A month ago my mom bought my son a Hotwheels Fireball track. The very last one Toys R Us had. It’s been hiding in the trunk of my car until two days ago. He wanted to play with it after receiving Xmas morning. So TD and I opened the box, scattered all the pieces and discovered it was missing the bottom half of the meteor, the two glow-in-the-dark cars and THE INSTRUCTIONS!!!
What kind of animal steals the assembly instructions? I hope there’s a special place in hell for that kind of filth where they are forced to put together model airplanes to exact specs without directions and missing some pieces while a small imp with a hot poker and a shrill voice asks “Can I play with it now?? It doesn’t look right. Fix it faster.”
I’m glad my house wasn’t the only one filled with parents cries of anger and frustration.
I had to have my heathens leave the room so dad could free their toys from their cardboard bondage. The language was that of the likes I have never heard before.
Of course I didn’t help much by sitting in the corner giggling.
If you are going to sit and go on about how all the cooking is womens work then be prepared to be laughed at over the tough man dad jobs!
I just had to jump in here on this one.
This is a classic engineering Catch-22. The “proper closure” (i.e. a molded spring and tenon combo) and a re-usable threaded fastener are mutually exclusive design elements. You can’t get both.
If I were to give you some sort of industrial machine screw for a fastener I’d have to anchor the nut in the case somehow, on crappy plastic, and hope some idiot didn’t crank it down too tight, or put too many assemble/disassemble cycles on it. Real “hard” screws are made to be installed and left in place until decommissioning time.
Every time you cycle a bolt-and-nut fastener you deform the threads. They’re designed with a certain amount of interference so that the threads on the nut and bolt will “bind.” You “work” 'em every time you turn 'em.
“Soft” metal will deform without work-hardening over a lot of cycles, but “hard” metal won’t. You’ll get fatigue failure much more quickly with the hard stuff, which means you’ll strip the threads.
Which brings me to the plastic. That thermoset stuff is cheap, but it sucks, structurally speaking.
If I designed a screw fastener as a safety feature in conjunction with a snap closure, I can guarantee you that some fumble-fingered idiot will crank the screw as hard as he can without closing the snap properly, thereby totally destroying both elements.
Those “clowns” did go to engineering school. They just got backed into a corner by the lawyers.
I dunno about that. I don’t think it’s impossible to design a battery compartment that has a snap closure AND a screw to hold it in place once it’s closed. The screw is just an added safety device, which can be discarded if it’s not needed.
And in fact, many toys are exactly like that. Their battery compartment closures are identical to their pre-screw ones, and hold themselves closed just fine without the screw. All they did was just add a support post and a screw hole, so people with really small kids could ensure that the battery compartment stays closed. I have no problem with these, or the use of soft screws with them.
But I have a few toys here this Christmas that use ONLY the screw to hold the battery door closed. Without the screw, it just flops open. And then, instead of using a proper nut and bolt closure (which, again, the better ones have), they just use a soft screw tapped into the plastic. These NEVER last. It’s just bad engineering.
Why the screw at all? Because it’s cheap. I would much rather have a childproof closure that worked better. How about a plastic spring with a tooth that engages when you slide the door closed, but which can be disengaged by pressing a screwdriver blade (or a special tool provided with the toy) through the hole and against the spring to unlock it? Or use a rotating knob that can only be engaged with a special tool that parents can lock away? There has to be a better solution.
Finally! Something that I can agree and empathize with Sam Stone! 
That stupid Barbie house was so annoying to set up with all those stickers, that my brother even asked for my help to have it ready for Christmas morning. At least my niece is happy now.
But now those repetitive “la la la” recordings for the Barbie shower are driving me nuts!
And I also agree that those screws for the battery compartment are really cumbersome!
Christmas Bondage is SUCH a killer band name.
I remember putting together the Hot Wheels Car Wash set. Then the kid actually played with it and all those flimsy plastic pieces wouldn’t stay in place and I had to keep reassembling the damn thing. After fixing it for the millionth time, I just got frustrated and threw the stupid thing out.