The gift of getting gifts.

Whilst a-shopping in a shop today, I noticed they had an offer on toy cars. Might be a nice little treat for a small person I thought to myself, magnanimously, and might just have the pleasant side effect of shutting up a whingeing kid.

And look, they had an special on Transformers!

Can't go wrong with transformers, I reasoned. Always popular, as they combine the traditional roles of . . . well, cars and robots. Yes, very traditional.

I was about thirteen when Transformers came out. Transformers the toy, not the electrical current transferring device, because that's been around since Einstein invented electricals.

I was lucky enough to have a couple of the figurines, and must have got a full two or three enjoyable hours of excitement transforming Optimus Prime into a lorry and then back again before his arm came off and stayed that way for ten years.

There was also, if I recall correctly, some sort of reddy-brown jet fighter contraption, the transforming process of which being so hideously complex that you had to have a working knowledge of 11-dimensional M-theory physics to convert into its robot alter-ego and back.

It was almost certainly a governmental test to seek out the precocious mathematical prodigies who could complete the task, and then put them to work in the Department of Very Hard Sums.

Because of this, most of the time I played with it was as an aeroplane with a random foot sticking out, or a robot with one big flappy wing impeding its progress.

Anyhoo, this Transformer I clocked in the shop was a police car, and was quite little, which excited my inner child. I wondered what the intervening quarter of a century had provided in the way of toy innovation and transformer design. I turned it over to look at the back before I parted with my hard-earned two quid:

And I'm glad I did, because the back bore the legend "DOES NOT CONVERT" in a font similar to that found on military cartons definitely not containing glowing bullets.

Huh?

So the Decepticon Transformer Barricade Police Vehicle, who's sole selling factor is the ability to change from a car into a gurt monster robot to terrorise local populaces . . . er . . . doesn't.

What a disappointing label. Like having a sticker on a knife informing you it "DOES NOT CUT" or a post-it on your wife saying "DOES NOT LOVE YOU".

What's the point of it then?

I wonder how many children have got one of them home and then suffered the crushing desperation of trying to transmogrify it into a robot, only to be defeated by the cynical marketing ploy of the manufacturers?

Dutifully, I put it on the floor, stamped on it, and then replaced it on the shelf in the shop, before slinking home.

Instead, I think I shall look to get such presents from a mail-order catalogue because they must rely on fairly full descriptions to persuade you to buy their tat. In this way, the toys do exactly what you'd expect, and also incidentally provide some potential career advice:

That, friends, is a Playmobil Amphibious Getaway Car, complete with dark-suited masked driver holding suitcases bulging, presumably, with valuables he has just liberated from the oppressive banking authorities using toy guns and toy threats to kill.

Now, with that you see, you get everything you pay for. You get a car for getting away, you get a legally ambiguous hero to drive it, and you get a sense of glamour attached to the criminal underclass.

Actually, it's quite a good idea. If you're doing a bank job near a river, imagine the surprise on the coppers' faces when you drove into the water and chugged your way to freedom.

Devious minds, them Playmobile fiends.

Early Selling Centre

Having small children, we made what seems to be a compulsory visit to Early Learning Centre.

Actually, the name is quite clever, because I almost typed "THE Early Learning Centre" which makes it sound like an officially sanctioned educational establishment, rather than a shop.

So there we were, looking to get educated with plastic ovens, plastic lawnmowers, plastic animals, plastic cars, plastic computers and plastic synchotrons, all of which, almost without exception, went beep.

Oh man, the beeping.

So many toys in Early Learning Centre beep like a censored Chubby Brown clip. I think it's supposed to be "stimulating" for a child's brain. That's the buzzword for toys, used when something can't really be described as educational but the manufacturers want to express the dubious benefits of their device.

A seizure inducing salve to the hyperactive child is just stimulating.

