“Buy me, and I can make it worth your while…”
I looked around, suspicious and a bit confused. That was not the sort of come on one expected to hear in the toy department of a shopping centre! “Who said that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t attract the attention of other shoppers.
“Up here, short stuff,” the voice directed. I looked up to find a typical Cabbage Patch Doll, with thick limbs and a round, bland face. But, this doll wore an old-fashioned pinstripe suit, with a black top hat and a huge cigar hanging out of its mouth.
“You?” I asked, incredulous.
“You were expecting He-Man, maybe?” the doll sarcastically asked. I looked around, embarrassed. “Buy me, and I’ll help you fill out your tax returns. I can make double what you spend for me within a week. Honest! Come on – what have you got to lose?”
I wasn’t totally convinced, but I decided to purchase the doll anyway. When I got it home, it was grateful to be free. “That plastic wrapping was getting pretty stifling, you know?” it told me.
“Your birth certificate says your name is Throckmorton P. Gundersludge III,” I said, reading from the small piece of paper.
“Cheap promotional gimmick,” the doll responded. “Now, you wanna talk to me all afternoon, or do you wanna make some money?”
“Slow down,” I replied. “We just got home.”
“I’m sorry,” Throckmorton said, although he didn’t really sound sorry. “But, I’ve got the honour of the family name to protect.” It was around this time that I noticed that, no matter how wide he opened his mouth to talk, Throckmorton’s cigar didn’t fall out of it. I tactfully decided to ignore this phenomenon.
“How so?” I asked.
“Aww, Coleco’s sales were down last year,” Throckmorton explained. “They only had sales of $500 million, a compared to $750 the year before. And, that’s not your cheap Canadian dollrs, either, buster – it’s the good stuff.”
“Why did they blame you?”
“Sales of Cabbage Patch Dolls were only in the 250 mill range, as compared to 350 mill the year before.” Throckmorton made as if to spit in disgust, then, remembering that he was only a doll, grunted instead. “We were the best selling toy line in North America for the third year in a row, but you think that mattered? When the market slows, we end up the short doll on the totem poll.”
“So, you’re here to prove that you can make money?”
“That’s right. So, when do I get started?”
“But, $500 million is nothing to be ashamed of,” I pointed out. “The toy industry as a whole obviously makes billions of dollars annually…”
“I got a lot of things to do,” Throckmorton interrupted. “What’s your point?”
“Surely,” I uncertainly suggested, “that’s a lot of money to spend on mere…amusements?”
Throckmorton hit himself in the side of his pudgy head with his pudgy fingers. “Of all the people I could have talked into buying me,” he said to nobody in particular, “I hadda go and choose a Communist!”
“Now, wait a minute -“
“I got news for you, height-deficiency boy. Most people respect a milti-billion dollar industry. That’s our free enterprise system. That’s commerce. You gotta problem with that?”
“Well,” I told him, “when you think about it, you have to ask yourself how toys affect children. Or, more importantly, how the advertising for toys affects children. It seems to me that, from a very early age, we’re training children to want things that they don’t really need. In short, we’re training them to be consumers.”
“Have you been paying attention, or are you just a pinhead?” Throckmorton shouted. “This society needs consumers. Where do you think they come from? The Cabbage Patch?”
“But, they’re losing an important part of their childhood,” I insisted. “Their innocence. We’re creating a society of grasping, cynical seven year-olds.”
To the extent that he was able, Throckmorton screwed up his face in anger. “How are we going to keep the economy growing into the next century,” he chided me, “if we don’t have consumers to buy our products!”
“Who says we have to keep the economy growing?” I asked.
“YOU ARE A COMMUNIST!”
We sat in silence. How does one resolve major ideological differences with a plaything?
I returned the doll the next day.