Thursday, May 1, 2008

The toys are back in town

Kids love new toys. The love affair usually only lasts 3 minutes, but they love them. We, as adults, tend to have similar short-lived infatuation with whatever we’re bombarded with on commercials and billboards. The one that comes to mind recently is the $200 robot being peddled to the somewhat-informed public to promote Disney/Pixar’s new moneymaker, “Wall-E.” Sure, I’m looking forward to watching the flick, for reasons that are probably the exact same as why kids are so excited for it. We’ve seen the commercials, read the ads, and visited the make-believe robot shopping website. It appears as though times have changed, that we buy the toys and learn of the characters prior to seeing the movie. People thought consumerism and marketing were bad enough when Star Wars memorabilia hit the public 30 years ago. Now we buy the merchandise before we get a chance to watch the movie and fall in love with it.
So should we buy our kids the toys they see in commercials? If we ourselves can live outside the hype and enjoy it with our children, sure. If not, they’ll live without them. I promise.

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