I am shocked, I am outraged, and well, confused. I honestly don't know how to feel this christmas season. As I succumb to the evils of corporate America sucking me dry and telling my children they can't live without a small piece of plastic they will lose interest in within twenty minutes, and it is all my old stuff. I feel like I am walking into my own garage sale as toy manufacturers sell off my childhood in a new package.
Walking down the toy sections at the store I pass over and over glimpses into the past. Yes kids, the toys of the eighties have returned to haunt us. I noticed it happening as early as high school, when the movie Robin Hood (staring a british accentless Kevin Costner, I mean come on, even Christian Slater tried to fake it) and a toy of what was supposed to be the Sherwood Forrest camp came out. I immediately recognized it as the Ewok treetop village playset I coveted as a kid. It has continued over the years, a more recent example of this repackaging came along with the second Harry Potter movie, when they came out with a toy of a trap that would dump slime on Harry Potter. This was nothing but a repackaged He-Man slime pit from the mid-eighties.
But now, they aren't even trying to be slightly creative by repackaging. I walk into the stores and they are filled with Care Bears, My Little Pony, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, GiJoes. Ok, I admit GiJoe was more my father's toy, then it was redesigned and sold to us (by the way, I miss the little plastic-eye-screw-rubberband- in-the-waist action figures much more than these retro pumped up Ken dolls.)
How dare they? That is MY CHILDHOOD they are selling! My kids need to make their own memories and stay out of mine (you know what I mean) Look, I hate to share my toys when I was a kid (ask my brother Wayne some time about a baseball glove he carried around for a full day once). I don't need to do it now. THOSE ARE MY TOYS AND KIDS NEED TO STAY OUT OF THEM! I didn't get to have an XBOX when I was a kid, they don't get to have Optimus Prime.
IT'S NOT FAIR, I'T NOT IT'S NOT IT'S NOT! And I am gonna hold my breath until they stop!
Calm down. (Big brother warning #1) I have no idea what you are talking about with the glove thing. Is that some kind of lingering grudge thing that we don't talk about until we are in our 20's and know a little more about life to know and respect that sharing is important and that coveting in general is a bad thing? And we say, "Hey, that really hurt me, but I'm ok now." to one another. Are we really ok now? Or did that have a lasting effect? It makes one wonder in general.
In turn, your/our childhood was not those toys. You or I may have retreated into those toys as part of your childhood, but that does not measure up the lump-sum total of your childhood.
I remeber having toys. I remember competing for the best ones. But I foget why I wanted them in the first place. Maybe so that I could have somehting to talk about, share with you in common. Most of all today, I remember how those toys brought chaos and turbulence into our lives, and that when we really wanted to have fuin together. We walked off, and left those childish things behind, and just talked about what we saw together. And what we thought we knew, or what we had ideas about?
Or, wouldn't it be cool if...?
I also, think an importnat consideration to keep in mind, is that maybe it isn't the lack of creativity or the end as means and drive for easy corporate profit in companies today that has brought these toys back. Maybe it is a sign, that we wish things could be a simple as they were when we were kids, and ultimately those are some of our fondest and most frightening memories. And not being able to get them out of our heads, we simply replay them into the present.
Often I get angry at "The Global Economy" and "Corporate Takeover of America" as these are concepts I can have great passion against, but the retort that continually lingers in my mind, is aren't these corporations really just all us. Doing our thing each of us the best we know how, some money grubbing, some carelessly, some non-chalant, some avaraciously, some creativly, some conciously, and sometimes...just as what we are familiar with. What we know.
sorry for the lack of editng above...I guess I deserve that after correcting your spelling mistakes in your post...ahhh humanity
Wow, pretty serious talk for saterday morning. Hehehe, truth is, I was just playing. Truely, I don't get too angry at the global econemy, considering it is the consumer mentality of our society that drives much of that which we would despise. We perpetuate the system.
Lack of creativity? No, lack of need for innovation. If you can ehash the same thing, you just cut out much of your cost, so why not. It is good business if the product sells.
Was my childhood based around toys? No, of course not. Still, toys are mass produced reminders of an era. The unnerving part is that these are reproductions of MY era. Hehehe. Truth is I like being able to get my kids the toys I played with as a kid.
My childhood was more than toys to be sure. It was imagination, play, pain, anger, confusion, love, hate, and a world I had no real concept of.
As far as the baseball glove (hehehe) once when we were kids you were being a jerk, and wouldn't let me use a baseball glove. You didn't want to play with it, you just didn't want me to play with it. Kid stuff. Kind of like when your dad would change the channel when I was watching tv, and then leave the room. He didn't want to watch anything, just wanted to be a jerk.
So, because you apparently wanted to use the glove so much that I couldn't touch it, my mom made you carry it around with you all day. And no, I was in noway scarred by this, I thought it was funny (funnier that your dad STILL does it.)
Spelling mistakes? I ran spell check! BLECH!