The Evolution of Toys

My three-year-old daughter receives a slew of toys every Christmas and birthday, not to mention most days in between. It’s not that her mother and I feel the need to smother her with things, it’s that she is reaping the benefits of being the only grandchild of both sets of grandparents. On top of that, my wife was the only girl among seven children between Rylee’s Nana and Grammy. That has resulted in a giant wave of estrogen released upon us in the form of dolls, little pink dresses, and Cinderella paraphernalia.

The amount of toys isn’t all that bad. We may have to move into another house to accommodate all the stuff, but it’s not what really concerns me. It’s the level of technological wizardry which has gone into the toys, dolls in particular.

Talking toys are okay. I can deal with that. It’s the toys that begin talking on their own which seems to cross some sort of line. When Amazing Amanda wakes up on her own at eight o-clock every morning and says in that belongs-in-a-Stephen-King-movie voice “Say my name, mommy.” I’m weirded out just a tad. On Dec. 31 my wife “woke” her up (You do that by hugging her. Lugging Amazing Amanda, Dress-up Dora, and assorted boxes upstairs after Christmas, I squeezed the little cyborg to make her ask me if I was her mommy.). After Amy woke up Amanda, my wife was greeted with “Happy New Year’s Eve, mommy.” The doll knew what day it was. Something else: Amanda will ask to go to the potty. Once you place her on her little toilet that was included you hear grunts and little watery kerplops. Lovely.

Okay, that can be a neat trick in programming the toys to know the days of the year and wish Happy whatever, but this is the beginning of the end. A few years ago America seemed to go through this battle-bot faze where nerds would build souped-up rock ‘em sock’ems that would beat each other up with saws and flame throwers in a metal death ring. Take that with the increased intelligence of these talking dolls and Care Bears (one came to life while I was vacuuming my daughter’s room and wanted to read a story to me) and in a millenia or so robots are going to be sent back in time to destroy the mother of the human race’s last chance for survival.

I feel my daughter’s only hope may be to shut her into the toy section of a Cracker Barrel and force feed yo-yo’s and slinkys to her. That way I can mount an offensive against the sinister toys who wish to live.

That might have to wait, though. Right now Amanda wants me to make her an omelette before combing her hair, and she can get pretty cranky when her breakfast is late.