Much Ado About Nothing – “Christmas Toys”
On August 27 (yes, just a very few short days ago), Starbucks released the pumpkin spice kraken back into the universe as if that would prematurely summons all things autumn. It did not. I did, however, immediately throw the seasonal space-time continuum into a cataclysmic tailspin, to which WalMart reacted by announcing their biggest ever holiday toy list. Holiday, in this usage, does not mean Labor Day, Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Halloween, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, or even World Smile Day which falls on October 4th this year. No ho ho, before summer has even officially ended, the Christmas machinery is in motion.
The world’s largest retailer dropped a list of 48 must-have-or-your-childhood-is-ruined toys that had been rated by kids who tested and played with Lord knows how many toys and chose these. I guess the good news is that Little Johnny got a job at 8-years old. The bad news is that nothing takes the fun out of fun like making it work. I just picture some bad-tempered slave-driver of a boss badgering some kid to make his toy quota: “You got 5 minutes to play with 78 more toys, kid, or we’re gettin’ someone in here who will!”
And, making sure that Christmas is completely and whole-heartedly commercialized and degraded to merely being a money-making scheme, WalMart is adding 40 new toys from kid-influencer brands. If you’re over the age of about 28, you’re wondering (as I did), what the heck is a kid-influencer brand. It sounds just a little diabolic, to be honest.
Kid-influencers are little kids videotaped for YouTube that other little kids watch and want to be like. So when Kid-Influencer Suzy posts her new vid of her playing with matches and drinking bleach (or the latest thing some toymaker has paid her big bucks to play with in her video), then all the 108 million kids who follow her want to do it, too. So, yeah, I’m sticking with the diabolic assessment.
Parents, first of all, have your children’s faces surgically removed from all screens. Get them off the couch and off the YouTube. Send them outside until they can think for themselves. Sure, they may stand out there until their brains finally congeal enough to go back inside, but trust me that everyone – except WalMart – will thank you later! And Merry Labor Day!
