I’m a parent. I know about putting toys together. I know the three words that send a shiver up every parent’s spine “Some Assembly Required”. This is a fact of life.
This year, however, Mattel went too far. Someone bought my son a Hotwheels combo track/garage/carwash thingy. He was all excited to play with it, so I began the process. I dump the contents onto the floor, and without exaggerating, there was about 100 pieces that needed to be assembled. If I wanted this kind of grief, I’d buy a crossword puzzle. This thing had little traffic lights that went on the side of the track. They did nothing, just a piece of decoration. Those alone where in 6 separate pieces. Come on asswipes, what’s next? Maybe just putting a block of plastic in the box and having us carve the pieces ourselves? It took well over an hour to assemble all this crap, using 4 separate instruction sheets and 5 pages of stickers.
Of course, my son got bored with it in about 15 minutes, and disassembled most of it. :smack:
On the same note, why do some toys have about 20 wires tightly binding them to the package? I had to use wire cutters to release my daughter’s dolls from their christmas bondage!
Hee. Great rant, I’ve been where you were, sitting there on the Christmas living room floor surrounded by tiny plastic components with a kid who wants to play with it NOW.
I have also sat there trying to undo the damn doll that’s tied to the damn packaging with the dozens of damn heavy-duty baggie ties. Why do they DO that?
You can thank “mint-in-box” toy collectors for that one. Now that the rage is to collect toys but never open them, there is a lot of emphasis on having the toy look good while still sealed in the package. To do this requires armies of twist-ties, clear rubber bands, tape, and so forth.
Products that are packaged in that sealed rigid plastic. How the fuck are you supposed to get those things open. If you use scissors to make an opening and then try to pry the package apart you end up cutting the shit out of your hands on the razor-like edges of the cut plastic.
:mad:
Ha, this is why I bought toys that little milliAmp had to put together himself this year, like legos and K’nex. The only thing I have that needs to be put together this year is the Creepy Crawlers oven. Hopefully it wont be to taxing.
I was in a toy store a few months ago and happened to be standing near some kind of K’nex roller coaster set. A woman assumed I was buying a gift (I was looking at Legos for myself) and pointed to the roller coaster. “Whatever you do, don’t get that for a gift,” she said, as though I’d asked. “It took me forever to put it together for my son, and he was bored with it in just a few minutes.”
Apparently it’s possible to miss the entire point of a building toy.
Oh, and there’s a new one this year. Some toys are screwed into the cardboard boxes.
Why?
Who thought this was a good idea? And why would anyone okay such a stupid idea?
Reaffirms my belief that toy companies are eeeevil.
“Yessss, let’s attach this $15.99 remote control car to the cardboard package with Phillip’s head screws. Hell, while we are at it, let’s also tie the wheels to the cardboard with 12 long plastic ties intricately threaded through the bottom of the car! And then we’ll encase the whole thing in rigid clear plastic that is impervious to mere box cutters and pocket knives! Oh, and that doll’s hair? Let’s tape it to the box, no, let’s tape it and then * sew* the tape into the hair! We can torture both children and parents at the same time! Mwahahahaaha!!”
Whoever came up with the design for the Star Wars troop carrier ship from Attack of the Clones needs his/her head examined. Oh, the toy assembles without much problem. The rub comes from the stickers.
Ah, yes, the stickers. There aren’t that many, and they’re not supposed to be affixed in out-of-the-way places. But why on earth was it necessary to have stickers on this thing in the first place? The largest of these stickers is maybe 30 mm long. A couple are the size of the little white crescent at the base of my fingernails. What’s the purpose of these things? You’ve got molded plastic in multiple colors as part of the overall construction of this toy – was it too hard to add one more color?
The screws, wires and rigid plastic are a present for Dad who at least in theory just got a new mult-tool and needs something to disassemble, cut, and slice.
I hear you on the heavy duty twisty-ties. Someone bought me a bunch of LOTR dolls for Xmas… after approximately five seconds of wondering if I should leave them in the box for revenue purposes 80 years down the line, I promptly spent 45 minutes releasing each of them [and related accessories] from their various six-point restraints.
I had to put together a ‘barbie playhouse’ yesterday. Actually, it went together pretty easily. HOWEVER I could have done without the FIFTY EIGHT stickers that had to be applied inside and outside of the house, many in hard-to-reach locations. Whee.
My pet peeve is having screws holding battery compartments closed. I’m sure some product liability lawyer told them to do it, but these little screws are usually made of some cheap soft metal, and god help you if you don’t have the right kind of screwdriver on hand, because the kid has to play with the toy NOW. So you wind up stripping the head of the screw, forevermore making it an incredible hassle to get batteries in and out of the thing.
And what’s worse is that some of the manufacturers have used this little screw as an opportunity to avoid having to design a proper closure, so you can’t even throw the screw away. The battery door will just flop open without it.
Someone needs to send these clowns back to Engineering school and teach them that soft screws are not designed as temporary fasteners.
My sister got a clock yesterday that was screwed into the back of a cardboard box. Thank goodness my nephew (her son) got a Real Tool Set ™ with a Real Phillips Head Screwdriver ™ a few minutes before. Apparently, clocks shaped like coffeepots are high-theft items.
