Toy Mountain

I did my Christmas shopping online this year. While perusing retailers' web sites, I had a strange feeling that toy makers were playing some horrible joke on parents.

You know the one: create a desire and then offer really expensive crap to fill it? It's an old one but we fall for it every time.

Lego, for example, is getting ridiculous.

It's long stopped being an awesome, generic building toy. Now you're strongarmed into choosing a themed, branded set, like Hobbit, or Chima, or Friends. They all have these teensy-tiny specialized pieces that are impossible for any person of any age to actually hold and build with, so instead they fall off, frustrate your kids and get lost until they stab you in the heel when you inevitably step on them.

And Nerf. Remember the Nerf from days gone by? When the point of the Nerf toy was to throw a ball indoors without hurting babies or old people, or breaking stuff?

Not anymore. The Nerf Elite Mega Centurion Blaster looks like it could be used in a drive-by. But not one that hurts babies or old people.

And who thought of calling a toy Cuddles My Giggly Monkey Pet? Don't know what it is, but I'm keeping my kids the hell away from it.

I tried to find toys that are “educational,”  but I even wonder about most of them. My kids received a “chemistry set” last year that contained packets of colored, flavored sugar to teach them about solutions. I wouldn't call overpriced Kool-Aid educational. Okay, maybe educationish.

Done shopping for a lot of crap that will disappoint them hours after opening it, I closed my laptop and took my kids to the park.

It was a cold, windy day and the playground was looking a little forlorn. Kids being kids, they didn't care.

"Ice!" they yelled, and ran to a group of puddles, breaking the frozen crusts under their boots.

A woman walking her dog stopped to watch the kids playing with ice chunks, fallen leaves and mud—a few precious bits of nature in a small oasis in the city.

She looked over at me, smiled and said, “Who needs toys?”