This Ain’t Your Parent’s Kids Meal Toy

Although I fancy myself a man of distinguished culinary tastes, my financial means do not always permit my progeny and I to experience the greatest that the food world has to offer. As a result of our limited financial resources last evening (that always happens the few days leading up to payday), T and I went to a local fast food restaurant to obtain our evening vittles. T ordered his typical cheeseburger kids meal: French fries, root beer and cheeseburger plain with only the bread, meat and cheese. I know, how delectably juicy and flavorful.

Of course, as at almost every fast food restaurant, this particular meal came with the creme de la creme of children’s entertainment products: the kids meal toy. So maybe not. OK, let’s just admit it. While kids often find it entertaining, the kids meal toy is always the chinciest, lowest quality toy you can find outside of a Cracker Jack prize (as a side note, has anyone else noticed the Cracker Jack prizes have gotten really crappy nowadays? They at least used to be something cool like a spinning top or temporary tattoo, but now it is the ever-exciting pencil topper or fun fact card about one of the early presidents of the United States. OOOOOHHHHHH, I can barely contain myself.) This particular kids meal did not contain a little plastic action figure or miniature truck, but instead contained a paper tiger hand puppet. The instructions stated: Children, you may need help from an adult.

I was soon to find out that the instructions should have had a second line that stated: Parents, you may need help from a 32 year veteran of origami artisanship. I struggled a bit to free the tiger from it’s seemingly tear-resistant plastic bag cage, and began what was to become not only an exercise in futility, but perhaps the greatest battle the world had ever witnessed of man versus converted wood product feline. The puppet was apparently supposed to be fashioned together by any average parental unit by following a series of NASA-like schematic drawings while dealing with ill-designed folds and a series of slots and accompanying tabs that either did not line up, or were of such mismatched sizes that the tabs either would not fit through the slots or they were too small and would slip back out. The first couple of folds and tab insertions were a little confusing, but I was able to manage. It was on approximately step 4 of 73 that my frustration began to rear it’s ugly head. Every time I attempted to make a new fold or insert a new tab, the other tabs that I had dealt with during earlier steps pulled themselves free. I spent nearly ten minutes of complete frustration, cursing silently to myself the little ten-cent-an-hour-Chinese-sweat-shop-working-seven-year-old that made this torturous thing for the sole purpose of showing the whole world how the American adult population can‘t even figure out a child‘s toy, all the while fighting back the urge to throw the thing on the ground, stomp on it and then take it home for it to meet it’s demise in my industrial strength paper shredder.

I looked at the side of the kids meal bag at this point, and discovered that the series of toys they were handing out were associated with Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. The only thing that was in the bag with the puppet was a fun fact card. I did not read it, but assumed it had some crazy, unbelievable facts about tigers, but also figured it was equally likely that the only thing printed on the card were the words: The only human to ever successfully complete the enclosed puppet was a 32 year veteran of origami artisanship. I believe you, Mr. Ripley. After ten minutes had passed I had reached the point of utter exsperation. I finally succumbed to my paper enemy, and admitted to myself, and my disappointed child, that my goal of puppet construction was unquestionably unattainable. T actually had pity on me and said it was OK and that it didn’t seem very cool anyway, but then suggested we take it home and try to put it together there. So I did what any parent would do….I let him walk out the door first and while I exited behind I angrily dumped the little piece of #$%*! in the refuse container (the tiger, not my child).