Kris Kringle Konfessions

The Fisher-Price News Crew

I regret that I can’t find the photos of the actual action figures that accompanied this set, but they were fantastic. From my memory, the three primary characters were (and I’m being totally serious):

The cameraman: A rugged guy wearing an all-blue jumpsuit with the letters “TV” on his back. I’m 99% certain of this. He also wore headphones. I allowed him to moonlight as a rock star.

The black female newscaster: What made this intriguing was that it really was an early-Oprah-Winfrey-prototype, designed to look (to my mind) like she did when she was a local newscaster. Her hair was a perfectly round and smooth afro, and she wore a painted-on blouse with a rubber skirt, which (cards on the table) I would look up and note the painted-on granny panties (although as a kid, it’s still “underwear”). Kudos to Fisher-Price for manufacturing a career woman of a non-white background!

Diversity can take weird twists however, mainly in the figure of the producer: Hand to God, I hope someone can find a photo of this action figure because he was a true original :over-50, grey hair, tie loosened at the neck to indicate his harried nature, with wrinkles, worry lines, and a noticeable paunch. He looked (and there’s no way to say this nicely) like an alcoholic. Not just on a deadline, but also on a bender. Like he had seen too much. Like he had been overlooked yet again this year for another Pulitzer, even after all he had done for Civil Rights and Vietnam and the thalidomide kids. . . Jesus, can’t a man get an even break in this dog-eat-dog world? When I retire, I just want a little place for Madge and me in Boca Raton, golf on Saturdays and bridge on. . .

Where was I? Oh yeah. . .

Fisher Price Movie Player

Pre-VHS, in an age when the best you could hope for would be bowling or yet another dull, Saturday-afternoon-viewing of Robert Redford’s The Candidate on the UHF channel on a black-and-white TV.

You popped in the cartridge (in my case, a Sesame Street one), turned a crank, and watched (at best) a five-minute reel of a truncated Sesame Street show. The beauty of this was that you could rewind slowly; case in point, I would watch the pastry chef fall in slow motion down a flight of steps, then gracefully fall up the steps, as the hot-fudge sundaes magically and gloriously re-assembled themselves. Then repeat. Again. For the next couple of years. I’m beginning to think this device was some sort of gateway-drug.

Fisher Price Little People

This was Bob. I still know him as Bob.

If you were to shove a shoebox full of these people in front of me, I would be able to identify each one by name (the one that I’d assigned them), would be able to indicate the familial and friendly relationships between each character, and could tell you (vaguely) what their professions were.

Bob’s job was to kiss his wife goodbye, walk to work, be distracted by the rotating candy-striped barbershop pole, treat himself to another haircut, enjoy a movie, catch an evening baseball game, then return home and tell his wife “Work was good.” Occasionally he would sort of fumble with his wife, at which point my eavesdropping mom might tell me to play outside.

It’s still a mystery how Bob managed to support a wife and a family of four kids, one dog, and a ne’er-do-well Weeble-Wobble Pirate brother-in-law. Bob lived in the inner city for a while, liking the feel of concrete beneath his soles. But eventually, the people of the suburbs called him.

Is it any wonder why I’ve found almost all of my real-life dwellings since childhood to be secondary to this one? And I won’t be happy until I’ve got a dog that can stand upright like a person and walk up a ladder with no problem.

This is what comes from being raised by pacifist parents who would not allow toy guns or military games in our house, for which I’m grateful, because there’s more grit and tough-luck, real-world lessons to be learned from the toys I was given.

By Santa, of course.

Pages: 1 2