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A Nice Christmas Gift For Kids
This afternoon I was looking for gifts for kids between 3 and 6. This is the best-ever I ended up with.
The Playmobil Security Check Point sells on Amazon for just $225.
It even makes these beautiful new 'naked' scanner pictures.
Now that will give the kids some really creative ideas.
What really convinced me to buy this toy are the very favorable customer reviews. One finds it Educational and Fun:
I applaud the people who created this toy for finally being hip to our changing times.
This one is a bit negative though:
Unfortunately, this toy comes short in a few areas:
1) It does not show that if you're rich, you don't have to wait in line for hours. If you can travel first class, you get your own fast-track screening. Too bad the terr'ists have plenty of Saudi and Pakistani cash and can easily travel first class should they want to. They should have included another screening set in the box.
2) It does not come with the 300 tired-looking playmobils you would need to show the passengers waiting in line behind the screening area.
However, it does some things very well: for instance, the screening apparatus is not actually functional. This represents faithfully the actual TSA system, which, every time it is tested or audited, fails to catch anything (weapons, even bombs).
Now I am off to pick up my gift: A 'harsh interrogation method' starter kit. That will come in handy when the kids let someone terrorists get through their gate.
Expensive 18th cent dolls, now highly prized collectibles, presented to girls the ideal baby, child, girl, or sometimes boy, of that time. An ideal, a star, but in their own firmament, if often a notch above in terms of Princess clothes .. Boys had military figures, tin soldiers, and if rich the mechanical dream of trains, then cars, tracks for them to run on, later Erector / Mecano sets, etc.
All cultures offer their children toys they see as appropriate for their age in their time. Some time after WW2, toys became more oriented to constructive, educational, activities, and the rise in educational toys, and toys / games in schools, took place.
This was not really new in the shape of the toys themselves – think of the wooden block set, lego created 1950, the board game, the box of crayons, cards – but was lathered over with new discourse. So, educational board games, letters for the fridge, creative splurge, stimulation, etc.
Toys rapidly became not just an amusement for children, or an embodiment of what was ‘cute’, ‘sweet’, or interesting, that adults liked to look at, buy, and even play with themselves, but a way of molding young minds, educating them, offering some kind of bonus beyond quiet times for the adults, or the kudos and envy that expensive toys for children call up.
The leap to propaganda and indoctrination seems to have taken place?
Barbie doll (1959) broke one mold – legitimizing aspirations to adult sexiness. (Say.)
Playmobil (1974, but see wiki – PM has long history) created assembled figurines, on the model of Lego in a way, they are competitors, with Lego introducing figurines boldly copied from PM, and PM creating fixed scenes or sets, which Lego then did too, but in its lego way, i.e. construction assembly following a model (Spaceship.) Traditionally, PM concentrated on history (Egyptian Chariot), stories and myths (Pirates), and anything mechanical / vehicle oriented, always replicas of real life (Garage.) No (or little) creativity in construction, they are sets. Barbie (Mattel) does the same. Because it brings in huge revenues – the elaborate sets are soon discarded. So this latest horror is directly in the PM line – where to find modernity in mechanical thingies?
Thanks for posting this, I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
bit potted history i wanted to put it in context
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 20 2010 13:56 utc | 8
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