CRAP TOYS
You know the
stuff I mean, we used to get them with Cracker Jacks. Crappy little toys, plastic rings, dumb
puzzles, anything with holes and a BB.
Crap toys are toys that get kids all pumped up because they are
“free.” They chaffed my backside because
they always broke about two minutes after they came out of the wrapper; free shit that only served to make a small
child miserable because it broke before he even had a chance to play with it.
They still
have crap toys in Cracker Jacks, but the biggest purveyor of crap toys is
McDonalds. Those damn “Happy Meals”
always came with a crap toy, and my youngest always wanted the toy more than
the burger. And you had to put them
together. It was bad enough that the
kid got all excited over a piece of plastic shit that you knew was going to
break and leave you with a whiney kid, but you had to follow directions to put
the crap together.
Directions
for a CRAP TOY!
It only took
me a few Happy Meals with Spencer before I put the kibosh on all crap toys.
“Ooh Dad, can I get the plastic
Sponge Bob with movable arms and legs with my meal?”
“No!
I’m not assembling a frapping crap toy that is only going to break and
leave you miserable. Don’t even think
about it.”
“But Dad…”
“No!
No crap toys!!”
It took a
few daddy tantrums to stem the Mickey Dee crap toy requests, and then came the
Birthday Party goody bag.
Why kids
today have to bring home a goody bag from a birthday party I’ll never know, but
if they don’t get one, they are inconsolable.
What is inside a goody bag? Crap toys! The typical bag has a pencil with a Power
Ranger eraser, a BB puzzle, a plastic spider ring and really bad candy.
I threw
several daddy tantrums over these goody bags.
“What the heck are you going to do
with that junk? You know the puzzle is
going to break, you have a thousand pencils, the ring is a choking hazard and
the candy is just sugar. The whole bag
is full of CRAP TOYS!! Don’t even open
it!”
I may have
developed a nasty reputation over this stuff.
I realized this one day when coming home from a birthday party where I car
pooled one of Spencer’s friends. The two
of them were sitting in the back seat and I heard his friend whisper,
“Hey Spence, can I have your Crap
Toys?”
Meanie. Crap toys are a life experience. You get what you pay for. On the other hand, if Spencer learned to pass off his crap toys gracefully--another life lesson.
ReplyDeleteRemember the toys in the cereal boxes? Do they even do that anymore? Good times.
ReplyDeleteI know they are crap toys but every kid really wants them. So we indulged our kid and consoled him when they broke. Kind like I still do with Jim and his toys.
ReplyDeleteHey Spence, can I have your crap toys? Bwahahahahahahaha. The perfect ending.
ReplyDeleteHave a fabulous day. ☺
LOL!
ReplyDeleteCrap toys extend into adulthood now, with crap giveaways. Do I need a new can cooler/tee shirt/sticker/stress ball? No. Do you? No...
Pearl
The only one I remember from when I was a kid was the Tom Mix Tiger Eye Ring.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing about it was I had to mail in a box top and wait forever to even get it.
It might have lasted an hour.
I know several crap people--do they count?
ReplyDeleteI have a basket full of crap toys in the back seat of my car......great way to keep them from cluttering the house and it gives the kids something to fight over when I have to take them someplace.
ReplyDeleteBut...but...the crap toys are FUN while they last. My son and I wore out a pink plastic My Little Pony carousel in 30 minutes. We took it away from my youngest son, who rejected it because the worker put in a GIRL toy even though told to put in a boy toy. This is how my youngest son got his nickname, The Pony.
ReplyDeleteSee? Without crap toys, my son would be without a nickname!
The crap toys from Mickey D are appropriate to go with the crap food.
ReplyDeleteSnortle.. and I second what Pixel Peeper said.
ReplyDeleteAnother fun post, but I loved crap toys when I was a kid. You're right about this stuff being junk but if you don't let your kids play with them and you hold on to them for a hundred years this junk might be worth something.
ReplyDeleteThe Cracker Jacks toys are a joke now. It's literally like a piece of paper. There's no point. Worry on putting more peanuts in the box Cracker Jacks! Wow that came out of nowhere. I still have a few random crap toys from MacDonalds but man did they add up as a kid. We had a ton of them!
ReplyDeleteoops McDonalds. Where's the edit button when you need it.
DeleteHmm. For a long time I've been complaining that Cracker Jacks don't have "real toys" like they used to. I don't even eat Cracker Jacks any more, but it seemed like a sign that things were going downhill, you know. But you're right, they were crap.
ReplyDeleteHa, your reputation was something among the kiddos. We use crap toys for geocaching. When we find a cache in the woods and have to leave something, the Happy Meal toys work very well (still in the bag as well).
ReplyDeleteCrap toy is a great name for those things. They are evil from the moment some poor child in a third world country makes them in a hazardous factory until you step on their broken pieces with bare feet on the way to the loo in the middle of the night.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather my kids get a ton of candy in the birthday party take-home bag than a bag filled with crap toys. Yes, I choose tooth decay and childhood obesity over broken pieces of crap all over my house.
ReplyDeleteOthers have traveled the path for which I was headed, that being the general poor quality of Crackerjack toys now. They may have been crap even when we were youngsters, but it was at least crap made of something that seemed like NOT crap, at least for a while.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid going to parties guest kids only went home with a slice of birthday cake wrapped in a paper napkin. One lucky child would also go home with the prize from pass the parcel, always a decent small toy. Goody bags were unheard of. Then when my kids were attending parties the goody bags started coming home, but usually only filled with lollies (sweets) and a balloon.
ReplyDelete