Also, the words "encourages hand-eye coordination" were prevalent on many boxes, which seems to be the ultimate catchphrase for making parents think a bright orange toy with pictures of animals that go "SQUEEEEEEE AK AK AK!" is in fact improving their child's motor control.

Well, so does picking your nose, if you're a kid, and nasal excavation has the added incentive that ham-fistedness often results in exciting haemorrhage.

Blood almost always results in a lesson learned somewhere along the line.

Before beeps led to madness and madness led to rage which would inevitably drive me to do something unspeakable in a toy shop, I dragged my boy over to a quieter aisle, where tableau's of frozen figures looked down on us and demanded a child use their imagination to bring them to life, rather than a supply of electrons.

Mind you, for a shop that pertains to supply to the younger version of human, there were some surprisingly odd thematic choices:



You're never too young to learn about a screaming witch holding a tormented human skull whilst a snarling wraith curls around bones behind her. Age 3-8.

Dubious, I looked for something more . . . realistic.

Dinosaurs!

Kids love dinosaurs, and they are approaching educational, although we all know that, when they are played with, they will almost certainly be hunting baddies by shooting lasers out of their eyes.

*nods in appreciative reverie*

I picked up a stegosaurus, which seemed anatomically accurate and was a simple, nicely coloured slab of resin with no batteries, no flashing lights and a distinct lack of screaming beeps:



Just as I was about to hand it to my son in order to gauge his reaction, a warning label caught my eye:



A choking hazard?

I'm not sure what sort of child could choke down a stegosaurus the size of fist, but I am sure I never want to meet such a child. I deferred to caution and put it back next to an 18 inch high pachycephalosaurus with a sign warning you it might get stuck under your contact lens.

My son pointed excitedly at a Makka Pakka.

You know. A Makka Pakka.

For those ignorant in the Tolkien-esque pseudo-legends of In The Night Garden, Makka Pakka is a . . .

Actually, I haven't got a fucking clue.

It's some sort of fat, stone collecting monkey:



Obviously, one must turn the head so it's pointing backwards for maximum hilarity.

We left The Academy Of Early Learning without buying anything, although I must say I did learn a few things.

On our way home, we went to our local supermarket where I noted that they are still selling terrifying man-hunting equipment only marketing it using even scarier kids, if anything:



Of course, I'm not going to buy anything that gives my offspring a tactical advantage, particularly at night.

Toy Whorey

I remember blogging!

I used to enjoy it. If I had a bit of spare time, I'd warble on for a few paragraphs, publish it, look forward to getting some comments, get excited about new posts by some of my favourite bloggers and read them with a cuppa and a garibaldi.

Life, in it's selfish, inimitable way, keeps rearing it's ignorant head and demanding attention, like the world's biggest and rudest baby starling, beak agape and begging insistently for the worms of necessity, forcing me to grub around in the mulchy humus of existence for whatever scraps of sustenance I can find, dutifully supplying it with whatever it needs when I'd really rather be flocking with the lads, wheeling about at dusk and shitting on clean cars.

This lack of me time has led to my neglecting this blog, as well as those I follow, and for this I can only apologise. I shall endeavour to make more of an effort in the next few weeks, so please feel free to lambast me for my tardiness.

Lambast me good.

I recall when time was so plentiful you had to find imaginative ways to fill it. Games and toys were obviously de rigeur for firing the imagination, although when you're a kid you can make do with a stick and some pebbles. And a target.

Remember playing War?

In your head, you and your mates would all be a specialist army commando unit, stealthily moving through the undergrowth to creep up on an enemy position, before launching an all out attack with blood curdling screams on unsuspecting baddies, shooting with deadly accuracy as they tried to escape into the jungle.

Or you were all half-cyborg space marines, stealthily moving through the star-destroyer to creep up on an enemy position before launching an all out attack with blood-curdling screams on unsuspecting baddies, shooting with deadly accuracy as they tried to escape into the vacuum.

Or you were all psychic ninjas, stealthily moving . . . well you get the picture.

