Without meaning to, I begin to feel a certain accomplishment in the product I design at ‘The Interactive Baby Toy Factory.’ It’s been a long time since I’ve something with my own hands. The motorcycle counts, I suppose, and I’ve done some repairs on the camper over the year or so that I’ve had it, but to make something from nothing, based on no former design. I don’t think I’ve done that since elementary school thrust me into a craft room and asked me to make a crocodile out of popsicle sticks and glitter.
The toy I design is a sort of thick plastic space ship with an inky finish and a crew of adorable aliens inside. My thinking is that the toy can be investigated in parts- locked closed while the child is young, and gradually opened as the child reaches ages where smaller toys and more nuanced pretend play can be encouarged. It’s got a little spring engine for zipping around the floor. The aliens inside make a satisfying rattle. The characters are generic enough to be lovable, but edgier that the usual bear. It’s something that will catch the eye of parents, I think. This is a capitalist endeavor, after all.
I hand my spaceship over to the workers and wait in a room with a two-way mirror. Inside, an eerie mechanical baby seems to be watching me or, I suppose, looking at itself in the mirror. It, doesn’t look much like a baby, minus the silhouette. A long cord trails out of its head and disappears into a track in the ceiling.
It turns its head when factory workers enter the room with the space ship.
‘The owner of ‘The Interactive Toy Factory’ is a parent himself and, prior to branching out on his own endeavor, worked in toy design for several decades. The new factory is a little ‘grumpy,’ he admits.
“Everybody thinks they can design a toy,” he says, “And when something goes wrong, everyone says they knew it was coming, that toy makers are cutting corners and using cheap plastic or faulty construction. It’s not easy, and it’s not my fault all those kids died!”
There is no record of the incident he is referring to.’
The spaceship is left on the floor and the workers retreat, leaving the curious mechanical baby to its process. It doesn’t move, at first, and I wonder if the toy is too generic. If it’s unable, even, to capture the attention of a child that, in turn, was designed to play with toys. Eventually, though, the baby makes its way to ship, toddles up to two legs, and then comes crashing down face-first on the tail. The fake baby begins to spew, what I assume must be a blood substitute as it mimics harm. It grabs for the spaceship and, in pulling it back, engages the little spring engine which begins to tangle in the baby’s thin hair. The baby tries to stand and slips in, what I personally feel but am in no way medically qualified to say, is way more blood than a child of that size could lose, and falls again in such a way that the hard plastic splinters into shards. What follows is an hour or so demonstration of what an immortal (and suspiciously clumsy baby) can do with pieces of sharp plastic.
I’m handed a report at the end that predicts a great deal of liability, an expensive and difficult recall, and a death toll in the thousands. I get to keep the bag of gooey plastic shards- a souvenir from a failed career.
-traveler
