Stay Tuned/The Toy Front Dispatch

I did the unthinkable and actually set foot in a Toys "R" Us a few days ago - for research purposes.

No, honest. I didn't buy one blessed thing, having no kids on the shopping list this year and precious little interest in anything there (save the Nintendo 64, which I know better than to buy) for myself.

And, y'know what? All these extremists who keep griping and moaning about the state of children's toys may not be so extreme after all.

When one is dealing with toys, one is forced to inevitably deal with Toys "R" Us, the Microsoft of toy stores. (That is not just a sarcastic observation - I hear that anti-competitive practices have been formally alleged.) I confess that by the time I got through scribbling, I was wondering - to what extent is Toys "R" Us reflecting the tastes of the manufacturers, and to what extent is it driving those tastes?

Certainly you can't ask the kids what they really want, since they tend to want anything bright and shiny they see advertised, but usually abandon it all to play with sticks and mud in the back yard anyway.

It is exactly this tendency of kids to make their own toys, or adapt their toys to unintended uses, which has historically allowed me to take the various good toy/bad toy lists that appear every year with a grain of salt. It is this tendency which has allowed me to not fret over the Barbie empire as much as others of my acquaintance - Barbie is just a hunk of plastic which I'm not sure the kids even identify with a human female very closely, and judging from the games I've seen kids play with Barbie, most of the brainwashing is not getting through.

However, after an afternoon in the toy emporium, I cannot deny that the brainwashing is being attempted.

I still think the kids are mostly interpreting their toys to suit themselves (and that their main influences are still their parents and peers, not their toys) - but I concede that messages are definitely being sent, whether the kids are receiving them or not.

Which comes back to the question: Who exactly is sending these messages? Whose social ideal do these toys reflect?

Ideal One: It's okay to blow the other guy away. I believe that "gun toys" have a certain inevitability - a theory formed by seeing a five-year-old boy who almost never played with other kids, seldom watched any TV other than Disney movies on videotape, and who had very carefully not been exposed to toy weapons of any kind pick up a crepe myrtle branch and start pantomiming using it as a rifle.

Nonetheless, something is clearly wrong when the Nerf projectile toys - which I don't dislike per se - start sporting names which are the same or similar to real weapons, such as "Arrowstorm Gatling Unit," "Ballzooka," and "Nerf Crossbow." I've fired a crossbow on several occasions. They are nasty things and I wouldn't want a kid to fantasize about one. Let alone a Gatling - which is a large free-standing machine gun that fires from several rotating barrels in quick succession, in case you were wondering. The toy does the very same thing. (On the package, it says "Safe, Soft, Fun." Underneath that, it says "Rapid fires six arrows!" Mixed message?)

Some people will say my position is a tad hypocritical: Oh, so the Nerf weapons are okay so long as they don't carry the names of real artillery? I dunno. I can see the virtue of being able to fire a foam dart at your bratty little sister every now and again. I just want to make sure no one is taking it seriously. If there's not a happy medium somewhere in between (and there may not be), then I'll vote against the gun toys, but until that's determined, I'll stay on the fence.

Ideal Two: Movies and other entertainment are not completely experienced until you buy something. OK, I like a souvenir as much as the next person, but this is extreme. There was a row each devoted to The Lost World and Batman and Robin merchandise at the toy store. I saw Tamagotchi beanbag pets (cute as all get-out, let it be said) and a Tamagotchi board game. I saw the Anastasia promotional merchandise, which is fighting the same valiant-yet-doomed battle against the Disney merchandising that is being played out even now in the theatres. (I will admit, though, that one seldom gets an opportunity to purchase a doll of Czar Nicholas II.)

I even saw a line of figures which were based on the quickly defunct movie Fairy Tale. A movie about two bored little girls who decided to fabricate a hoax in their back yard strikes me as improbable in the first place - small fairy dolls derived from it are even odder.

Not even public broadcasting is immune - the Microsoft interactive Barney doll is likely to become one of the season's hard-to-find cult items. (Brrrr. Microsoft and Barney. Two nasty things that go great together?)

Manufacturers have learned that calling something a "collectible" will permit even the most outlandish marketing schemes. I saw a line of "collectible" dolls, about Barbie-size, representing the three leads from "The Dukes of Hazzard." (Barbara Bach's shorts had been considerably lengthened from the originals.) Sorry, no Cooter doll that I could find. This is what we venerate in our culture?