To those uneducated in the dark art of warfare, the above exercises might have looked like some small bipeds with mud on their faces, skinless knees and hair sticking out at every conceivable angle carrying sticks and jumping out from behind walls to frighten elderly cats in the hope that they'd hack up a fur ball in panic.

The point is, accurate props aren't that necessary to small boys in the pursuit of excitement and replica derring-do. Being a middle-class libertarian, I wonder whether I will buy my son a toy gun, or will I try and persuade him that bead-work and craft dollies are just as exciting?

I think I will probably allow him to have one if he asks, but I won't be advertising the fact that guns are cooooool.

Strangely I have no such compunction against knives, having had one since I was a boy myself, and feel that they are an intrinsic part of growing up and, in fact, part of our human heritage. We've got a lot done since we started sharpening flint.

Recent demonisation of knives in the media because ignorant, barely literate teenagers have had a bonkers knife fight in a city doesn't stop me thinking of them as a generally wholesome sort of thing. As a boy, if you are given a knife with appropriate responsible direction and instruction, you learn how to hold it, sharpen it, use it safely and keep it in tip top condition until you decide to dig a trench with it and wonder why it then resembles a saw.

We all had penknives when I was young, and we all had fights as well, but no-one ever mixed the two.

Guns that are not used for defence and hunting, however, are out of step with human emotion. Our nature suggests that, if angry, even the most rational, calm and serene person might resort to violence. With fists, there are usually only temporary, relatively minor injuries received, and even that is often two-way. A few months later it's of little consequence.

With a gun, you get angry, you flex a few small muscles, and your target dies. They pay the ultimate price and you get to have killed someone for very little reason, and are left with the associated baggage for the rest of your life. Seems a bit extreme to me and might explain why I'm a bit nervous about anyone other than me being allowed to have one.

Anyway, it's guns for show, knives for a pro.

Bit of a tangent there. Excuse me.

Realistic weapons go in and out of fashion like big stupid sunglasses, and have done since I was a sprog. As children we love it and I expect my own son will too. As a growed-up though, I'm all suspicious of such desires and will no doubt explain how we had it hard when we were his age and had to whittle our own Kalashnikovs out of chicken bones and use dried horse droppings as grenades.

Actually, we really did do that last bit, but only because they made great grenades.

What about this then:

A local supermarket was selling it and I took a closer look. It's a stealth kit with night-goggles, compass and camo paint. For children. The picture of the kid on the front of the box freaked me out a bit:

He looks quietly confident, and his cold, cold eye gives him a terrifyingly competent air, as though he would think nothing of sliding up behind you unnoticed, maybe appearing out of a wall of mud, producing a matt-black stilletto and silently dispatching you with emotionless efficiency before having a jam toastie.

If I were the parents of the child who had modelled that, I don't think I'd be very comfortable around him now. Imagine trying to relax in the garden and suspecting that, just feet away, your little cherub could be fully camo'd up and watching you like a hungry jaguar. It'd be unnerving.

Does it glamorise joining the army, and if so, is that a bad thing?

When I was young(er), joining the armed forces was something we all considered, because it meant learning a trade, getting ski lessons and having sexual relations with adventurous ladies of questionable virtue.

These days, you actually go to war.

What's the world coming to?

Still, the toy in question here is no more offensive, I suppose, than having a realistic cowboy hat, or an exact replica police uniform, items that have been around for decades and resulted in no more than the usual amount of psychopathic cowboys and coppers on our streets.

Occasionally, you see a toy that causes your eyebrows to rise slightly, like the one mentioned above. Other times, you see a toy that makes them scuttle back over your head and nest at the nape of your neck like eloping ferrets:

It's a winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear.

That's right.

Bask in the glory of the winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear. It's not every day you see a winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear.

Did I mention that the winking lady with a cat's head dressed in bondage gear squeaks?

Well she does.

The fact that this is a dog toy makes it even worse.

Or better.

I haven't decided yet.