LadyFyre
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2000
- Posts
- 241
I'm not usually a c&p person, but this was too great...
And yes, I know it's long - but start reading it, and you'll get caught up in how true and hilarious this is.
Copied from
http://www.the-declaration.com/1999/12_09/features/toys.shtml
by Jason Bennett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A couple of days ago, while careening around my apartment in tornado / clean-up mode, I discovered the Toys 'R Us Christmas insert. I knew the powerful feeling of cleaning catharsis wouldn't last through a stroll down memory lane, but I was too tempted. The toy insert is a sacred document in every child's young life, and I couldn't just toss it aside.
When I was a wee whippersnapper, we didn't have newspaper inserts or Etoys.com. All we had was the thick, cumbersome Sears Wishbook, which had 130 pages of tedious grown-up "gifts," and only 30 pages of sweet, sweet toys.
Naturally, I kept my Sears Wishbook next to the toilet: it is the most popular place in a house to read. I would gaze longingly at that year's big gift. Once it was a remote controlled truck, once it was an elaborate Constructs Robot, and eventually it was a Sega Genesis. I spent many a December morning without any feeling in my legs, sitting on the frigid beige-porcelain bowl, gazing into my Christmas future.
Of course, even in the holy world of those 30 pages, there was a tainted valley. It was the much-avoided, always-reviled grotto of pink and fuchsia. For about five pages the entire catalog was drenched in pink: pink backgrounds, pink numbers, and pink stars around boring, ugly, useless pink toys. The pink section didn't last more than a week before it was torn out to expedite the page-flip from Hot Wheels on page 147 to Video Games on page 153. I think it might have been used as makeshift toilet paper once, when circumstances demanded. Nobody liked the pink section.
Well, I suppose girls liked the pink section. I always figured they did and probably also wanted to tear out the other 25 pages of "boring" guy junk. Girls do girlie activities (such as giving birth), and guys do macho activities (such as driving Monster Trucks). Girls raise kids, guys crush cars. At age six, this all seemed rather obvious.
Recently, however, I've learned that most girls were jealous of guys' toys. They wanted to play with Legos, Transformers, and video games, too. Unfortunately for them, various family members were suckered by the pink and gave little Jane a pink Gymnast girl who twirled on a pink high-bar and said "Whee."
Whee.
Does any real gymnast use a pink high bar? Why can't it be made of metal? It is almost as if the color pink is robbing girls of any real power over their world, like some fiendish soul-sucking force of pale red evil. It takes everything but their power over the pink world, which doesn't exist.
This over-analysis of pink is silly and drenched in academic tomfoolery, but it explains something about modern times. I'm living proof that now, even guys think about stuff like this. We're beyond traditional gender roles, even though some angrily say we're stuck in the stone age. The fact is this: now the world is much more open to can-do women, and for that we're all grateful. It's also open to guys who bump chests in basketball AND write poetry. This is why the pink crap is so bizarre.
If I stared into a time-warping wormhole and somehow saw a toy catalog from 50 years ago, I could understand the domestic junk. Fifty years ago sexism was the norm and women's liberation was unheard of until female suffrage. Women were "naturally" supposed to play with ovens and babies because that was their lot in life. Similarly, guys were supposed to play with everything else because that was their lot in life: to do everything else.
But seriously, we're peeking around the bend of a millenium here and toy companies are STILL trapped in slo-mo. Women do all sorts of crazy stuff nowadays, such as windsurfing and architecture. So does this anachronistic practice continue?
Are toy companies hiring women based on the perkiness of their asses? If so, they must be scraping the bottom of the perky-ass barrel. Even that ditsy pre-comm girlie in your math class would have the common sense to market progressive toys to her gender -- even she is modern enough.
"Progressive toys" do not mean guy toys. Guys play with tons of boring junk as well, such as WWF action figures. Many of these duds end up in basements or attics with musty clothes and bats. Video games are also of questionable value, as noted by my esteemed colleague Mr. Grabowski in his recent journalistic tour de force "Exit the Dragon."
There are plenty of imaginative toys out there, such as Legos, marble runs, various action figures, and brain-teaser type games (rubix cube). Yet all these are typically marketed to guys, which is a shame.
This year's toy offering is the usual mix of crap and genuinely cool stuff. When I was a tyke I could easily recognize boring, gimmicky toys; and like riding a bike, I can easily do so now. Of course, back then I just thought, "That looks dumb." Now I think, "That doesn't have any value." Same meaning, different words.
The opposite reaction hasn't changed, though. When you see a clever toy, you're transported beyond cynicism. You forget about educational value, advertising, and the whole mess. For that brief moment, you just think, "Wow. Neat."
