Rubber Monsters and the End of Innocence

When I was a little kid, I used to collect and play with rubber monsters. I don't even know if they make those anymore. I'm not talking about the plastic ones, or the ones that are made from "hard" rubber. I'm talking about a specific type of rubber that was used to make all sorts of weird critters. It was soft, pliable and sort of spongy. I had flies, snakes, turtles, bats, spiders, frogs, a gorilla, aliens, crocodiles and alligators, mutants, ants, a scorpion and a crab. I'd find them in local dime stores in a big bin full of similar toys, or at supermarkets in those dime machines where you get a monster in a clear plastic capsule. I'm not sure they have those anymore either.

I'd construct elaborate, ongoing storylines with these creatures. Some of them were good and some were evil. I guess my "story" was sort of like the "Transformers" saga in that some of these creatures protected mankind and some of them sought to destroy it. They would interact with army men and toys from other mediums like "Star Wars" and "Micronauts". I remember I froze some of my monsters in a dixie cup full of water in the freezer (pre "Return of the Jedi", mind you). I would occasionally drop them in my mom's dishwater and watch in devilish glee when she "found" them. I played with them inside in the winter and outside in the summer. They were shot, electrocuted, frozen, crushed, impaled, and buried in sand. They suffered all the expected tortures at the hands of a little kid with a wild imagination in the 1970s.

It's been a long time since I thought about those toys. Oddly enough, I was reminded of them while watching a news broadcast about a woman who had gone missing and had been employed as an escort. Someone who was interviewed said that the woman worked so hard for her children, and tried to give them a good life. That reminded me of the children of some of my friends, and I thought about how hard it must be to keep kids happy today. Kids are plugged into video games and all manner of digital media at such a young age; I can only imagine how they would react to getting a bunch of rubber monsters as a present. How on earth could a sticky rubber spider compete with a fully realized, complex computerized world full of state of the art graphics and a wide array of functions and options?

I began to feel immeasurably old and out of touch. How do you explain to kids the wonder of a toy that seems so archaic? It's like trying to extoll the virtures of a paper airplane to a fighter pilot. It's as if time has moved past and eliminated whatever purpose the original device once had. The current generation is just so used to its level of engagement it can't imagine anyone being satisfied with something so prehistoric.

It's not their fault, of course. It's all environment. I can't imagine a time when there was no television , but my parents could, and did. They survived. They listened to radio and went to the movies. They used cardboard boxes for "forts" and sticks for guns while playing "cowboys and Indians". Their toys didn't do much on their own so they had to use their imagination to enable the wonders they held within. Nothing was electronic or had fifty pieces to assemble or was patterned after the likeness of Harrison Ford. Each generation progresses (or changes at least) and each successive group seems to have trouble relating to the ones that it followed. The cycle repeats itself.

It does make one pause, though, to consider the implications of this. If today's kids are plugged into ultra real games and toys that require less and less personal creativity to enjoy, what on earth will succeeding generations find meaningful diversion? Will we all be running around in virtual reality arenas like the "Star Trek" holodecks, where all we have to do to visualize something is to program it into a computer, and then experience it? With toys and games becoming more and more "real", what will be the inspiration for future? What will fire the creative juices of the children of the future if everything they experience in their leisure time requires so little of them? Isn't there a danger in having diversions that simply "happen" to you and don't require any kind of personal input?

But all the computer games have options, you say. They are not totally passive; you construct your own models from a huge array of preprogrammed choices. True enough. But even these choices, numerous as they are, are finite and worse, constructed by someone else. A kid that picks up a video game and has a thousand types of powers he can adopt for his character is still more limited than the kid who picks up a stick and it limited only by his own imagination. The character can be almost anything, but the stick can be anything.

I'm not lobbying for a ban on computer chips or CGI graphics. I love the look and feel of all these modern games and toys, too. I just think with entertainment, as with every facet of life that's changed by technology, it wouldn't hurt to examine the long term consequences of immersing ourselves so deeply in these admittedly astounding advances. Instead of just blindly assuming that all change is "good", we should acknowledge that with all advances there are complicating factors. Most medications address some specific societal need and work well with combatting their target illness, but also often carry with them side effects, both long and short term. Advances in cultural tools, including those concerning entertainment, are no different.

Maybe the answer is peaceful co-existence. Maybe we can embrace technological advances while retaining the value of imagination in games and toys. History does indeed move forward, but it doesn't have to be a scorched earth policy. The advance of one thing doesn't mean instant obsolescence for its prototype. Apes are still running around the globe even though man has dominated it for quite a while.

It's a nice thought anyway, but I have to be realistic, too. What kid is going to pay any attention to a rubber snake when they've got "Halo" on the shelf? Who's going to willingly become a nerd amongst a gaggle of techno geeks? Only when our society decides to place value on our past and stop cheerleading so passionately in favor of the latest "hot" advance will we find some kind of balance here and allow ourselves to be "acoustic" once in a while, and know that it's not only OK, but meaningful.