Want a plane that loops the loop
I still want a hula hoop
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas, don’t be late.
— “The Chipmunk Song,” Alvin and the Chipmunks
By Randall Grantham
Community Columnist
Ah, the holiday season is upon us. I knew it was true when the Christmas specials started showing up on TV again.
You know them by heart, probably. Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (with the timeless and unmistakable voice of Burl Ives), The Grinch, as well as the celebrity feature shows we’ve all grown to know and love.
We saw a good one the other day. Dennis Leary, the caustic comedian, had his own special on The Comedy Channel.
Judging by Leary’s reputation and the name of the show, “Merry F#@*x!% Christmas,” you can probably guess that it wasn’t the kind of show to give you the warm fuzzies. But he had a segment that rang true and brought back memories of Christmas past.
In the feature, Leary ranted about the wimpy nature of toys children get these days and how the old toys were not only more fun, but also served to “thin the herd” in a survival of the smartest kind of way.
His examples were BB Guns (with their obvious safety concerns), the vibrating football game (with small plastic players that “pose a choking risk”) and a Creepy Crawler Factory that used a 110-volt hotplate to melt and cook plastic goo into …well, creepy crawlers, what else?
I had every one of those given to me as a Christmas present when I was a boy. Although I shot one of my friends with the BB gun and I know I burnt myself more than once with the Thingmaker version of the Creepy Crawlers, those were great toys!
I don’t know who would be stupid enough to eat a plastic football player, but my “incidents” were learning experiences in the what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger sense of the word. I’m still alive (don’t worry, so is my BB’d friend) and a little wiser to boot.
Not that I’m dissing today’s way-cool computer game toys and electronics, but it does seem that most of the other stuff these days is just … well, weak. BB guns were real. I actually killed a rattlesnake with BB’s when I was growing up.
I had both the Thingmaker and a Vac-U-Form, and I can vouch for the fact that those suckers were sizzling hot. So were the metal molds and the plastic thingies you were making, even after you took them off the heat. Learning experiences!
I recently read that a version of the Vac-U-Form is being re-introduced and it uses “safe” light bulbs instead of the sizzling 110-volt hotplate. What fun is that? But it did get me to thinking, why are these plastic factory toys not even manufactured anymore? Is it because those pesky lawyers filed so many frivolous lawsuits that legitimate businesses were bankrupted? Too many stupid kids eat the plastic pieces or put their tongue on the heating element?
Surprisingly, in my superficial research and fact-checking on the internet, I didn’t find a single report of any lawsuits or serious injuries from these hotplate toys. I guess manufacturers like Mattel are just going soft.
So, this year I’ve placed my order for Christmas toys for my nephews with a company called Mainway Toys, named after company president Irwin Mainway. I’ve ordered a “Johnny Switchblade: Adventure Punk” doll for the older one and the tried-and-true “Bag O’ Glass” for the younger one. That just screams Christmas, doesn’t it?
(Apologies to Saturday Night Live.)
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2009 RCG