Here are my "Wow, neat" picks for Christmas '99. I suggest you give them to your niece:
Lego Mindstorm system ($200)
Lego's Mindstorm system tickles my fascination with consumer robotics in the same way Sony's Robodog AIBO did. Lego basically combined a Technics Lego building kit (the highest level of Lego) with a computer interface that allows you to program your Lego constructions using a simple computer program. Even the non-techie post-modernist can have fun building a depressed robot that hides from the light and avoids contact with other robots.
Zoob (from $20 to $80)
Zoob is Legos with bones instead of blocks. They are a bit like K'nex, but don't have mechanical axles and gears. Instead they connect in ball and socket joints like human bones. Using sockets with varying degrees of freedom you can create creatures that move realistically and structures that can morph, like sky-scrapers that become venomous plants.
A Yomega Yo-Yo ($10)
The Yomega clutch yo-yo has spring-loaded ballbearings that disengage when the centrifugal force propels them outward. This allows the yo-yo to sleep for a very long time and hence do magnifico tricks, like walking two dogs at once.
Soccer Barbie ($20)
So she's not "Robotics Professor Barbie," but at least she isn't wearing pink. Of course any real member of the Women's World Cup soccer team could easily toast scrawny Soccer Barbie one-on-one, not to mention pile-drive her into the turf. At least her knee joints are moveable though -- a big step up for Barbie.
It's too bad most cool toys are marketed to boys. Three of the four toys I listed have happy little guys tinkering with them on the box. No one has to obey marketing, but parents or children may feel foolish if they don't. Many girls feel abnormal if they stand up for themselves or pile-drive their adversary because these aren't expected from them, even though the world rewards these activities.
There are plenty of educational toys marketed to girls, like chemistry sets for girls, whereby they mimic the experiments of female scientists. There are also plenty of books about inspirational women.
Yep. Plenty of educational toys that nobody wants for Christmas. Even if they're cool, like Intel's digital kid's microscope, it's a bummer to get an obviously educational gift. Truly educational toys are subliminal. You never realize you're learning because you're too involved. I'd hate to be so involved in tea parties.
I'd love to see a woman build a spaceship. Who knows what it'd look like! It might be the coolest spaceship ever built, with laser cannons in places I'd never even imagine or maybe no laser cannons at all.
Now I'll never get to see such a ship ... unless my Y chromosome gets it's squiggly tail beaten by my X chromosome. If that happens, you can be sure that the future Bennett female will be spared the boring pink section of life.
9 DECEMBER 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Bennett is a third-year religious studies major who always hated getting gender-neutral undergarments and socks for Christmas.
And yes, I know it's long - but start reading it, and you'll get caught up in how true and hilarious this is.
Copied from
http://www.the-declaration.com/1999/12_09/features/toys.shtml
by Jason Bennett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A couple of days ago, while careening around my apartment in tornado / clean-up mode, I discovered the Toys 'R Us Christmas insert. I knew the powerful feeling of cleaning catharsis wouldn't last through a stroll down memory lane, but I was too tempted. The toy insert is a sacred document in every child's young life, and I couldn't just toss it aside.
When I was a wee whippersnapper, we didn't have newspaper inserts or Etoys.com. All we had was the thick, cumbersome Sears Wishbook, which had 130 pages of tedious grown-up "gifts," and only 30 pages of sweet, sweet toys.
Naturally, I kept my Sears Wishbook next to the toilet: it is the most popular place in a house to read. I would gaze longingly at that year's big gift. Once it was a remote controlled truck, once it was an elaborate Constructs Robot, and eventually it was a Sega Genesis. I spent many a December morning without any feeling in my legs, sitting on the frigid beige-porcelain bowl, gazing into my Christmas future.
Of course, even in the holy world of those 30 pages, there was a tainted valley. It was the much-avoided, always-reviled grotto of pink and fuchsia. For about five pages the entire catalog was drenched in pink: pink backgrounds, pink numbers, and pink stars around boring, ugly, useless pink toys. The pink section didn't last more than a week before it was torn out to expedite the page-flip from Hot Wheels on page 147 to Video Games on page 153. I think it might have been used as makeshift toilet paper once, when circumstances demanded. Nobody liked the pink section.
Well, I suppose girls liked the pink section. I always figured they did and probably also wanted to tear out the other 25 pages of "boring" guy junk. Girls do girlie activities (such as giving birth), and guys do macho activities (such as driving Monster Trucks). Girls raise kids, guys crush cars. At age six, this all seemed rather obvious.
Recently, however, I've learned that most girls were jealous of guys' toys. They wanted to play with Legos, Transformers, and video games, too. Unfortunately for them, various family members were suckered by the pink and gave little Jane a pink Gymnast girl who twirled on a pink high-bar and said "Whee."
Whee.
Does any real gymnast use a pink high bar? Why can't it be made of metal? It is almost as if the color pink is robbing girls of any real power over their world, like some fiendish soul-sucking force of pale red evil. It takes everything but their power over the pink world, which doesn't exist.
