Miss Mom: Toyland Revisited

The other day I was watching my grandaughter play with a pot and a lid. She found it delightful to put a small object into the pot, put on the lid, then take the object back out. She also had a wooden spoon that she would sometimes use to bang against the pot with.

These simple little items kept a small toddler happy and quite entertained for nearly 20 minutes. She is as easily entertained by a bath towel or small blanket. She has a large storage container full of toys, but it is often the simplest things that she enjoys playing with the most.

When one goes to a toy store today, it is hard to find simple toys anymore. My husband decided to get his granddaughter a little toy dump truck. She’s a girl I tried to explain, she won’t care about trucks, but he was adamant. Do you know how hard it is to find a actual toy dump truck that doesn’t require at least two “C” batteries? None of the larger ones were suitable for a toddler, most of the smaller ones needed owner’s manuals to operate all the functions. All we wanted was a plastic dump truck where Helene could put stuff in, push around and dump stuff back out in. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard, but it was. We finally settled for two small, toddler-friendly cars that didn’t need batteries but made popping noises.

It is obvious that it had been a while since my husband and I had done any serious toy shopping as we were quite overwhelmed by all the electronic gadgetry being sold for children under the age of 3. Is it just me, or are the toy companies and the battery manufacturers in cahoots?

Watching my granddaughter play reminded me of some of my own children’s favorite toys when they were young. There was the red wagon, for instance. We replaced the wheels on that thing about once a year because my kids literally wore them out. That was one of the most played with outdoor toys my children possessed, as they found a 1001 uses for the thing.

There was my dining-room table, and whatever blankets they could find. It was used more as a kid-friendly fort than as a place to sit down for a meal. If a friend was over visiting my girls, the fort would be up, and you’d hear the sounds of giggling coming from behind blanket-encased furniture. On nice days, the fort would move to outside as my clothesline made a perfect place to drape blankets and sheets.

My children also had their favorite purchased toys as well. My girls had a toy chest filled with various Barbies and her friends, three million outfits and all the paraphernalia that this doll needed to keep her fashion forward. I made them, every so often, glean out the dolls that had lost their pristine, silicone-enhanced beauty. These were the dolls that had undergone a makeover, thus permanently losing their hair, or that the cat had decided to chew the feet off of. Somehow no matter how hard I tried to reduce the number of Barbies, somehow they always managed to get more of the dolls thanks to Grandma and the aunts.

I remember when my son got his first gaming system. That kid was absolutely delighted. We quickly learned that setting time limits on his play time were a must as he’d rather complete a quest on his Zelda game than eat. Those gaming systems were as expensive as they are now, but it was money well spent as it instilled a love for electronic technology in that child that has yet to abate, and that he has channeled into his career choice.

Our family never really got into the “HOT NEW TOY FOR CHRISTMAS” frenzy. We preferred to do our Christmas shopping with practicality in mind, as well as stuff our children would use and enjoy for longer then when the batteries wore out. However there was one year when family members had other plans. That was the year of the Furby.

For those that don’t remember Furbies, they were early generation interactive toys that you could teach to talk. They looked like a cross between Yoda and an extra on that old movie Gremlins. They were hugely popular, as toy and doll collectors were snatching them up almost as fast as the moms and dads who had the toy on their kids’ wish lists. The talk before Sunday evening choir practice was not about matters of faith, but what store had a new shipment of Furbies and how much collectors were reselling the toys for. One of my girls wanted on in the worst way.

Sure enough, come Christmas, my daughter got her much-asked-for Furby. In fact, we ended up with three of these offspring of a drunken muppet cast party. My kids were delighted and immediately began to try to teach these toys how to talk. My daughters tried to get them to learn to say “Hello,” “How are you” and “My name is_____.” But my son, being the typical boy, tried to get them to say things like “butt,” “snot-boogers” and “you stink.”

After a week, it was quite apparent that a Furby’s capacity to master the English language was greatly lacking. If it did learn a word, it was nearly impossible to understand what it was. Within a week, the toys were lined up on the girls’ bookshelf, as teaching the toys to do anything but ramble for a few minutes completely at random or purr suggestively was about all these things could do. Yeah, they creeped me out too.

By the end of the month, the Furbies three were relegated to a shoe box under Ashley’s bed so their batteries could die out and the sound of their occasional and unexpected ramblings would be largely muffled.

Not long afterwards, my children outgrew their toy phase and went straight into their cool new electronics and awesome clothes phase. I sure do miss the days where a blanket and a rusted red wagon could keep them happy for hours. At least I get small reminders of that when the toy-strewing toddler is here.

Sylvie Galloway is a Spartanburg-based writer and blogger. You can read more of her work at Sylvie is a blogger.