I also found a line of "collector figures" of various winning NASCAR drivers, which wouldn't surprise me as much back in Louisiana, but seemed jarring in Massachusetts. I didn't think anyone in Cambridge knew what NASCAR was.

Ideal Three: Boys will be boys and girls will be girls, or else. Not sure why toy manufacturers don't cross lines more often, but they tend to think in terms of gender segregation instead of inclusion. Even the art supplies and other innocuous toys - the kind which normally show up on the good side of those good/bad toy lists - sometimes surprise me with their gender segregation, such as when a manufacturer repackages basically the same paint set twice, once in a "boy" package and once in a "girl" package. Do they think the kids care? (Do they think the kids would care if they weren't being told so often that it's important?)

My favorite example (Barbie is in her own category, below) at present involves two toys: The Metal Molder Die-Cast Factory and the Precious Metals Jewelry Maker. Both are small plastic boxes with a lid and a depression inside where you place a metal mold. You fill the mold with beads of a low-melting-point metal and perhaps a fake "gemstone" or two in strategic places, close the lid, turn it on (I forget whether they use batteries or AC) and out comes a metal item or figurine of some sort. In short, both are the same toy.

But the manufacturer has chosen to market two very similar machines in two different colors, two slightly different designs, two different boxes, with two different sets of molds. The Jewelry Maker has butterfly pendants, moons, stars, and the like. The Metal Molder has items looking like D&D miniatures - wizards, dragons, etc. The "gems" and tubes of metal beads are the same in both.

Now imagine, from a manufacturing point of view, how much more expensive this is - twice the construction, twice the packaging, twice the advertising - than having one product and just putting all the molds in one basket. Why do it this way? Is there a good reason that I'm not seeing?

Most of the little girls I know (admittedly not many) would probably like a dragon pendant a lot more than a butterfly anyway.

Ideal Four: Encourage children to become good consumers. The number of toys involving, or centered around, a shopping/purchasing theme is becoming fairly appalling. I recognize that child's play is frequently imitative behavior, and since Mommy and Daddy shop so much, the kids want to pretend to shop as well - but, uh, why are Mommy and Daddy shopping so much in the first place? There's a behavior cycle here that we could do well to break.

Given that malls have become the major social center of American culture, it may be too late to do anything about this ... but that's a rant for another day.

Ideal Five: Barbie is the spokeswoman for toy values. Barbie embodies all the principles above except, possibly, number one (I haven't seen Gun-Totin' Barbie anywhere yet). As I noted, I considered Barbie fairly benign, but it had been a while since I had taken a long look at the Pink Aisle, and it was an eye-opener.

Among other things, I saw:

- No fewer than four Barbie types devoted to weddings (Wedding Day, Wedding Fantasy, Wedding Party, Dream Wedding), and not low-key weddings either, but the kind where the bride bankrupts her father and builds up the event in her mind so much that all of her subsequent married life is anti-climactic and doomed to failure and/or Prozac.

- Astonishing degrees of cross-promotion. OK, I can see the "collectible" Barbies dressed as famous movie characters, and (as I have said before) I admit that I thought the "Star Trek" Barbie where Ken is Capt. Kirk and she's Yeoman Rand (the perfect role for her) was a hoot, but the "Baywatch" Barbie? Or (absolute nadir) the "Got Milk" Barbie? (I am not making this up.)

- An implied glass ceiling, in that the only "professional" Barbies were the Dentist Barbie and the Pet Doctor Barbie. Shucks, if Mattel is always insisting that Barbie's so socially conscious and intelligent and all, then let the woman become a real doctor - or at least a registered nurse (a much tougher gauntlet, in my mind, than any D.D.S. - apologies to the dentists out there). Where's Lawyer Barbie? (Probably getting ready to sue my butt for this column.) Where's Peace Corps Barbie? Put your activism where your mouth is.

- A whole lotta shoppin' going on. I saw the following settings: Boutique, Supermarket, Bubble Gum Shop, Pet Shop, Kool-Aid Stand (you can file that one under "cross-promotion" as well), and of course the latest, heavily hyped this season: Cool Shoppin' Barbie, where the cash register comes complete with a miniature credit card reader and the plastic to go with it (the box touts: "Barbie says 'Thank you' and 'Credit approved'! Plus: Package can be used as a store!")

