An Angel on My Desk
Where do we get those wonderful toys?
      by Rachel Hyland

I can't play chess. It just doesn't interest me. I don't get it, I don't want to get it, and I have no plans of ever attempting to get it. But, man, I want to get a chess set. It's pewter, it's gorgeous, and it has characters from Lord of the Rings on it! I want it so very badly that often just walking by the store window in which it is housed is torture. "Look how cute Frodo is!" I exclaim, to companions and passers-by alike. I really want to get that chess set.

But it's not the only one I want.

Ever since I first saw it advertised in some glossy magazine or other (and I think it was Reader's Digest, to my ultimate shame), I have longed for a 3 Dimensional Chess Set. You know, one of those ones from Star Trek, with the three levels and the incomprehensible rules? But, hey, I figure if Counselor Troi could master its complexities enough to best android Commander Data at it, then how hard can it be? Plus it's from Franklin Mint, purveyors of only the best quality merchandise, and thus, I tell myself, its multi-million dollar price tag is more than reasonable. I'm also attracted to the Star Wars chess set. Now, I don't even really like Star Wars all that much, to be honest... but it's got fighters for pawns, and the adorable R2D2 is, with C3PO, in the place of that castle thingie, and thus, I want it too.

I repeat: I can't play chess. But then again, I can't play bridge either, yet I still love my set of Miss Piggy and Kermit bridge cards in the original box, that I only ever use to play snap and strip poker with. Probably not what the original designers had in mind; and, perhaps, a little more than you needed to know. My point is that the love of a show, a character, or even strip poker can lead us to buy things that we don't need, have no use for and could probably live without, but desperately want anyway. In a word: toys.

It starts young, for most of us. We get a Mickey Mouse doll, a Wonder Woman board game, an Astroboy action figure. Our parents know we love these shows, or they want us to love these shows, so they get us on the merchandising bandwagon early, little suspecting the trouble it will later spawn. As we get older, we might start to buy the toys for ourselves out of long-hoarded pocket money: the trading cards and the model kits and the masks that can turn us into Jason or Chewbacca with ease. All perfectly normal, perfectly innocuous behaviour for the young, and not a cause for concern. Until, all grown up, we find ourselves buying trading cards, and model kits, and masks that can turn us into Jason or Chewbacca with ease, and not even thinking twice about it. Then, yeah, it's time for some concern. (After all, just how many hockey masks does the average non-hockey player need?) But also -- and I hesitate to say this, 'cause I just know I'm about to offend myself here -- but also because, well, it's just a little bit weird. I, a relatively sane, kinda mature, semi-normal (okay, I'm a basket case) adult, uncontent until I have me all of the Smurfs, immortalised in plastic? Much as I'd like to believe otherwise, I must concede that it is... odd. And, what is even odder is that buying and receiving toys, now that I am grown up, has all become so very complicated...

Next Page >