Ripoffs in Toyland

Not to be a downer, but I had a few thoughts today about how too many toys are mostly about ripping off parents, and not so much about delighting children.

These thoughts were inspired by cleaning up, believe it or not. I was organizing one of the kid's toy shelves, and I wanted to move some books from one shelf to another, including a new boxed set of books the girls received last Christmas. You know, one of those book series that are sold as a group, usually in a nicely packaged box that the books are kept in. So I reached for the box, barely touched it, and the whole thing sort of fell over, the books fell out, knocking over other toys and books in the process.



I barely touched the box! Putting everything away, I realized that what had happened is that I had reached for the box assuming that it would be a sturdy paperboard box, the way most boxes for books USED to be. Instead, this particular box was very flimsy and barely held the books it contained upright. So when my hand sort of clumsily, oafishly (I admit I'm a clumsy oaf) brushed against it, the box couldn't contain the books inside and they fell out all over.

To put it another way, the box for the books was cheaply made, thinner than usual paper stock, somewhere between paper board and a heavy card stock. Why was it made this way? To save money for the publisher and increase the profit made on the boxed set.

Don't we see a lot of this these days?

Here's another example. During a shopping trip to Target last Christmas, I went to check out different playsets that my 5 year old daughter might enjoy, My Little Pony playsets in particular. I was hoping to find a boxed set of all the main characters. I was prepared to pay around $20 or $30 for such a set, if I could find one.

I was disappointed to find only one set that frankly, felt like a big ripoff that I couldn't buy. For about $25, all I could find was a set of tiny little "sparkly rainbow" versions of the main MLP characters. If it wasn't this set shown here, it closely resembled it:

Now, I'm no fool. I've been around the block a few times and I've bought toys like this. Sure, kids are small, their hands are small, and perhaps their love of MLP is so strong that they will be perfectly content to play with these teeny tiny representations of their favorite MLP characters. 

I want to emphasize again that these toy ponies are tiny. Very small. Like an inch and a half high. They're not much to play with and needless to say they're begging to get lost. And we parents are asked to pay around $20 or $25 for this unsubstantial package.

And that's the point, isn't it? We know, and the toy makers know, that our children really really want these toys, no matter how small or overpriced they are. In fact, our kids are mostly oblivious to things like size and price.

This kind of miniaturization is a trend. It is based on the idea that the smaller the toys are made - without lowering the price of the toy - the more money can be made. And parents can be trusted to keep paying, because they want to get kids toys that they love, no matter the quality.

/Rant off for now, but I gotta say, I find this trend annoying.