Toys ‘R Us and plastic values

13 November 2013 - 13:46 By Bruce Gorton
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A pearl spotted owl.
A pearl spotted owl.
Image: Bruce Gorton

A recent Toys ‘R Us advert has pretty much summed up why I think capitalism isn’t doing America much good.


The advert starts with a bunch of children queuing up for a field trip to a forest, and then goes into them looking bored on the bus.

They then get super-excited when they are told instead of going to a forest; they are going to a Toys R Us to get toys.

To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, it essentially says that nature is nothing next to the majesty of a strip mall.

According to Washington State University in 2008, “Fifty percent of the wetlands, 90% of the northwestern old-growth forests, and 99% of the tall-grass prairie have been destroyed in the last 200 years.”

This isn’t a problem however to the bigwigs of Toys R Us, who needs old growth forests when you can have a pretty plastic princess?

These are the values corporate America wants to instil in the young, because who cares about whether the world is livable so long as you have money?

The advert took 3 days and about 200 kids to film, which is to say it took some doing to get them looking that bored at the idea of a field trip.

In fact the North American Nature Association for Environmental Education questioned the whole advert, saying, “While you may say that these were the real reactions of the kids, we question the method in which you presented the nature trip in order to get the "bored" responses, as it is our experience that children, particularly those from urban areas, are delighted at the chance to connect with nature and explore.”

Going onto the Toys R Us corporate page I found nothing with regards to environmental responsibility, but I did find a commitment to helping the US military recruit soldiers. The exact sort of thing you want from a company dealing primarily with children.

While I can applaud making kids at charities happy by giving them toys? It should never come at the expense of an interest in the world around us.

That world is our world, it is what we rely on for not just our survival but our sanity because we live in a hyper-stimulated world, we need those quiet spaces.

Teaching a disdain for that to children? I just find that despicable.

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