Yup, definitely some message-sending. About the only point in Mattel's favor is that they've finally given more than lip service to being multiracially representative - the placement isn't equal by any means, but it's prominent, and there were plenty of Barbies available in both white and brown models for all the styles I looked at. The black Barbie version is appearing fairly regularly in the ads, something which didn't happen a few years ago.

Now, admittedly, if you happen to be, say, Hispanic, your options are slimmer. Barbie has three friends - Christie, Teresa, and Kira - who might as well be black, Hispanic, and Asian clones of each other. (Christie is apparently a different entity from the black Barbie.) However, they are featured much less prominently. This is the same problem that Ken has always had - there is just no room in Barbie's universe for anyone else but Barbie.

Also, having a black Barbie in no way undermines the toy's tacit assumption that every woman wants to be glamorous and over-consume and live in a big pink townhouse. There may be a black Barbie but there is no hint that there may be such a thing as a black culture, which is a shame.

(Admittedly, it may be possible to go a little too far in the opposite direction - I saw a doll called Kenya, one type of which had a dress made of "Color-Me Kente cloth," with washable markers so the child can color the doll's outfit. This is no less excessive than many Caucasian toys, but are those excesses something worth duplicating?)

Mattel has a fine line to walk with Barbie - she has to be an icon for so many things, yet is never allowed to have any true content; she must be bland and innocuous on all fronts. This is probably why Mattel is sweeping the matter of her child under the rug.

Oh, yes. I saw the kid. Her name is Kelly, and she, too, comes in black and white models, and she is billed as being Barbie's "baby sister," but you can't fool me. This is Barbie's kid. We have the option of purchasing the "Potty Training Kelly" play set. Barbie takes the kid to the grocery store. Barbie takes the kid everywhere. If Barbie is a big sister, then Mom has flown the coop and gone to Tijuana. No, no - this is Barbie's love child and Mattel is trying to keep a lid on it.

OK, seriously. Aside from the fact that she has no genitals, why is Barbie not allowed to have a kid? Because she's ostensibly a teenager? To hell with that - ask a kid who has Barbies how old Barbie is. (Even they know that Barbie's been around since forever.) Because Barbie's not married? Pshaw - to judge from the evidence above, Barbie gets married a lot. This is just a case of Mattel being needlessly coy. After all, if you prefer for your Barbies to be chaste, there's no reason to let Kelly into your universe.

On the other hand, I suppose you could say that if you want Kelly to be Barbie's kid, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, either.

As much fun as it would be to rant about Barbie all day (she fascinates me, I admit it), I would prefer to leave you with the idea that these are the values that the toys are attempting to push. It's an interesting exercise to try to point the finger, and it's one I can't participate in, since I have no children nor do I buy toys for any. So it's up to you: who's responsible for these values? The toy stores? The toy manufacturers? Or the toy purchasers?

Somebody has to take the blame for this agenda. Even if the kids aren't buying into it.

[February 2007:] Some day it will be necessary to explain to the young'uns that Barney was an extremely obnoxious giant purple dinosaur and that Tamagotchi were these little digital "pets" you had to feed and so forth, providing all the upkeep tedium of real pets but with none of the benefits.

You will note, by the by, that this column preceded, but hinted at, the cute-Japanese-critters onslaught which historians will one day classify as the Age of Pokemon.

I got mail from my usual correspondents about this column. One letter noted:

After prattling on about Barbie last week, I read in Sunday's paper that Barbie had a new look. Interesting.

Just so you'll know, Barbie has been a doctor (albeit a pediatrician, one of the low-end salary specialties) and a nurse as well as an astronaut and several other things, but not all at one time. She was a doctor a couple of years ago, she was a nurse about ten years ago, and an astronaut last year.

I knew about Barbie's new look, but avoided mentioning it because I had already contributed that to a Barbie rant for a different web project the week before, and I was trying to avoid repeating myself. Entertainment Weekly did a nice piece on "which celebrity does the new Barbie most resemble?" You get to vote for one of the following: Valerie Bertinelli, Naomi Judd, or Natalie Portman. (My vote's for Naomi. No question.)

As for Barbie being a doctor, mea culpa and I'm happy to hear it. Why can't they keep these professions around then? Is being a doctor no longer trendy with the kids?

and now back to our program

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