The Invasion of the Tiny Plastic Toys

I gathered up this little pile of meaningless garbage while I was going through Ruby's purses and backpacks and plastic grocery bags that she squirrels things away in:

Where does it come from? I never buy this crap, ever. It grows like mold in our house, multiplies like common kitchen pests. Can it even be recycled? I just Googled that and got sucked into watching this short video of a small beach cleanup effort that shows us what washes up with the next wave. Yikes!

Plastic toys in general are the current bane of my existence. They represent everything I hate:

1. Ugly stuff.
2. Clutter.
3. Toys with TV/movie characters on them (see #1).
4. Nasty chemicals disguised as things for little kids to play with and suck on.
5. Thoughtless, wanton consumerism at the expense of clarity, order and aesthetics (see #1 & #2).

One of the (many) reasons I didn't want kids in the first place was because of all the ugly crap that accompanies them, most of it garbage. Molded plastic toys, awkward talking books, cheaply-made stuffed animals, all of it made out of plastic, much of it with BPA, and none of it beautiful to look at. It gets played with once and then becomes another piece of clutter that attracts dog hair and dirt. 

I swore from the beginning that we wouldn't have it in our house. But then Ruby wanted that damned ugly plastic molded cash register so badly, and it was only $1.98 at the thrift store, and now it's in our living room.

I PROMISED MYSELF IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN AND I LET IT HAPPEN AND NOW IT'S INFECTING MY LIVING ROOM. Plus, you know, there's Christmas and birthdays, and our families are so big that the plastic ugliness adds up, and what kind of ingrate would I be if I wasn't thankful that Ruby gets to have new toys twice a year? And what kind of detestable, self-righteous bitch would I be if I insisted to my family that they only buy beautiful things for my kid? Ruby doesn't want beautiful things. She wants a doll that comes with a plastic bottle with yellow liquid in it and a shiny pink car seat with a hideous plastic cover and a tiny pacifier that never stays with the doll for more than a day. She wants a Batman figurine with a cape that comes off and a tiny shooter plastic thing screwed to his arm that houses a tiny little projectile that I find among the dog hair in the vent a week later. 

Fine. But the minute she's old enough to prefer fashion or whatever to toys, I'm scooping it all up and getting it out of my house, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Meanwhile, I try to keep it reined in, try to keep the ugliest stuff in her room, door closed, and the rest of it corralled neatly in the living room. It's her house, too, after all. But that doesn't mean I can't hate plastic toys with every mitochondria in my body and bitch about it to you, my faithful readers. 

Still, iffen I had my way, all of Ruby's toys would come from companies like B. Toys, whose offerings are mostly easy on the eyes, entirely devoid of the meaningless and the pointless, and just plain smart. Ruby loves these toys. I love the packaging. (Jesus, don't even get me started on the insanity that is toy packaging, with all the twine and wires and rubber stoppers and tape and molded plastic you have to open with heavy-duty tin cutters and cardboard inserts and advertising pamphlets and plastic bags with warnings on them...I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT TOYS.) And no, this is not a sponsored post. But I'll be happy to write one!

I could go on and on about ugly toys, believe me. But I won't. Because look how much she loves her ugly plastic cash register.