Toys 'R' Us: Marketing to the Voiceless

Today the Toys ‘R’ Us Christmas Catalog came in the mail.  The packaging is like a Christmas gift.  Colorful candy canes and trees and a big orange bow in the corner.  It also advertises a free poster inside.  

To get to the catalog, you actually have to unwrap the gift-wrap-like packaging.  Kids don’t normally get much mail and to get something that looks like a present would be very exciting for them.  They would want to have it, open it, and look at it.  The inside of the wrapper is the free poster, which is actually a decorated list of all the Skylanders Trap Team figures-the poster is an advertisement.  On the sides of the poster there are more advertisements for limited edition comic books, video games, and more products.  

There are sixty-five different figures to collect.  Most individual figures cost around sixteen dollars, so if a child wanted all of them they would spend almost a thousand dollars, if not more.  Some of the figures are closer to ten dollars, but there are more things to collect.  Don’t forget the trap crystals and video games and everything else.  

To play this video game, you’ll need whatever gaming system is needed-and that kind of thing isn’t cheap either.  According to the Toys “R” Us website, an Xbox 360 gaming system is normally 199.99 (nice charm pricing) and it’s on sale for 179.99 (probably only on sale for the holiday season, so buy now).  To buy the 500 GB Media Hard Drive, which you’ll need to have if you want to save your game and the games of all of your friends, it would cost an extra 109.99 dollars BUT, the Media Hard Drive will be shipped to your house for free with any purchase of 49+ dollars (so it would ship free with the purchase of a few of the Skylanders action figures or the purchase of an Xbox 360).  It even says “Skylanders Trap Team and Xbox go great together!”  

And the spending doesn’t stop there.  You can also get extra controllers, batteries and chargers, special cables, headsets, and storage.  But not all of the storage is for games, some of it is to store your Skylanders.  

You don’t have to buy an Xbox to play with your Skylanders though, you could buy a PlayStation 4, if you preferred.  They only cost 399.99, think of the savings.  Of course, they would require all of the extra cables and controllers and hundreds of dollars of other extra things.  

But wait, there’s more.  

On the first page of the catalog, you see a bunch of characters and toys.  The man from Monopoly, an orange hippo (I assume that this one is from Hungry, Hungry, Hippos, but I don’t know as it was just a mere board game when I played it), Littlest Pet Shop animals, Play-Doh creatures, Nerf Guns, My Little Pony (they don’t show pictures of the toys, they show pictures of the characters from the TV show), and what looks like a Transformer dragon/dinosaur/robot thing.  

The catalog comes complete (as does nothing in it) with a special page for kids to make their wishlists, or they could just check the boxes beside each of the products to show “Santa” what they want.  

The catalog talks directly to the parents (“Your little Turtle is showing off his new powers and Elsa’s singing her heart out.”) and then it says “And you finally got that cup of coffee.”  It’s not about getting toys for your child now, it’s about getting time for you.  That well earned break you deserve can be your’s if you just pick the right items from the catalog in your hands.    

Talking about something as if the customer already owns it (the child and parent are already envisioning themselves in the scenario the catalog has set up) is a marketing trick, but children won’t think about that.  They’ll think about how happy they would be to have an Elsa doll, or how fun it would be to play with a Ninja Turtle.  

Here are some of the highlights from the catalog:

The Fabulous 15! list is the list of cool toys for 2015.  The first toy is a little car from a TV show.  It is shown with a stuffed animal and a plastic sheep.  It’s on sale for only 44.99, but the stuffed animal and plastic sheep are sold separately (and probably not on sale, either).  Children won’t look at that, though.  They’ll just check the box beside the toy and move on to the next page.  

The second toy is-unsurprisingly-the Skylanders Trap Team Starter Pack.  

The eleventh toy is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure.  

The twelfth is a Disney Frozen Snow Glow Elsa.  The price isn’t listed anywhere in the magazine.  I looked online and it’s on sale for 34.99 (normally 39.99).  I don’t know why they didn’t have the price.  Maybe it’s just an error in the catalog?  Or maybe the need to have it takes you to the store or online where a whole new round of marketing can begin.

