Why must Iran continue to provoke us?
They’re working on nukes, they’re supporting deadly attacks against Americans in Iraq and our Israeli allies, and now, they insult our toys? This is madness.
“The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger,” Iranian Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi whined to his government in a letter about our subversive toys, according to news reports.
“The display of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spider-Man and Harry Potter … as well as … unsanctioned computer games and movies are all warning bells to the officials in the cultural arena,” he wrote.
It is clear that the Iranian prosecutor knows little about American culture. I bet you he doesn’t know that 99 percent of all American women look exactly like Barbie dolls, only much larger and perkier. And I bet he doesn’t know that Barbie’s gentle boyfriend, Ken, doesn’t even want sex.
Yet the Iranian prosecutor is right. Some American toys are culturally destructive. Especially those American toys that, until recently, were slathered with lead paint in China, and American toddlers quietly chewed on them, as their parents stared, passive and benumbed, at TV commercials hawking luxury goods emblazoned with the Beijing Olympics logo.
We get the message. The Iranian government considers Barbie to be nothing more than a wanton Western seductress eager to turn the heads of those nice Iranian boy dolls away from what’s really important, like developing nuclear weapons.
“I think every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile,” Iranian toymaker Masoumeh Rahimi said. She supports those proper — yet wildly unpopular Iranian toys: Dara and Sara. The virtuous Sara keeps her clothes on. Dara is an Iranian Ken.
My wife wasn’t corrupted by her Barbie as a child. But it got lost in the Land of Forgotten Toys.
“Barbie? Who cared? I played baseball with my brothers and climbed trees,” she said, proudly at breakfast Wednesday, as our sons nodded their approval, though she was raised a Cubs fan.
See? My wife didn’t play with dolls. But I sure did.
Dragging my GI Joe to breakfast one morning — I was about 10 years old — I asked my mother if I could borrow her iron.
“What?” she asked, as my dad fumbled nervously for his cigarettes.
I need to iron Joe’s pants, I said.
“Why?” asked my dad, turning pale. “Son, why do you want the iron?”
To press my GI Joe’s fatigues, that’s why, I repeated. GI Joe needs crisp creases in his uniform when he patrols the DMZ and Saigon. I need to press his clothes.
Which I did, and my Joe had killer creases, much to the envy of all the wimpy Kens in our neighborhood.
Sadly, this doesn’t begin to help the Iranian children find cool toys. Their parents would die — perhaps literally — if they allowed their kids to have a GI Joe. The Revolutionary Iranian Toy Committee would seize them on the grounds they harbored subversive toys.
So we decided to come up with a few Iranian toy suggestions.
The kids in Tehran might like “Mr. Potato Head,” a game I played as a kid, though unlike today’s wimpy and safe and abstract Potato Head, we used a real potato and sharp plastic spikes to impale it with eyes, nose, mouth and so on, so that he’d look hot for “Mrs. Potato Head.”
After playing, our mom would slice him into fries.
Sadly, as lentils and zucchini are the favored vegetables of Iran, they might wish to adapt this idea to “Mr. Lentil Head” or “Mr. Zucchini Head” — although lentils, being tiny, would frustrate an entire generation of kids and incite them to a counter-revolution. And zucchini is not a toy.
An Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves action set is much too easy. So how about the 12-inch King Leonidas talking action figure from the movie “The 300,” which is about the destruction of the great army from Persia by those proud yet stubborn Greeks? That would sell in Iran.
According to its Web site, the Spartan King has a spear, two changeable heads, and he talks, saying: “Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight we dine in hell!” and “This is Sparta!” Sadly, there is no mention of an accompanying King Xerxes figure, ruler of what is now Iran, replete with facial piercings, eye shadow and lip gloss.
Or what about the Onetobelieve.com toy company, which doesn’t make sexy toys, but virtuous toys, like the talking Jesus, a Samson, King David and so on. They offer a fascinating talking Moses action figure for only $19.99.
All they need is an updated Moses, say a Moses leading a squadron of fighter jets attacking Iranian nuclear reactors, with an optional AWACS plane flying overhead, commanded by the U.S. Air Force.
The Iranian Revolutionary Toy Council sure would be stunned by such a toy, so stunned, they might forget about Barbie for a while.
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jskass@tribune.com
