While catching up on Andrew’s blog (who, thankfully, is done moving and able to update more regularly again), I read this delightful critique of a new Fischer-Price line of dinosaur toys. You can check out his full write-up (and I recommend you do), but I’m going to snag a few lines from it to use here, because I enjoyed it so much.
Gods, where to start. How about with the little man who comes with Razor™ the T-Rex. That’s right  there’s a caveman-like guy who comes with the toy, complete with saddle and… and… clubs. But not any ordinary clubs. One is a skull and backbone of some undefined creature and the other is a lobster.
Yes, caveman guy uses a lobster as a weapon.
I think my son plays a game of imagination in which dinosaurs and cavemen co-exist, but a) he knows that dinosaurs and people are actually from different time periods and b) he never involved the lobster-as-club genre of play in to it. Personally, I suggest Fischer-Price commit fully to their things-aren’t-like-this-but-we-make-shit-up toy building style and give the cavemen frikkin’ sharks with frikkin’ lasers on their frikkin’ heads (speaking of which, I’m long past due a good laser article – I’ll work on that in the coming week). And ninjas. A caveman using a ninja as a club would be awesome, don’t you think?
On the back of the box are pictures of the other toys in the set: the Predators (T-Rex, allosaurus, anklosaurus, etc.) and the “Ecovores” (brontosaurus, triceratops, etc.).
Yup. The herbiivores are now ecovores. This is probably an Al Gore and Sheryl Crow approved renaming. It’s all the fault of those damned meat-eaters that the planet overheated, if I’m to buy in to the implied message there. I just wonder where the omnivores fit in – they want to eat the herbivores, but also fight global warming and genocide. Man, what’s a poor “I-eat-everything-but-am-plushie-and-lovable” dinosaur to do? Other than run for President.
Andrews comments are far more interesting than mine, and the full article is humorous and sad at the same time. So get to Andrew’s site and read about the spiffing up of dinosaur history.
[tags]Andrew, Kantor, Ecovores, Dinosaurs[/tags]