Tin Toy

I once read that nostalgia creeps on us around year thirty, when we are old enough to remember childhood with fondness and still close enough to it to clearly recall its tribulations and its happiness. I got a beautiful tin toy for Christmas and even though I never lived in the years of the tin toys (before WWII), nostalgia bells rang loudly in my ears as I edged the rocket ride out of its box. Now I cannot stop looking at it; it is so alluring and comforting in a way I've never known before. It is completely new to me, and yet uncanny in the Freudian sense of the term.



Above and beyond the fuzzy feeling, I got a little miffed as the packaging reads that 'The Schylling Collectors Series Tin Toys are made the same way toys were made almost 100 years ago'. Nothing bad there, right? Yes, but how about the other side of the box that also reads 'WARNING: NOT FOR CHILDREN FOR COLLECTORS ONLY', like it is an unexploded war bomb painted in pure lead?

If this beautiful toy is lovingly made as they used to, when kids only had paper, wood and tin toys to play with, why is it that one of today's kids cannot play with it? Has tin become more dangerous than, say, video-games, Barbie dolls, Big Jims? More dangerous than those annoying mono-skates that infest our pavements everywhere? Methinks this is another case of suing-culture spin... what if an idiot child decided to ingest the whole tin toy? Or maybe just one of the rockets? What if the kid decided to stick it into his eye or perhaps ram his little sister with it? Gosh, perish the thought that this lethal weapon were given as an actual toy to an actual child. Everyone knows that the more evolved we get and the more imbecile our children become. I am just glad I am not a child and can play with this all day, so there, ha ha ha, ho ho ho!