Toys Rn’t Us

Went shopping at Toys R Us last week for my four-year-old nephew’s birthday — great nephew, but who’s counting? Heard he was into dinosaurs. Cool. Me too.

I found a big two-foot tall rubber T-Rex. Played with it for a while ‘til the woman stocking shelves an aisle over stuck her head around the corner and asked, “Uh … can I help you?"

I put the big guy back on the shelf and poked through a few smaller forms of the more popular dinos: Apatosaurus (can’t call ‘em Brontos anymore), Triceratops, Stegosaurus — you know the kind. I was thinking how I would very much prefer buying him one of these over the electronic storybook my bride was looking at. I looked at the lower shelf to see what else they had when I noticed something odd.

The brat who shoved his way between me and the rubberized Dinosauriformes without so much as a “‘scuse me mister" noticed it too – after all they were eyeball high to him – but he didn’t think it odd. He just grabbed what was there and gave his best Godzilla roar. But it was odd because mixed in with the dinosaurs were these very cool, but very misplaced dragons. I like dragons, too, and will stop while channel surfing on any movie with dragons in it and watch the damn thing through, but here in what was supposed to be a somewhat educational section of the toy store, the dragons and dinosaurs were displayed as if they belonged together — as if there was no difference. They were all just big, scary beasts.

I stood to give the rude little tyke more room as he grabbed one dragon and one dinosaur and smashed them together in a mock battle of titans worthy of Tomoyuki Tanaka’s 1954 classic. And as my own eyes came level with the top shelf, what horror did I see? All mixed in with the little Eoraptors and Pterodactyls was another famous flying creature from folklore — the unicorn. 

When the stocklady came back to ask if I was still looking, I asked her if she thought anything was wrong with her display. “Well, it’s a little messy," she said, “The kids are always playing with them. I see you’re having fun."

So I asked flat out if she thought it was sending the wrong message to have dinosaurs, dragons and unicorns all displayed as if they belonged together. The puzzlement on her face told me everything. I picked up a nearby Big Bird and asked if she ever heard that Sesame Street song, “One of these things." She continued to stare blankly so I sang it to her.

One of these things is not like the other
One of these things just doesn’t belong
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

"They’re just toys," she said.

She didn’t know what was wrong with that picture. I told my bride I would write a strongly worded letter when we got home. She said, “Get over it. You watched the Flintstones growing up and they had dinosaurs living with people. Nobody cared. It was a cartoon."

I didn’t want to admit to her how old I was before I realized that humans and dinosaurs lived millions of years apart and never crossed paths — thank you Fred Flintstone. And I didn’t think a whole new generation of kids should be likewise misinformed.

As I walked to the checkout with the electronic book on who-cares-what and walked past the Science & Discovery section only to spy two intriguing displays: “Dangerous Books for Boys: Essential Electronics" and “Dangerous Books for Boys: Classic Chemistry," I wondered what my granddaughter will think of that display in a few years. And I wonder what Florence Weber from HP would think of it and Fredel Thomas of CHR Solutions and Susannah Scholl of CGI and Valerie Scheder of AT&T and Marie-Paule Odini of HP and Aparna Khurjekar of Verizon and Laurence Heyndrickx of Verizon and Faye Henris of TEOCO and Michele Gehl of Sprint and Victoria Cashion of Pitney Bowes and Cynthia Brumfield of the Utilities Telecom Council and Monica Braden of Frontier and all the other women with advanced technical degrees and executive level positions who appeared on the B/OSS Live! agenda last June and across the industry. 

I wonder.

E-mail me at tmcelligott@vpico.com or click on the comment button below.