This over-analysis of pink is silly and drenched in academic tomfoolery, but it explains something about modern times. I'm living proof that now, even guys think about stuff like this. We're beyond traditional gender roles, even though some angrily say we're stuck in the stone age. The fact is this: now the world is much more open to can-do women, and for that we're all grateful. It's also open to guys who bump chests in basketball AND write poetry. This is why the pink crap is so bizarre.
If I stared into a time-warping wormhole and somehow saw a toy catalog from 50 years ago, I could understand the domestic junk. Fifty years ago sexism was the norm and women's liberation was unheard of until female suffrage. Women were "naturally" supposed to play with ovens and babies because that was their lot in life. Similarly, guys were supposed to play with everything else because that was their lot in life: to do everything else.
But seriously, we're peeking around the bend of a millenium here and toy companies are STILL trapped in slo-mo. Women do all sorts of crazy stuff nowadays, such as windsurfing and architecture. So does this anachronistic practice continue?
Are toy companies hiring women based on the perkiness of their asses? If so, they must be scraping the bottom of the perky-ass barrel. Even that ditsy pre-comm girlie in your math class would have the common sense to market progressive toys to her gender -- even she is modern enough.
"Progressive toys" do not mean guy toys. Guys play with tons of boring junk as well, such as WWF action figures. Many of these duds end up in basements or attics with musty clothes and bats. Video games are also of questionable value, as noted by my esteemed colleague Mr. Grabowski in his recent journalistic tour de force "Exit the Dragon."
There are plenty of imaginative toys out there, such as Legos, marble runs, various action figures, and brain-teaser type games (rubix cube). Yet all these are typically marketed to guys, which is a shame.
This year's toy offering is the usual mix of crap and genuinely cool stuff. When I was a tyke I could easily recognize boring, gimmicky toys; and like riding a bike, I can easily do so now. Of course, back then I just thought, "That looks dumb." Now I think, "That doesn't have any value." Same meaning, different words.
The opposite reaction hasn't changed, though. When you see a clever toy, you're transported beyond cynicism. You forget about educational value, advertising, and the whole mess. For that brief moment, you just think, "Wow. Neat."
Here are my "Wow, neat" picks for Christmas '99. I suggest you give them to your niece:
Lego Mindstorm system ($200)
Lego's Mindstorm system tickles my fascination with consumer robotics in the same way Sony's Robodog AIBO did. Lego basically combined a Technics Lego building kit (the highest level of Lego) with a computer interface that allows you to program your Lego constructions using a simple computer program. Even the non-techie post-modernist can have fun building a depressed robot that hides from the light and avoids contact with other robots.
Zoob (from $20 to $80)
Zoob is Legos with bones instead of blocks. They are a bit like K'nex, but don't have mechanical axles and gears. Instead they connect in ball and socket joints like human bones. Using sockets with varying degrees of freedom you can create creatures that move realistically and structures that can morph, like sky-scrapers that become venomous plants.
A Yomega Yo-Yo ($10)
The Yomega clutch yo-yo has spring-loaded ballbearings that disengage when the centrifugal force propels them outward. This allows the yo-yo to sleep for a very long time and hence do magnifico tricks, like walking two dogs at once.
Soccer Barbie ($20)
So she's not "Robotics Professor Barbie," but at least she isn't wearing pink. Of course any real member of the Women's World Cup soccer team could easily toast scrawny Soccer Barbie one-on-one, not to mention pile-drive her into the turf. At least her knee joints are moveable though -- a big step up for Barbie.
It's too bad most cool toys are marketed to boys. Three of the four toys I listed have happy little guys tinkering with them on the box. No one has to obey marketing, but parents or children may feel foolish if they don't. Many girls feel abnormal if they stand up for themselves or pile-drive their adversary because these aren't expected from them, even though the world rewards these activities.
There are plenty of educational toys marketed to girls, like chemistry sets for girls, whereby they mimic the experiments of female scientists. There are also plenty of books about inspirational women.
Yep. Plenty of educational toys that nobody wants for Christmas. Even if they're cool, like Intel's digital kid's microscope, it's a bummer to get an obviously educational gift. Truly educational toys are subliminal. You never realize you're learning because you're too involved. I'd hate to be so involved in tea parties.
I'd love to see a woman build a spaceship. Who knows what it'd look like! It might be the coolest spaceship ever built, with laser cannons in places I'd never even imagine or maybe no laser cannons at all.
Now I'll never get to see such a ship ... unless my Y chromosome gets it's squiggly tail beaten by my X chromosome. If that happens, you can be sure that the future Bennett female will be spared the boring pink section of life.
9 DECEMBER 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Bennett is a third-year religious studies major who always hated getting gender-neutral undergarments and socks for Christmas.
