The War on Boredom shares some traits with other recent and ongoing wars against mental states. These wars waste a lot of resources. I think the War on Boredom can be won without resorting to buying plastic things like gaming consoles or supersoakers.

First things first. You must know your enemy…

Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods lacking activity or when individuals are uninterested in the opportunities surrounding them. The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of “to be tiresome or dull” since 1768. – Wikipedia*

The first line of defense against boredom is to carefully examine the opportunities surrounding you. Sign up to local newsletters that include events calendars. Organize your stuff. Read the user manuals of the gadgets that you already have. If you are reading my blog, you obviously have access to the internet. The internet has been an unceasing source of information and entertainment for me for over ten years. We abandoned a gaming console in Africa late last year. I thought that the kids would be begging for a replacement. So far, they are keeping boredom at bay with online and outdoor activities. Sometimes they even read BOOKS

I am not a crafty person, but some people certainly are. The greenest way for these people to fight boredom is to make useful and/or decorative items out materials that would otherwise be a burden on landfills or recycling facilities.

I am looking for some allies in this green War on Boredom. If you can think of any great ways to fight boredom without wasting plastic please leave a comment

I’m going to end this post with a few videos advertising plastic crap designed to fight boredom on it’s home turf (the office). I hope you find the videos entertaining, but please don’t buy this crap. I don’t want to pick on Vat19 – they sell some really awesome canvas bags.

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A toy doesn’t have to be very complex to be good(Not to impugn the excellent design and craftsmanship pictured above). Basically it needs to have a shape and it needs to stay in one piece. Everything else is just detail. Toy commercials on television would have us believe that children have very little imagination and require a ready made set of characters and actions in order to have imaginative play. Every parent knows that that is bull, but most parents still buy the crap. Get some kid a handmade wooden toy this year and fight the power.

Photo credit: Bitninja

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transformers 2

I presently live in a country that does not have any McDonald’s outlets. I had to check online to find out the current theme for the 1/4 pound of plastic that kids get with their cholestafest.

Happy Meal Toys are bad. I’m not going to mince words the way they mince cow body parts. Giving kids a toy with their meal seems like a recipe for an eating disorder. Paying people in Asia a pittance to design and produce a toy that has some fleeting pop culture significance but that will last for a thousand years is absurd. Sometimes they don’t even do a very good job.

The worst thing about happy meal toys is that they teach small children that acquiring plastic crap is a good thing. It’s not a good thing and the young children that are getting these toys today are eventually going to have to deal with plastic waste along with a host of other negative environmental impacts of human activity. The dad who wrote the blog post in the above link said that his kid played with her toy for 30 seconds before she got tired of it. 30 seconds of entertainment? A single use plastic shopping bag could entertain a kid that long (BUT THEY ARE NOT TOYS)

I seem to remember these toys being optional and I certainly hope that McDonald’s employees ask before putting them in the box. Just say no to plastic toys at fast food restaurants.

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Virtual alternatives are greener than the real deal in most cases. I am satisfied the the calculator that came with my computer operating system. I don’t need to go out and buy another handful of plastic and heavy metal to help me balance my checkbook (like I’m the one who actually does that, lol).

I don’t need to buy bubble wrap or a Rubik’s Cube to occupy my idle hands either. There are free virtual versions of those plastic things.

I’m the one who made the stickers all green. You can get a regular one at RyanHeise.com.

Note: The Rubik’s Cube is embeddable on your own blog or website, but it seems to have some buggy javascript, or else my server/Wordpress install just can’t work with it.

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I grew up with Tonka toys. They were mostly hand-me-downs from older cousins. Back when I was a kid they were steel with some plastic parts. They were durable. I wouldn’t call them indestructible. My dad drove a real dump truck and we occasionally left our toys on the lane.

Tonka started out as a company that made steel rails. They got the toy idea from a neighboring business that failed. Tonka was a huge success. I am writing about Tonka on a blog that is all about reducing plastic waste because Tonka toys are increasingly being made out of plastic. The company was bought by Hasbro (the people who make Mister PlasticHead) in 1991. Hasbro has discontinued many of the metal toys. I can’t be bothered to do the research, but I assume there was a concurrent shift away from domestic manufacturing. My observations lead me to believe that plastic Tonka toys are less durable than metal. Hasbro has a ‘Classic’ line of Tonka toys with steel parts, but many of the toys that I grew up with are discontinued.

Playing with toy trucks in the dirt seems to be something that kids thrive on. I think buying used toys that have proven durability is a wise decision. Some kids are just as happy to play with kid sized garden tools.

If you and your kids don’t have access to an outdoor imagination excavation, wooden trucks make great indoor toys.

Vintage Tonka photo credit: Steve-Photos, Others: fair use from Toys(backwards R)Us and Hasbro.

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1975 to 1982 was the golden age of movie merchandise according to the NYT. The articles that I found on the subject mostly talk in dollars. I have to wonder what the numbers mean in terms of tons of plastic.

In more recent decades, toy manufacturers have experienced a lot of expensive failures with movie merchandise. It is a high risk venture. I think one of the ways that they mitigate the risk is by making really cheap plastic products. On one of my walks on the beach, I found a broken Spiderman bucket and filled it with other plastic trash.

