Blast from the past, at a cost

I've calmed down over the elections bit, thanks to an article from the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/opinion/11collins.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin). That it takes a columnist to get me my nerves back is comical, but so it goes these days for me.

So on to other things... today I visited Jess, who now works at a toy shop called Inay (Filipino for "Mother") in the posh Riverside Square Mall. All the toys are made from natural material, mostly. A lot of wooden toys and dollhouses, musical instruments, slingshots and wooden puzzles. It seemed like a wholesome blast from the past; really a charming store I could fall irreverently in love with, until I caught a glimpse at some of the price tags. There was a wooden animal set for $300, a large decorative mobile for $400 and a dollhouse for $700. Sure, there were some items that were affordable (I set my eyes on a kalimba for $32), but largely it was oversized price tags for a key to simple childhood. Imagine that. We used to play with sticks and stones, rubber bands and whatever trinkets we could scrounge from our mom's drawers and shelves. We once made our own puzzles and pictures, and now there was this store, offering the same simple wares but at a price suitable for a totally different income bracket. Imagine those little kids in their J. Crew sweaters and corduroys, picking up one of those slingshots and hurling a ping pong ball and then breaking a window with said ping pong ball. That experience isn't any different than if the kid had made his own slingshot and stolen the ping pong balls from the garage. But this store would sell both slingshot and a set of two ping pong balls for $20. Really?

It's not bad that there's a store like this - as I said before, I found it terribly charming - but what bothers me is that there's actually a demand for this kind of thing among the upper echelons. Please! Just let your kid run around the backyard for once. Then he can learn about wood, and how to make it into other things, or dirt, and how to pick it up and roll around in it, or leaves and how if you paste them on a piece of paper they make a nice wall decoration.

I just imagine that future they had on Wall-E... it's already starting!