I recently had this email exchange with my dad:
My dad wrote: "Question about "Licensed" toys. It appears that a more & more toys have some character or personality on them. Not that you can not find some without, but sometime the item you really like does. Anyway what are your suggestions as to what would be OK if it came to that?"
I replied: "We try not to get toys with characters on them. If you do get
something, Sesame Street is usually fine. Dora the Explorer is okay.
Hello Kitty/Sanrio is okay, too. It's easier to say what we shun
altogether: Barbie, Bratz, Hannah Montana. Please don't buy Barbie or
any of those. We also try to stay away from Disney princess stuff, but
among the bad, Disney princess is better."
The exchange highlights something that I think about A LOT - toys and television.
It's very frustrating to me that toys and television are so closely linked these days. Every item that is available for children is available in as some kind of licensed product. The insidiousness works both up and down. We went looking for a toothbrush and all the toothbrushes are branded. I let her (3 yo) pick out her own toothbrush. From among them all she chose a Disney princess toothbrush - despite having no exposure to the princess movies or other products at home. Since she doesn't know that there are princess movies or other toys she hasn't asked for them, but I am sure it will happen sooner than later. She has friends, they watch TV, they play with princesses, she's smart, she'll figure it out and then she'll want to watch princesses. And then there's the hook that works the other way, from TV show to licensed product. If she watches the TV show of say Curious George (which we allow her to watch, mostly on DVD) then she'll be more inclined to want toys with Curious George on them.
I know that there is a futility to all this. She will get older. She will watch TV that I don't like. She will own toys that I don't like. Yet, I have to feel that pushing against those things and holding them off as long as possible is a good thing. The truth is that I find her toys that aren't covered in cartoon characters. Not all toys must be made of molded plastic. The point of this is to avoid training her to consume what she sees on TV.
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Barbie rulz. And the doll came first. But I feel ya. My bug usually prefers cardboard, paper, milk containers... to any of the cool toys she gets.
ReplyDeletewhen greg first told his dad that we were expecting, his dad said, "good now i have a reason to go to the disney store." i cringed. by the same token, barbie was an integral part of my girlhood. my barbie had a pat benatar haircut and could wear the hell out of fabric scraps. her boyfriend was a one legged steve austin wearing nothing but his permanent utility belt plastic underpants. they drove a used camper van and i'm pretty sure they threw key parties. it was the 70's after all...
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