Toy Story

Getting ready for Christmas brings lots of memories of the years when David and John were young – years of excitement and wonder and magic along with icing drips on the Christmas cookies, interminable sessions at Children’s Palace, carrots for Santa’s reindeer and blizzards of wrapping paper, ribbon and boxes on Christmas morning.  This will be my first Christmas as a grandparent, an ideal role for someone my age because, at 60 plus, there is absolutely no way I could brave the tsunami of toys that used to engulf our house every November and December.

With Christmas plus a November and a December birthday (colossally bad planning), a host of loving thoughtful grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends inundated the boys with presents.  We had no idea that those adorable Fisher Price toddler toys like the school bus, the garage, the family camper and the schoolhouse were just the tip of a massive iceberg.  Soon, wave after wave of toys swept over us - billions of blocks, mountains of matchbox cars, legions of LEGOs, piles of PlayMobiles, an avalanche of athletic gear, a glut of games and a wealth of weapons. (See my March post, “Arms and the Boys” for more on that subject.)  This was in addition to big items like a toddler slide, a chalk board, a play grocery store, a red wagon, a bumper pool table and a tabletop ice hockey game.

While I was often the designated shopper for the grandparents, that didn’t mean I could control how much came into the house.  Everyone wanted to give gifts with the WOW factor, especially my grandmother, Nana K.  Her favorite year was when I chose Civil War battle sets as her gifts to David and John.  As a native of Alabama, a one-time resident of “the first White House of the Confederacy;” and, if you believe my dad, a personal friend of Robert E. Lee, Nana was as excited about those gifts as the boys were.  Each set had a cardboard antebellum mansion and more cannons, cannonballs, tents, horses and blue and grey guys than the boys could count.  All that was missing was Scarlett O’Hara so almost everybody was happy.  As for me, I can’t really reconstruct the thought process that led me to buy even one of those toys, not to mention two; but I do remember my shock at how many pieces came out of the boxes.

It quickly became apparent that resistance was futile.  The most appealing toys had the most parts.  Every Star Wars guy had a removable helmet and one or more weapons as well as props ranging from the Millennium Falcon and the Ewok Village to these gangly things that looked like intergalactic Tyrannosaurs.  The PlayMobile Western sets included a fort, a jailhouse, Indian tepees, covered wagons and, naturally, a saloon.  In the PlayMobile Castle set, even the horses had accessories – those skirts they wore in medieval times and silver helmets with plumes, detachable, of course.

What did David and John do with all that stuff? Well, if they had skipped school and bedtime and played 24-7, they still couldn’t have played with everything they owned; but they certainly made a good attempt.  With their fleet of heavy metal backhoes, graders and dump trucks, they moved enough earth to dig to China. When outdoor construction shut down for the winter, John kept his edge by digging in a big box of dried navy beans.

With their garbage cans full of blocks (including some really big ones my dad made for them) and their suitcases full of outer space and castle LEGOs, they constructed edifices rivaling the Great Pyramids, the Roman Forum, Windsor Castle, Fort Ticonderoga, the Empire State Building and the Space Station.  Their wooden and, later, metal train tracks and car racetracks could have connected the East and West Coasts.

With their armies of guys, horses, vehicles and weapons, the boys made what they called “Set-Ups,” recreating the Gallic Wars, the Crusades, the Spanish Main, Gettysburg, Little Big Horn, Pork Chop Hill and Star Wars, sometimes all at once.  A Set-Up would fill every corner of the room, sometimes lasting for a week or more.  The rule was that there had to be a clear path between the bed and the bedroom door although sometimes the path wouldn’t have let a garter snake through.  When I finally announced it was clean up time, there was always a lot of complaining, followed by gut-wrenching emotion of an intensity not seen since  Robin Hood, with an arrow in his breast, bid his Merry Men goodbye or Douglas McArthur gave his “old soldiers never die” speech.  To soften the blow, I took multiple photos before they conducted a no-holds-barred Last Battle – nothing like a gigantic shoot-em-up to ease the pangs of separation.

I must admit that David and John did really have some cool toys – things I would have loved as a kid. The only toys I never took to were Plug Uglies like the Masters of the Universe and the Transformers.  The Masters of the Universe were disgusting TV characters with squatty little legs and grotesquely bulging torsos that could only be the product of steroid overdoses, a probable explanation for their offensive behavior, clearly manifestations of ‘roid rage.  More than once I’ve skipped a session at the gym for fear I’d end up looking like one of those obnoxious, over-flexed hunks of flesh.  Transformers were jeeps and trucks and airplanes with aggressive names like Ravage, Double Punch, Scourge, and Grimlock - their appeal to boys was that they could be transformed into surly, leering, combative robots.   Need I say more.

For those of you who are experiencing your first toy invasion, all I can say is, it’s going to get worse – a lot worse – before it gets better.  I can offer a few pieces of advice.  Don’t expect Santa Claus to assemble the 795-piece PlayMobile Pirate Ship complete with lifeboat, crow’s nest, sails, riggings and pieces-of-eight.  Be aware that making space for two of everything is a steep price to pay to avoid sibling squabbles, but it's your call.  And, in a few years, set the stage for an October garage sale of toys, by telling the kids, “We can’t bring any more stuff into this house until some stuff goes out.” This at least slows the rate at which you get buried.  If it’s any consolation, before you know it, your kids will be asking for major electronics or cars for Christmas and you’ll look back on the Toy Era with feelings of nostalgia.

Eight years ago, Paul and I packed up the contents of the house where we had raised our family and prepared for our big move. Sorting through David and John’s old toys brought back lots of good memories, and we boxed up some (actually, many) of the classics “for the grandkids.” We had really loved that house and the years we spent there, but we didn’t feel any regret or sadness at moving.  Since the kids who had shared the house with us were grown up and gone, it really felt right for us to be leaving, too.  The only thing that gave us both a lump in the throat was when, at the end of the day, in the corner where the piano stood, we found one lone Star Wars figure.  We didn’t leave him behind.