On the next two pages, there are babies and toddlers wearing fashionable clothing and playing.  Even the toys for little kids are expensive.  A plastic riding-elephant is 39.99.  A door for toddlers to walk through is 79.99.  Thank goodness it’s on sale.  

On page nine there’s a “Leaptop” for children ages 1 1/2+.  There’s also an alphabet dog, many different cars and tracks, and Doodle Bear, and an Elmo whose personality changes depending which hat he’s wearing.  Just like your child can change from a rollicking turtle to a quiet video game player.  

On the next page, everything is a toy from a TV show.  Now the TV show advertises the toy and the toy advertises the show.  The catalog says that there are over one-hundred-twenty choices in store and online.  This connection between show and toy not only creates a marketing circle but also tends to limit the way children play with the toy.  Instead of free play, they act out the story line creating the need to watch more shows and buy more toys.

There are also SpongeBob themed toys.  SpongeBob isn’t a show for three year olds, but these toys are.  They are advertising the show to younger children.  The young children might watch the show to seem cooler in the eyes of older children.  Older children might relate to them because of the toys.  This does not make the content of Sponge Bob appropriate for young children, though.  

There are two entire pages covered in pictures of girls in Disney-Junior themed costumes, playing with Disney themed toys.  Disney is a marketing giant genius in its own right.  They are everywhere and they protect their brand quite well.  Every girl wants to be a Disney Princess.  Every parent of a little girl knows this.  These outfits are expensive, though.  Not to mention the ramification of buying into the princess ideal on young girls as they grow up.  

On page fifteen, The Home Depot Big Builder Workshop is just an advertisement for The Home Depot.  Of course, one must give equal time, so the tool toys are the realm of little boys.  How will this work, though?  No Disney Princess marries the handyman?  What roles are being sold to the children and how will that impact their future view of the world?

There are so many advertisements for tablets for kids.  They are advertised for kids ages three and up.  Why would a three year old need something so they could play video games?  Why would a three year old want to play video games instead of interacting with the real world around them?  

Perhaps one of the most egregious toys available has to be the board game where you identify logos.  It’s marketed for children as young as four.  Clearly, these children are able to play - they know enough logos to name the brand even as pre-readers.  Before they even know how to read they know how to identify logos and can probably identify their favorites.  

The Toys ‘R’ Us catalog should be a frightening read for any parent.  It should make clear that children are being primed as sales targets even as babies.  Television leads to toys leads to sales.  This is the drive of the marketing engine to children.  

A review of Rags and Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales edited by Tim Pratt and Melissa Marr

I loved this book.  I already love short stories, but these were excellent.  

“That the Machine May Progress Eternally” by Carrie Ryan is inspired by “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster.  It is the tale of a man who goes underground and gets stuck there.  While reading the story, I had mixed feelings.  At the beginning I thought I was going to like it, then around the middle I became unsure about it.  I didn’t know if I liked it or not.  I didn’t like the main character AT ALL and had no idea why he wouldn’t make more of an effort to get out (I would have been kicking walls, screaming, and throwing things at people).  When I got to the end, I realized how awesome the story was and I was very glad I read it.  I’m giving it four stars instead of five because even though I liked it, I didn’t like the middle as much.  

“Losing Her Divinity” by Garth Nix is based on “The Man Who Would be King” by Rudyard Kipling.  It is the story of a goddess seeking escape from her immortality.  I’ve heard very good things about books that Garth Nix has written.  I really hope that those books are better than this.  I don’t know what to say other than I just didn’t like the story.  I didn’t connect with any characters, I didn’t enjoy the writing style.  I started to read it, but I just got bored.  I had to force myself to finish it.  One star.  

“The Sleeper and the Spindle” by Neil Gaiman is a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty”.  I can’t find the right words to describe this story.  All I can say is READ IT!  It will probably be one of the best Sleeping Beauty retellings that you will ever find.  Five stars.  

“The Cold Corner” by Tim Pratt was inspired by Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner”.  This is about a man who encounters alternate versions of himself during a trip home.  This story was okay.  It was better than some of the others, but it wasn’t my favorite.  I would probably appreciate this story more if I read the original.  Two and a half stars.  

