house swap: toy edition

There are two kinds of families in the toy world.  There are the Little People, made by Fisher Price, and the Weebles, made by Playskool.  My son has one playset of each so I’ve been able to evaluate both toys. 

In the beginning I preferred the Little People, and the only reason was because they are lightweight, and when my son was going through his tossing phase (everything he picked up was observed for two seconds and then discarded by a quick toss over his shoulder) I was usually sitting on the floor with my head in prime tossing range, and my face became a target for the hurled toys.  Having taken both a Weeble and a Little Person in the face, I can tell you that a Little Person will bounce right off causing minimum pain and damage, but a Weeble, with its weighted bottom so that it can Wobble but it Won’t Fall Down! is heavy and dense enough to break a skull bone.  The first time I got cracked in the face with the raccoon Weeble, I thought my cheekbone was broken.  I walked around all day with a big swollen red mark on my left cheek that eventually faded into a nice light purple bruise. 

The second time, I took a Weeble to the forehead and I don’t know if the noise outside my head was as loud as the one inside my head, but something caused Joey to stop throwing his stuff, turn around and stare at me.  It could have had something to do with the way I grabbed the Weeble and hurled it against the wall and then curled up on the floor, clutching my head and muttering a string of obscenities. Watching grownups in pain is fascinating for babies.

Since we received the playsets, we’ve been spending a lot of time in Weeble land and Little People world and I’ve noticed some disturbing things.  First off, the farm is kind of a flimsy toy.  If you toss it around, barn doors break off and the fence falls apart.  The food for the animals is made of stickers you have to stick onto their troughs when you first set the toy up.  The treehouse, on the other hand, is one huge unit that is solid and sturdy and made of plastic that can stand up to much more toddler abuse than the farm because it is more like steel than plastic.  There are some socioeconomic differences between the playsets as well.  The Weebles live in a treehouse that has a slide and a ferris wheel and a secret hideout up in the top where a Weeble can go just to get away from it all.  There is also happy carnival music.  The Weeble world is fun and stress-free.  The farm doesn’t have anything fun, it is basically a business.  The farmer has a bed, a workshop, and a wheelbarrow he can push as he picks crops.  The animals stand in their stables, which are boring plastic rooms with no slides or ferris wheels or anything fun for them to do except eat their sticker food.  They have no hideouts.  They have no music.  They are on the farm to work.  Period.

So one day, after watching Joey spin the Ferris wheel on the treehouse for a while, never growing weary of listening to the happy LOUD carnival music that does not have an “off” switch, I decided it was time for the lazy Weebles to get a taste of the real world.  As I moved them into the farm, I reminded them that some of the other toys aren’t as lucky as you guys, and not everybody gets to live in a funhouse.  Once the Weebles were moved into the farm, it was time to move the farm folk into the treehouse.  They were long overdue for a vacation, and the treehouse, with its wonderful rides and happy music would be the perfect spot.

I should note that if you decide to do a toy swap yourself, make sure first that the toys are compatible or you’ll find yourself trying to dig a horse out of the center of a plastic tree because his legs got caught halfway down the magical chute. 

Before:

After:

Look how happy everyone is in the treehouse!  Even the cow is smiling! Meanwhile over at the farm, I had everyone over for a party.  All the toys were invited, not just the playset figures.  Plush toys, wooden toys, even plastic counting cups were welcome.

On the left, we have a plastic Chicken McNugget chatting with a wooden puzzle dog.  On the right, a whale drinks from a counting cup, and the horse has a taste of teether ice cream cone.  In the middle, Little Person Farmer and Weeble raccoon hang out and share their stories, laughing about how the day-to-day life on a farm and life in a treehouse can be so vastly different even though they’re located on the same living room floor only two feet away from each other. If you notice up at the top, a bear has descended upon the farm and is eating a Baby Einstein mobile bunny while a rubber bird looks on helplessly.  Everything spun into chaos after that when a T-Rex from an All About Dinosaurs board book attacked the farm and ate everyone in it.

The End.

This is an example of why I need to get out of the house and go to work. My boredom is tarnishing my son's sweet innocence.  Pretty soon I'll be showing him things like how to write on the Aquadoodle using his tongue or how to create cool new textures on plastic toys using the cheese grater.