In one of the more memorable lines in film history, the character Mr. McGuire in “The Graduate” leans over and confides to Ben, the young college graduate: “I just want to say one word to you — just one word: plastics,” he says.
“Exactly how do you mean?” Ben asks.
“There’s a future in plastics.”
He wasn’t kidding.
The future is now for parents of preschoolers.
Via yard sales, hand-me-downs and toy stores, plastic toys accumulate upon the bare beach of new parenthood like so much detritus disgorged from a heaving sea.
Suddenly it’s there, in your trunk as you leave a relative’s house; at your doorstep, a gift from a neighbor who outgrew it; and in your shopping cart because you can’t resist it.
It’s there: plastic formed into the shape of cars, sandboxes, slides, shovels, dollhouses, mini-kitchen sets, you name it.
“Sometimes I do look around and think, `Oh, God, look at all this stuff,'” says Debbie O’Neill of Albany, mother of twin 2-year-olds and a 6-month-old. “Yes, it does get to you.”
Thanks in large part to gifts from her sister, her fenced-in back yard has been transformed into a virtual Little Tikes metropolis. It includes a storybook cottage, a toy bench to match, three teeter-totters, swing sets, slides, a little rowboat that rocks, a big boat sandbox, and a picnic table, among other items. Indoors, too, toys make their way into nearly every room.
“Everyone caves in sooner or later,” says Todd Pinsky of Santa Cruz, Calif., a veritable connoisseur of plastic and the author of the book, “Homedaddy: Little White Lies and Other Tales from the Crib” (Push Pull Press, 145 pages, $13.95), a chronicle of his first few years as a stay-at-home father.
But why so much plastic? It’s the material of choice for the major toy manufacturers because it’s cheaper to produce than wood or metal. In turn, plastic toys are less expensive to purchase than their wood and metal counterparts.
For example, a plastic ride-on toddler car, the Little Tikes Car Sounds Coupe, is sold for $48.88 at Wal-Mart. The similar-sized, all-metal Red-Hot Roadster, sold through www.kidswheels.com, is $289. The price of plastic may account, at least in part, for why more toys in general seem to have made their way into homes.
Aside from price, there are good points to plastic, many parents say. Namely, it doesn’t rust or disintegrate, and it doesn’t contain sharp edges that can cut.
If avoiding plastic is unlikely, then the key concern is not being overrun by it. Barricading by means of fencing (for outdoors) and gates (indoors) is one method to curtail the spread of plastic toys in a given household.
