Taking A Stand: Putting together toys is a big pain
Some assembly required? Yeah, right. Half the stuff they make for kids nowadays takes the intellect of a rocket scientist and the patience of Job to assemble. It also helps if you speak several languages.
Of course, there’s one language many parents were speaking this Christmas morning when the boxes were opened, but it’s not a language I can repeat in this family publication. It seems toy manufacturers are outdoing themselves, trying to see how many different pieces they can stuff in a box to be assembled. You open the box and out spills the equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle with little metal pieces, clamps, screws, nuts and every little part known to man. You’d think you were assembling a space shuttle rather than a race track.
Making matters worse is that all the parts look alike from the instructions and it’s not until you’ve incorrectly installed the part that you realize you’ve done it wrong. This, in turn, means you have to break down about half an hour’s work and start from scratch, hoping you get it right this time.
Given my experience this holiday season, I firmly believe the person who writes the directions for assembling these toys is either sadistic or one big prankster. I mean reading these instructions is like deciphering some kind of hieroglyphics from an ancient pyramid wall.
And speaking of deciphering, what’s with all the languages on these directions? It’s like being at a United Nations meeting, given all the various languages. I bought the toys in America, I would like my directions to be in American. You have to shuffle through multiple pages just to find the English translation as they have everything from Pig Latin to Vulcan in there. Then, when you do find the English translation, it’s about as clear as mud.
I think this whole assembly thing is one of the major causes of stress over the holidays. Come on, we’ve all got the Christmas spirit leading up to Christmas. We sing Christmas carols, wrap presents and have dinner with the in-laws. Everything is right out of a Norman Rockwell portrait until those boxes open. Then, things go south real quick as you try to assemble this stuff before you’re child gets up on Christmas morning. Or better yet, wait until he gets up and let him stand over you, urging you to hurry so he can play with it.
All I can do at that point is growl and turn up my Elvis Presley Christmas album to ear popping level in hopes I don’t transform into some big green hulkish figure from the frustration. Hey, I know why the Grinch stole Christmas. It was so he didn’t have to assemble all this mess.
As I’m writing this, my knuckles are still stinging from all the times they were busted trying to screw in little screws, scarcely the size of a pin, into plastic molded crap. Screws and plastic were never meant to go together because they simply never fit.
I mean, how hard could it be to use a slightly bigger box so we could have it at least partially assembled instead of everything being broken down into its most basic molecular state? Better yet, let’s design stuff so simple that the kids can assemble it, leaving tired old dad time to sit on the sofa and sip nog.
Next year, I’m going with all pre-assembled stuff. If you give my kid something that says “some assembly required” on the box, you’d better have your caroling tail at my house with Phillips head in hand.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter with the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)