Take, for instance, those lovable good luck charms of the nineties, Trolls: naked, completely androgynous little creatures with a plastic jewel in place of a navel and smiling pug-nosed faces just ugly enough to be considered cute, topped by a pouf of brightly colored synthetic hair. Who wouldn’t want to take one home? Unable to move or bend in any way, as their creator seemingly forgot to give his creations joints, Trolls were renowned for their ability to sit on a shelf for hours, collecting an assortment of dust particles, waiting to be taken down, brushed off, and shown with a measure of pride to one’s peers. How anyone could be proud to have a collection of naked plastic elves in their possession, I don’t know. Later, the need for common decency, even among plastic elves, asserted itself, and the naked tribe of neon-haired munchkins was provided with a vast array of unbearably cute outfits. There were nurse Trolls with cute little white caps, firemen Trolls with jackets and helmets, and plain village folk Trolls in ordinary, everyday attire. Of course, this new level of maturity in the population soon spawned a new breed of Troll: baby Trolls. I don’t even want to think about how completely androgynous creatures somehow managed to reproduce; it’s just too mind-boggling. Baby Trolls were blessed with the ability to move their limbs to some extent, as a result of evolution in the vats of the Troll factory. Not quite as ugly as their predecessors, they weren’t as much of a hit and the entire species soon died out. So much for the naked plastic elves.
But Trolls were not the first ugly plastic midgets to be a huge hit with children. An earlier species, the Cabbage Patch Kid, holds this dubious honor. With cloth bodies, bald plastic heads, and a face only a five-year-old could love, Cabbage Patch Kids came in all races and both genders, complete with baby clothing and a hospital bracelet. The smirking little dolls also had a world of other associated items on the market, almost all of which had to be bought separately, to the obvious chagrin of many parents. These accessories included carriages, strollers, baby furniture, more baby clothes, and all the accoutrements needed for the care and feeding of a mute plastic dummy. One of the more successful items was the Magical Monitor. At the touch of a button, a child could hear a giggle or a cry that was supposedly made by her doll. This led to many young girls learning the fine art of multi-tasking, allowing them to play elsewhere in the house, all the while alert for the cry of their beloved plastic buntings. When a cry was heard, they could then rush to it’s aid and console the disgruntled midget with spoonfuls of air scraped off of molded plastic strained carrots or changing it’s always-pristine diaper. Why young girls not even old enough to understand the process of reproduction are so obsessed with having a baby of their own is a mystery, but whatever the reason, this weakness made the Cabbage Patch Kids the top-ranking item on many a letter to dear old Santa.
A more recent development in the toy industry gave rise to a whole different breed of ugly and frivolous toys, among them the Tickle-Me Elmo doll, a red furry . . . something-or-other that vibrated and produced an obnoxious, high-pitched electronic giggle when poked in a certain spot. There are those who see a few parallels in this that are best not discussed in polite company. The giggling red furrball was an instant hit among the kindergarten set, it’s freakish chuckles prompting kids to let out some pretty annoying squeals and squeaks of their own. The Tickle-Me Elmo craze also produced abnormal behavior in adults, who waited in line for hours, grappled with each other in the toy store aisles, and paid ridiculously high prices just to get these toys under the tree.
Am I the only one who fails to see the attraction in these toys? What is so fascinating about furry red monsters that laugh obnoxiously, baby dolls with impossibly large heads and so many accessories that parents practically have to mortgage the house to pay for them all, and naked genderless elves that sit around and do nothing? Whatever the answer, if the same reasoning that attracts children to these toys in that with which they will one day govern the world, then we’re in big trouble.
