Connor had his first parent/teacher conference and the teacher said he was very bright and a very well behaved child. My wife decided that a reward was in order so we would buy him a toy. Why he needs another toy is beyond me. Our house is already overrun with toys. It looks like an explosion at a toy distributor. After ages of deliberation in the toy store, he settled on a craptacular toy. It was a knight’s castle with requisite dragons and such. It was craptacular because we bought another of this companies toys that was said to be a fire station. The box on that toy, expounded the versitility of it’s product. It can be assembled in various forms that allow for maximum fun! This was, of course, blatant lies. The product is like a pale imitation of Lego. It does not hold well, it is not sturdy and it is NOT versitile. The assembly points are very particular. Support and connecting pieces are only addressed to one side. That is, you cannot connect them to the left side of the piece without inverting it which doesn’t work b/c the top piece isn’t flat, it has a male connector. Even when it was assembled as directed on the box, it was as stable as Courtney Love on a three day bender. This is all a very long way of saying I had to tell him, no. After that we discussed the merits of the Thomas the Tank Engine multipack. It has three different types of Thomas’. One with a snowplow, one with a multi colored paint job and one with something else that escapes me at the moment. He held this one and furrowed his brow. He described each one to me and then I showed him, Culdee. He’s the newest and therefore, greatest toy train ever to exist. The pull of it’s appeal was greater than a black hole of fun. We again discussed the merits of this train. It has a cart full of apples. What could be better? Even with the inxorable draw of a NEW TRAIN, he was unswayed. We would not be buying a train today. Wife called and asked how the search was going. She asked about the Playmobil version of the knight’s castle. I explained that I had showed it to him earlier and he was non-plussed. This was the same item he was talking about every day for weeks before Christmas. While looking for said castle, Connor found a rocket ship that was for Superman’s dog. Yes, apparently Superman has a dog who wears a cape and has a rocketship. My immediate question was an obvious one: If he’s a Superdog, why does he need a ship? We know Superman can fly in outerspace. Perhaps Superdog is just lazy. In any event, this thing was horrible. The body was shaped like a rugby ball with three protrusions sticking out. Each was a rocket motor or some sort. It had lights and sound effects and he loved it. There was no way I was going to buy it. I knew it would be consigned to the ash heap of toys within a week. Now I was in the unfortunate position of telling him no again. That’s twice in one trip for a reward to the toystore. Not something I wanted to do. I took him around the aisle to look at the Playmobil castle again and this time, I opened the flap on the front of the box. That did it. He was sold and sold big. Somehow seeing the product in all it’s resplendent glory did it. Whoever did the packaging for this one must know what they’re doing.

I wrestled the thing to the front counter and we went home, Connor was very pleased. Once we got home I realized, we needed to assemble the thing. I had no idea how many pieces there were. Really. It took half an hour to assemble. This one, however, was very sturdy and stable. God bless the fine engineers at Playmobil. I am pleased to say the toy was a hit. They played with it non-stop since it was assembled. I suspect it will be as popular today.

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