The R.P. Wants You to Know: Eco Toys Are Not Safe

            It’s true.  Hippy dippy kids’ toys can hurt you. 

            No.  Really.  It’s true.  Those hippy dippy kids’ toys are dangerous. 

            But the manufacturers and the fans and the proponents of these so-called hippy dippy all-natural eco-friendly environmentally conscious kids’ toys will surely tell you differently.  They will tell you that their toys are safe.  They will tell you that their toys are superior.  They will tell you that their toys are just that: toys—only more natural, made of more natural products, in more natural facilities, by more natural people, for more natural motives, with more natural intentions. 

            And typically, these more natural toys are made of wood.  And what could be more natural than wood?  Well, dirt or stone or bone are at least as natural as wood, but who wants toys made of dirt or stone or bone?  Nobody.  But who wants wooden toys?  Well, frankly, lately, lots of people do. 

            So, you’d think (correctly) that there’d be a market for this kind of thing. 

            But, it must be pointed out, these hippy dippy all-natural eco-friendly environmentally conscious wooden kids’ toys are just that:  wooden.  And wooden toys tend to hurt more than plastic toys when dropped on your foot or chucked at your head or clubbed against your knee. 

            And, frankly, the geniuses who make these enviro toys seem to be somewhat anti-adult, particularly given that, in their construction, these toys typically consist of blocks, balls, cubes, and, insanely enough, hammers.   

            Yes, I understand that the wooden hammer is intended for banging the wooden balls through the wooden contraption so that the wooden balls might roll down (plinkety plunk!) the metal xylophone, but really what we have here is a wooden weapon with round wooden projectiles, complete with other, heavier, wooden components which can also be flung about, some of which are blessed with rectangular metal xylophone slabs screwed into their wooden bases. 

            Frankly, to this observer, none of this seems even remotely safe for children and/or other humans. 

            Now, naturally, nobody on this end of the blogosphere (whatever that means) is promoting the production of toxic plastic lead-based Chinese-made craptacular kids’ toys for the dearly beloved toddling loved ones of our dearly beloved toddling nation.  But there has to be some kind of middle road. 

            They make plastic kids’ toys out of corn, don’t they?  They make recycled and upcycled and fore-cycled and aft-cycled kids’ toys, don’t they?  They make environmentally harvested kids’ toys of sustainable wood that are not in the shape of hammers or sickles or projectiles or other weapons that children might use against those dearly beloved human people who bought the toys for them in the first place, don’t they?

            And, in all honesty, we poor afflicted (and now assaulted) dearly beloved human people in charge of these little weapon wielding urchins are not exactly in need of another way for them (the aforementioned urchins) to injure us.  Frankly, they (the urchins) are already at a fairly injury advantageous height, which puts us (the aforementioned parents, see: tall humans) at a rather distinct disadvantage when it comes to protecting ourselves. 

And then to give the little urchins wooden projectiles?  Well, frankly, that seems simply unsportsmanlike.