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Today a Kid Will Pay to Play
When I was a child my grandfather made toys for us kids for Christmas. He made me a doll’s house. He made a rocking horse, which was actually a duck, for my baby brother. He made a red sit-on train engine for another brother. These toys belong, of course, to a by-gone era when toys were simple and days long. Back in the olden days a girl got a doll for Christmas. This doll looked like an 8-year-old and only managed to cough out ‘Mama’ after she’d been tipped upside down, straightened and shaken. A typical boy’s Christmas present might be a colt Revolver cap gun. The midget cowboy usually ran out of caps mid-Christmas morning much to the relief of all concerned and no more caps could be purchased for a loooong time as shops were closed until the day after Boxing Day.
The doll’s house, the duck, the train, the doll and the capless cap-gun all had something in common. They didn’t do much. To play with these toys a child had to use their imagination. The year I got a nurse’s outfit I often coerced a brother into being the doctor. There was no funny business involved as we kids had baths together anyway. But the first thing this brother did was operate on my doll and take out her teeth. The kid had used his imagination, if not in the way the manufacturer had intended.
I wonder if children can do this today. I wonder if they can play with a toy in a way that the manufacturer had never intended. My grandfather could make Christmas toys for us because the toys of my childhood were simple. Toys are complicated today. Your average teen doll wouldn’t live in a little wooden house. She has designer clothes and attitude. She wants a three story dream condo with a grand entrance, winding staircase and many rooms to relax and entertain with the dream pool and spa sold separately. Cap guns have been replaced by Exo-force, laser-aim, missile launchers with 3 sound modes and batteries not included. Better still; a boy can access all the multi-level, battlefield action he wants with a video game and 2 working thumbs.
Such modern toys don’t kill a kid’s imagination, but they don’t expand it either. This became apparent to me on a recent trip to New York. On 5th Avenue there is a very large store called American Girl Place. This is hardly an imaginative name. The store, however, is not in the business of selling imagination, it sells dolls. To the brands credit, the dolls are not teen dolls. There are no tiny tarts and poppet pole-dancers in this girl world. The dolls are wholesome 8 year olds that wear sensible party frocks. There is also a full range of Just Like You dolls with 25 different combinations of hair colours and skin tones.
On the other hand, for around $20 a girl can take her doll to the American Girl Salon and have her doll’s hair restyled. While at the salon she might have a face scrub. Dolly too. She can take her doll to the restaurant and have ‘high tea’ with a cup and saucer provided for the doll as well as a separate seat. Tea will set mum back around $20 as well. A girl can have her photo-studio picture taken with her doll probably in her matching Dress-Like-Your-Doll outfit with the photo reproduced as a fake magazine cover. This costs around $35. A girl can get fashion advice for her doll and select from a range of add on accessories such as the ice skate, white fury muff and ear muff set for, maybe, $20. A girl might decide to buy a pet for her doll. There is the cuddly white Westie, Coconut, and the fluffy, black cat, Licorice. If a girl buys Coconut for her doll then she might like to also buy a Coconut play outfit for her doll and a matching outfit for herself, of course. They’re very cute. The play outfit consists of a musky pink t-shirt and knee-length khaki cargo pants. If a girl must have Coconut and the matching play outfits then she should also have the Coconut and friend carrier bag. These purchases involve more than play money with the cost over $100.
American Girl Place is all very charming and seductive, but you can see the problem. What does a girl in the consumer age do with her doll? She doesn’t play with her. She takes her out shopping or to get a make over or to pay someone else to pour the tea for the dolly tea party.
The big challenge for parents and grandparents at Christmas is to buy a present that the kid wants that also fires up their imagination and hoses down the reckless spending. Good luck.
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