There are three main strategies used in movie merchandising and the target demographic of the movie will determine which one gets the most attention. The main difference between plastic toys and plastic collectibles is the price. Blockbusters that are aimed at the cool kids are better off selling clothes.

I would love to see some big name movie producers make a responsible decision and simply not grant licenses related to making crappy plastic movie merchandise. Worldwide illegal sales of unlicensed merchandise would continue, but consumers might buy less.

The Trekkies are typically enthusiastic consumers of plastic crap. It’s too late to argue against merchandising with regard to the current release but it’s not too late to suggest to fans of Star Trek that they enjoy the experience of the movie without buying any plastic collectibles. Resistance is not futile.

Photo Credit: Nanoprobe67

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Photo Credit: Hugo90

Planes, trains, automobiles and more can become an obsession for nominally sane adults who don’t mind the smell of glue. A lot of plastic and other materials are expended on miniature versions of the equipment that we use to get from point A to point B.

The concept of having a hobby was confined to the upper class up until the last few hundred years. I think people who have a surplus of time and a crafty mentality would do better to find an activity that is sustainable and might even benefit the earth. Gardening is the first thing that comes to mind. There’s no airplane glue involved, but manure can be almost as overpowering.

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When I was a kid, it seemed like girls and boys were about even with regard to plastic toys. I didn’t have action figures, but I visited boy friends and girl friends who did. The boys had soldiers and heroes and villains by the bushel and the girls had, um, blonds and brunettes and the obligatory token eunuch named Ken. I think I put more miles on the Barbie car during my visits than it ever got any other time. I think I may have broken at least one Barbie car and if I didn’t apologize at the time, I hope it isn’t too late now. I’m sorry.

This may be just my impression, but I think girls are now a much bigger target market for this stuff than boys. It may have something to do with the gaming industry disproportionately capturing the minds of boys. It seems like the world is saturated with Barbie. Barbie has some stiff (I don’t think they bend at the knees) competition from some big eyed Bratz. There are grown men and women taking this battle into the US court system and it isn’t over yet.

If I had it to do over again, I don’t think I would get Barbies for my kids. I can’t recall actually buying any for them, but I know that they were there. Like most girls, mine went through a stage where they dismembered their Barbies. I remember that.

I hope software companies can step up their game with regard to engaging the minds of girls in a positive way. That should indirectly reduce the amount of plastic crap in the world, especially if the products are downloadable or web based. One of the CD-ROMs that my kids had in the 90s was a stupid Barbie game. It was really crappy. My kids are very creative and now they sometimes make elaborate dress up doll files using only MS Paint. They draw naked doll-like figures and row upon row of clothing and accessories. Saving everything as BMP files is important so they can do transparent copy, paste and undos. It’s really neat.

Little girls don’t generally get a paycheck but for every dollar of actual ‘disposable income’ there is roughly 10 dollars of ‘pester power’. It really is up to the parents and grandparents to decide whether plastic Barbies get to live on in our culture. If your family is exposed to the full brunt of television, your kids with probably be sucked in by children’s advertisers that are concerned with their bottom line. You won’t be able to convince your kid that a Fair Trade Organic Doll is just as good as Barbie. You’re not going to convince your kid that making their own corn husk doll is really cool. That doesn’t mean that you have to buy Barbie.

Buying used Barbies may or may not be a slightly better option than buying new Barbies. Older Barbies are made from PVC and there have been some people raising concerns about health risks. It seems like industry, science, government and the public do the same square dance with every chemical that poses a risk to human health. Items that babies put in their mouths have come under more scrutiny than Barbie. Buying a used Barbie does not usually drive the market demand for new product and you don’t end up with that massive amount of packaging.

Mattel has to be one of the worst culprits for excessive plastic packaging. The package for every small doll or tiny accessory is designed to be bigger than a child’s pocket. Teaching a child to make clothes for their existing Barbies is worth a try. If this were to capture a child’s interest it would reduce the amount of plastic packaging consumed, the amount of money spent and the child would be developing a valuable skill. I personally find it very disturbing that so many plastic packages of Barbie clothes are sold and yet almost every Barbie doll in the world spends most of its time naked.

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Lego.

I played with it relentlessly as a child.

I felt its corners with the soles of my feet as a parent of small children.

I have never been to Legoland.

I have heard that there is a lot of plastic there. Today I also heard that a lego Barack Obama is being inaugurated in advance of the real flesh and blood inauguration.

I am not very good at recalling my childhood but I have to wonder whether plastic interlocking blocks were actually fueling my imagination. Is it possible that my imagination and those of millions of other kids have actually fueled the market for this stuff? I have seen simple wooden blocks used with equal enthusiasm. And they make a really satisfying crash when it is time to tear the old down so that you can begin building something better.

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I don’t need one of these wooden rattles myself. I get most of my amusement via the Internet these days. Americans please take note that you can get this or other well engineered and safe wooden baby toys from manufacturers in your country. With this particular item, the wood is American and it is harvested responsibly.

If you are buying from a local toymaker, remember to cast a critical eye with regard to safety. Don’t take chances with imported, used or vintage toys that may have harmful finishes.

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