press. Big Sis loves picking flowers and with Spring and the new baby just around the corner I have these mental fantasies of sitting on a large picnic rug, baby at my breast, Little Bro pottering nearby as Big Sis and I press flowers and discuss all that is natural and magical.

The truth is, educational toyshops fire my imagination! Then again, it could be the pregnancy hormones! But what’s wrong with that - Big Sis doesn’t know who Bratz is yet - and I’m not going to be the one to introduce them!