What have we become? An entire "Lord of the Flies" nation where even the adults are acting like children? What happened to that good old tough love stuff that was all the rage not so long ago, when parents said, "No! Because I said so. Because what you want is not good for you."
There in lies the answer to the government not being the toy watchdog that they should be. If they won't sink their canine teeth into the problem then parents and grandparents have to become the angry watchdogs who will growl and howl and tell their kids they can't have any toy that's not made in this country.
If parents instilled in their children that the holidays -- Christmas and Chanukah -- are more than gift-giving occasions, but are steeped in long-held religious and cultural traditions, everyone would benefit.
As every parent knows, a week after the long-awaited holidays are over, the anxiously-awaited toys will be as old and stale as those leftovers in the fridge. By the time those kids walk down the aisle they won't love their parents any less, and they will have learned a lesson they can pass on to their children.
The little ones won't care. They're just as happy playing with the box the toy came in, only now you can't even let them do that, because the ink on the carton might be poisonous. Buy your tot a couple of pots for his very own and some wooden spoons to bang them with.
Kiddies still like to play with those things, don't they? I have photos of my eldest sitting on the kitchen floor in front of an open cupboard surrounded by every pot in the kitchen and its cover. She was happier with them than all the toys in her playpen and crib.
For the older kids with more refined tastes, talk to them and tell them why you're doing what you're doing. The reasonable ones will understand, and the more contentious need to be taught a lesson in self-control.
Instead of gifts, extend them favors you normally wouldn't, or give them an early raise in their allowance, or double the gift certificate you were going to stuff in their stocking for the music store, the movie threatre or their favorite fast food joint. Use your imagination. Not all gifts have to come from the store.
In a final irony, David Kosnoff, senior director, products integrity at Mattel, said, "Everything coming out of Asia and our vendor source plants has been tested and is safe for the holiday season."
What he didn't say is that toy manufactures will be doing more testing and that's going to cost the American consumer even more money.
Wasn't the whole idea of outsourcing to save the toy manufacturers money, which was supposed to ooze down to us in the form of cheaper goods? It doesn't freakin' work; toys aren't cheaper. They could very well become more expensive than if they were made here.
The parents who lost their jobs and either haven't found new ones, or got jobs that don't pay as much, can't afford the toys for their children that aren't cheaper.
The manufacturers who shipped out the jobs to cheap foreign markets must have spent a fortune on consultants, focus groups, surveys and bean counters before doing so. Whatever went into this risky venture of outsourcing, all their collective brain power never once considered the folly of their enterprise any more than the neocons prepared for anything going wrong in Iraq.
Now it will cost them big time in the form of recalls, testing and class action lawsuits, which is more than deserved. If they are forced out of business by their craven avarice, that's even better.
Down to defeat will go the toy kings to make room for new princes and their start-up companies that will keep the manufacturing and the jobs here. The old kings do not deserve to stay in business; they deserve to be sued and their fiefdoms boycotted out of business.
In general, boycotts don't work, but if a Christmas/Chanukah boycott hit them hard, really hard, in their greedy corporate purses, maybe, if nothing else, they'd bring the manufacturing jobs home where they belong -- even though at the moment they say they are not going to do that. If they did, they get one more chance to prove they place the welfare of our children above corporate profits.
