the Scott Stein

One of the presents my son got at his birthday party today was Imaginext's T-Rex Mountain (by Fisher Price). The toy features sound effects, lights, moving parts, dinosaurs, and cave men carrying clubs. It has everything a four-year-old could want, prehistorical inaccuracy aside.

When I was in advertising, I wrote copy for toy packaging (dog toys, too), so I know how full of shit the descriptions on these things can be. It's my guess that the copy on T-Rex Mountain's box is not ideologically driven. Most likely, someone in the marketing department believes that some parent out there might have additional motivation to buy the toy because the box says the following (complete and unedited):

Imagine...a primitive civilization of humans and dinosaurs, living in a lush, green land. One side--the predators--is using up its natural resources, wiping out everything and everyone that gets in their way. The other side--the ecovores--wants to preserve their land. And they're willing to fight to make that happen. The battle begins at T-Rex Mountain: Will the predators succeed in destroying the land, causing their own extinction? Or will the ecovores stop the destruction and make the land a place where dinosaurs and humans can live together peacefully for all time? In the world of Imaginext, anything is possible!

Ecovores? For pure nonsense, it's hard to think of its equal. Not that there's any point in deconstructing the babble on the side of a toy box. The toy itself has no message and gives no indication of eco-anything, so the eco-copy must have been added later, after the toy was developed. The packaging will be in the trash tomorrow and my son will not encounter any incoherent socially conscious messages on the box, as it should be. Because for four-year-olds, an epic battle between dinosaurs and cave men is meaning enough.

On a related note, see Nick Gillespie's "Suffer the Little Children: The grim 'fun' of highly partisan kid lit"