Today an article was released on this year’s Toy Fair. This year many of the companies that are participating are going high-tech for the kiddos. Dolls will now know your children’s name, blood type, and Social Security Number. Not only will your dolls be programmable, giving your child the love and attention that you can’t give them, but they will also cost at least $39.99 and require four hundred AA batteries.
I remember how high-tech we felt when purchases were made for the beloved Chicken Dance Elmo and Hokey Pokey Elmo. Unfortunately, Elmo is no longer dancing, but instead you now can program your children’s private information into it via your computer. Now Elmo will be chanting things like, “ETHAN, I love your special BLANKET. ETHAN, are you playing your favorite game of RUNNING AWAY FROM YOUR DADDY WHEN HE TRIES TO GIVE YOU A BATH? ETHAN, I bet that is fun!” All of this will be in that awful high-pitched Elmo voice. I can see already that there will be lines at the toy stores and parents selling these demonic dolls on Ebay for a gazillion dollars.
Even more mind-blowing is that Crayola has jumped on the high-tech bandwagon. Crayola representatives laugh about how kids used to put a crayon to paper. “How lame was that?” they scoff. Now we need to hook up our coloring books to the television so kids can make their images on the big screen instead of the crayon drawings that we once hung on our refrigerators.
Can I just say, what the heck happened to Lincoln Logs? Here is another thing I miss…I know that it really is overrated, but um…what about that thing we call the imagination?