Once upon a time, toys came in a \u201cready to play with\u201d condition. You opened the box grabbed your toy and ran off to begin the serious business of playing with your new toy. Those days are long gone. The toys which you are fortunate enough to find already put together have so many twisties and fasteners and tape or are actually sewn into the box so securely that would lead one to believe they had purchased something rare and priceless rather than a toy costing $9.99.<\/p>\n
This morning my son, child #3, spent his own money to purchase a Bionicle. If you\u2019ve never seen one of these lovely toys of peace and harmony, I\u2019ve included a picture. For those in the know, we bought Mahri Toa Hahli. I hope that means something to someone, it\u2019s all Chinese to me.<\/p>\n
The thing came in approximately 1,000 pieces needing to be assembled by yours truly. I\u2019m sure the \u201ceducational value\u201d is derived from the child attempting to assemble it himself. I laugh at that idea. Ha ha ha ha. He\u2019s just turned six and can\u2019t resist the temptation to chew on little plastic pieces. Since this lovely creature is made entirely from little plastic pieces, there was no way I could leave him alone with it as it came. My mother has said, \u201cTrust your children, but don\u2019t tempt them beyond their power to resist.\u201d Good advice, mom, thanks. So I put it together. It took an hour and several words I can\u2019t write and still maintain a \u2018G\u2019 rating.<\/p>\n
I am sure that somewhere in this world there are people who used to pay someone to assemble these things. There may have been an entire cottage industry in \u2018ugly toy putting together\u2019. But the person in charge understood that if the child wants it badly enough, the parents will do the work and not charge the company the way those people in China would.<\/p>\n
Parents of the world, let\u2019s get together on this and begin sending the toy manufacturers a bill for the amount of time it takes us to complete THEIR assembly process. I think this one is worth about $10 for the hour, but let\u2019s add on a surcharge or $5 for every time I got asked \u201cIs it done yet?\u201d So I\u2019m mailing my bill for $245 today. I\u2019ll let you know how it goes.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once upon a time, toys came in a \u201cready to play with\u201d condition. You opened the box grabbed your toy and ran off to begin the serious business of playing with your new toy. Those days are long gone. The toys which you are fortunate enough to find already put together have so many twisties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n