“Millcara” by Holly Black is a retelling of Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and it is about vampires.  I LOVED THIS STORY!!!  I love most things written by Holly Black, but I LOVE when she writes about vampires!!!  This was the first story I read and it gave me very high expectations for all the other stories in here.  Fifty-thousand stars.  

“When First We Were Gods” by Rick Yancey is based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”.  This story is about a man who finds a way through technology to kill his wife and live with her maid.  I like the idea of people’s minds being saved every day so if something happened to them they could still survive.  In the right hands, that could make a really good sci-fi story.  But this is NOT that story.  I didn’t like the characters or the writing style or anything.  One star.  

Horace Walpole’s “Otranto” is the seed for “Sirocco” by Margaret Stohl.  This is a tragic love story/murder mystery of sorts.  I probably shouldn’t have read this when I did.  I read this one after I read “New Chicago”, “The Soul Collector”, “Awakened”, and “Millcara”.  After reading four really good stories, this one really fell flat.  I kept telling myself it had to get better, but it didn’t.  Ever.  Not even a little bit.  One star.  

“Awakened” by Melissa Marr was inspired by Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”.  It is a selkie story and I have been loving selkie stories since I was very little.  I loved this one too.  I remember listening to an audiobook when I was little about a selkie who lost her skin.  My sister and I listened to that repeatedly (much to the annoyance of my father).  I have no words to describe the awesomeness of this story.  If you like mermaids, read this.  Even if you don’t like mermaids, read it anyway.  Five stars.  

“New Chicago” by Kelley Armstrong is a retelling of the “Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs.  I remember reading The Monkey’s Paw when I was younger (I also remember thinking it was really creepy).  Looking back on it, I would like it a lot more now.  But I probably won’t like it as much as I like “New Chicago”.  I loved the characters and the story and how it didn’t say what he wished for at the end.  Five stars.  

“The Soul Collector” by Kami Garcia was inspired by “Rumplestiltskin”.  I LOVED this short story.  I will definitely read the original, and probably read this again.  And again.  And again.  Five stars.  

“Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy” by Saladin Ahmed is a take on Sir Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”.  This is the tale of three brothers captured by a fairy.  I didn’t like anything about this one.  Maybe I didn’t like it because I read so many great short stories before I read this and expected something better?  Probably.  One star.  

“Uncaged” by Gene Wolfe is a retelling of William Seabrook’s the “The Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban”.  I read this one right after reading “Awakened”, and it wasn’t even close to being as good as that one.  I didn’t like any of it and it didn’t make the most sense.  One star.  

I averaged my ratings for each story to get my final rating and I got this:  4169.291666666667 stars.  But Goodreads won’t let me rate anything that high, so I’ll pretend the rating for “Millcara” is five instead of fifty-thousand.  Now I have 3.041666666666667 stars.  But I’ll round it up to four stars.  

Review of Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality, and Creativity by Bernadette Murphy

This book was good, but I didn’t like that there was no mention of anyone who did something interesting or unique with crochet or any other craft.  When someone did something close to crochet, the author talked about considering not including them because they weren’t knitting.  This book could be much better if the author included activities that weren’t just knitting.  She could have had chapters about spinning, weaving, sewing, crocheting, and a bunch of other crafts that can be just as calming and spiritual as knitting.  

I think the book would have been better if, instead of having a knitting pattern at the beginning of each chapter, she had something about different crafts.  It wouldn’t even have to be a pattern.  It could be something like the history of knitting or crochet or spinning or weaving, or even something about the animals that yarn comes from.

The author proves her point that knitting is calming and people knit to get through hard times.  However, people can do that with crochet or other crafts, too.  She speaks of a woman who crochets food and is impressed by her work but goes to great pains to make sure the reader understands that this artist’s work is not as good as pure knitting.  She goes so far as to say that she would not include anything that wasn’t close to knitting even though there are lots of people who do interesting things with weaving, spinning, sewing, or crochet.  

The author asserts that knitting is calming because you can not concentrate on a bunch of things that would worry you - you have to focus on your pattern.  This forces you to clear your mind just as you would in meditation.  However, this is not unique to knitting.  It can be done with many other crafts.   The author exposes her own bias and it colors the impact of the book.  

Three out of five stars.