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Brand™ New WorldThe Boutique Individual buys goods that bestow personal identity and promise to make us happy. So why does every transaction make us more miserable?
My mother took a conservative position on toys: Less was better, in part because you should be outside playing anyway. I might have preferred a different approach. But now that I have a two-year-old boy and toys are again on my radar, I see the wisdom of my mother’s old-world view. It’s partly a matter of self-preservation. Toy marketing has grown devious. Television tie-ins are standard. There are strategic alliances between toys (Duplo and Bob the Builder, for example), which try to create complex multi-toy-group dependencies. But my larger concern is for my son. We visited a big toy store recently. He wanted a baseball and bat. But to my surprise, his happy chatter faded to silence as we wandered past the Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob gear, the toys pitching Marvel, Pixar and Nickelodeon content. Then, as his breathing quickened with anxiety, it dawned on me. With the possible exception of the plastic bat and ball we never found, no toy in the store was designed merely as a vehicle for imagination. Instead, every toy was prefreighted with brand story, all of which were being yelled at us simultaneously. Which is right about the point my son asked to go home. I wasn’t having a great time, but the experience was actually making him unhappy. |
