This weekend I saw a display of plush Smurfs at the little mom and pop boutique, Le Mart de Wal. Smurfette and Papa weren’t far from a wall of Play-Doh and another wall of New, Fast-Pitch Softball Coach Strawberry Shortcake.
See, whoever owns Hasbro and Mattel aren’t stupid; they’re well aware that we Children of the 80′s are now grown and reproducing– especially my family, The Amazing Breeding Germans, with three babies on the way in 2009 alone. We push a cart past the toy aisle, we see a Sit’n'Spin, we forget that it really kind of sucked, and into the cart it goes. Your childhood shall be my childhood, son, no matter how many questions about communism the Smurf Village raises. And much of that childhood was shaped by our television shows.
There has been a rebirth of Scooby-Doo and the entire gang out on DVD, too, complete with new theme music by Blink-182 and a totally stoned Shaggy. The only apparent change is that Fred has been made .0000000000001% less metrosexual; he is now without his alarming ascot. Plotlines remain reassuringly stupid.
“Is that a real monster?” Jim The Small Child Nephew asked his mother, with growing anxiety, the first time he watched it.
This was the cue for Julie The NephewsMama to bring him into one of the great truths of life. “In Scooby-Doo,” she said, “it’s never a real monster, only a guy in a mask.”
Next episode: “Mommy, is that just some guy in a mask?” And so another American is brought into the fold of the apex of Western Civilization: 1980-1990.
