Letter To a Toy Manufacturer

Dear Toy Manufacturer,

Hello. I writing this letter because I need to get something off my chest. Normally I would take a bit of time to inquire after your well being or thank you for whatever service you render. I just want to say, that while I wanted to do these things, I could think of nothing polite to say. I’m sorry.

I hate your guts. That seems a bit harsh. Let me try it again, I think you’re vile, festering excuse for a human being. Again, I apologize, this isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. I don’t want you to think that this is how I normally act. That is assuming you are still even reading this letter, given that I assume you have an unbelievably short attention span. Clearly any one producing toys today must. I’m a sane rational man, who tries to be level headed and clear minded. I like to try and approach issues from a detached emotional standpoint. It’s just that where your products are concerned, I have trouble doing so.

As an adult I have trouble remembering what I played with at one and two years of age. I imagine there were many brightly colored objects. Cups, blocks, rings and other highly stimulating shapes that excited my rather spongy infant brain. I can only imagine what my parents must have endured at the end of the nineteen seventies. Plastic toys they had to assemble, and colorful mechanical cars that whistled and beeped when you wound then up. How annoying to have all those things under their feet. Up until I became a parent I could empathize for them. You, Mr. toy manufacturer, have changed all that.

My folks never had to endure the slow brain deterioration that my wife and I must go through on a daily basis. I’m talking about your battery powered, intelligence pathway driven, implanted microchip talking toy series. Because of you and your creative circuit circus, I’m losing my mind! I cannot move in my house without some object singing, “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” , asking one of my daughters for a hug or just letting out some freakishly demonic toy like laughter. I’ve heard “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” one million five hundred and seventy-two times. I have strong urges to smash little talking tea pots.

I then considered abandoning all the talking, singing, laughing and otherwise annoying toys. I figured on some normal stuffed animals that just sat there. Maybe some plastic cause and effect toys, or just bits of rocks for them to look at. The trouble is there isn’t a toy that doesn’t do, play or say something. It seems that people who can't accept this, are just living in the past. I then decided to just persevere by scheduling some quiet time,every once in a while, by turning some of them off. You, in your infinite wisdom, neglected to add off switches to your toys. Cute. Additionally all batteries are secured to the toy with a twenty eight screw panel, to test our parental endurance and make sure we never remove the power without an hour or so of free time.

Anyway, if you see a strange man coming to your manufacturing plant in the dead of night with a pickup truck full of gasoline cans, a box of matches and a good pair of running shoes, pay him no attention. He’s just blowing off some steam.

Sincerely yours,
Peter “Little Teapot” Brown