Just a short one, something
that came to mind for my Quick Crappy Review of Circ du Freak Clawdeen but that
I had no appropriate place for in that post, here is the box after I finished
cutting her out of it:
Mattel seems to have
celebrated the continued success of Monster High by killing a fuck load of
trees; the packaging is getting more complicated as time goes on and getting
the poor ghouls out of their plastic prisons is taking longer and longer. It
took 20 minutes of bum-clenching precision to get Clawdeen out without losing
her a limb, some hair, or ripping her outfit – and given that this is Clawdeen
Wolf I fear if I’d done the latter she would come to life and slap my bitch ass
for such an apocalyptically horrendous transgression as ruining her beautiful
clothes and all the hard work she put into designing and matching them.
Every time I go through
that 20 minutes of bum-clenching required I think the same two things: “what it
the fucking point of this Mattel?” and “How could a child, y’know, the intended
audience of these dolls, get these out without breaking and/or scalping their
new toy?”.
Both have very simple
answers but none of those answers are good enough for me I’m afraid: The answer
to “what is the fucking point of this Mattel?” is keeping them safe in transit and
I’m guessing keep them posed in the packaging and thus looking good on the
shelf – but I’d rather they looked boring in Toys R Us (especially as they’re
currently so popular you could sell them no matter what handstands they were
seemingly doing in their packets) if it meant I didn’t have to spend 20 minutes
trying not to fuck up a £20 toy just to take it out it’s box; I’m sorry MOC
collectors but these things are supposed to come out of their packaging, being
packaged is not their intended state of being, it should be a nearly half-hour risk
to have them attain that.
Hmm… maybe it’s also to cut
down on theft? You know when you slide a toy out of the packet and just leave
the packet? That’s total conjecture but
there is no way you could do that here, you’d have to be an origami expert to swiftly
remove a Monster High doll in a store and not get noticed.
The answer to “How could a
child, y’know, the intended audience of these dolls, get these out without
breaking and/or scalping their new toy?” is ‘they couldn’t, fuck ‘em’
Here are the two things
that Mattel need to stop right fucking now:
The first are these weird
plastic bracelet things they’re using to keep the hands in place, they have a
allegedly have a slit in them but the plastic’s way to tough, you can try and
pull them out but that is exceptionally worrying, the wrists are the smallest
joint on the doll and the dolls are thin (“remember to treat everyone the same
no matter what they look like, even though we all have the bodies of pop stars
because Mattel’s too cheap to pay out for more than one tool”) so you pretty
much have to cut them out, but the hands are soft plastic, softe than the piece
of packaging, so any scissors that are sharp enough to cut such a thing (that’s
so small) could easily chop off a digit or four or take a chunk out of the
hand. What’s wrong with those stretchy see-thru plastic band things? They’re
using them with Masters of the Universe Classics but they seem to have
completely fazed them out for Monster High – where they’re more needed – except
for holding accessories onto the characters, which is a further bone of
contention re: those plastic bracelet things, Mattel keeps tying the
accessories to them as well as the hands, a particular problem as those bands
are the only way to keep the bloody accessories in the characters hands because
the whole design team hadn’t cottoned on that open hands cannot hold a pencil
and notepad until Freak du Chic. With this set up I’ve ever got to cut them (so
they won’t be able to hold their stuff) or find a way to untangle them and then
use wrap the larger band around the figure’s hand in a way that doesn’t look
shite (or else it’ll be loose and they’ll ‘drop’ their stuff). With all these
easily cut fabrics around you don’t want something that needs lots of scissor
work – especially on things aimed at children – why do I, the know-nothing
bloke from Essex – have to say this to Mattel, a company that has been making
toys since the forties!?!
Which brings us nice to the
other thing – attaching the ghouls to the back card by their fucking heads; I
don’t know if you can see it that well in my picture but they have those little
plastic tabs – the ones that look like dumbbells they use to keep the tags on
soft toys (I don’t know their real name, or even if they have one) – through their
actual head. You have to cut them, BUT because their very purpose is keep the
head tight to the cardboard there is very little give and very little margin
for error – do it wrong and you’re gonna lop a chunk of hair off. No child
could get these things out; most dads couldn’t get these things out and it’s
two tabs as well, not one long one, meaning you can’t cut it and then feed it
through so there’s nothing left in the head instead you get two little
thorn-like spikes of plastic sticking out the back of the head. You can push
them into the head itself (which is hollow) most of the time but I just…why
would you make something for kids that kids can’t open and that are then
spikey? I don’t get it. Especially after you were in a very public recall
scandal about toys that could accidentally hurt children!
This long rant may imply
that this is more important to me that it actually is, or that it somehow ruins
my experience with the toys – that isn’t true, Clawdeen’s been out of the box
for a fortnight, I love her and hold no resentment towards her for how much of
a pain in the arse it was to free her. It does ruin the experience of unboxing
the toys though and that should be a good experience, there’s a temporary
childlike excitement that returns when you’re taking a new thing out it’s box,
it’s part of the recapturing the feeling of childhood that is one of the draws
of toy collecting, and it isn’t there if you have if unboxing them is akin to
the later stages of Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. To end this on a happy
note, here’s Frankie and a Pikachu:
Thank you for indulging me, talk about First World problems...
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