Realism invades toy market
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
Elaine Maganello, who lived behind the house in which I grew up, and who was a whole year older than I and, therefore, infinitely more mature, told me her Betsy-Wetsy doll, which she took for a walk every day, was real.
And I, of course, believed her.
I didn't totally fall for this at first. I thought she was trying to trick me, so she could make faces and call me a baby third-grader. The day she beckoned from her back steps as I sauntered past pushing my own Betsy-Wetsy, and sat me down and told me a miracle had happened, something no one else knew, then removed her doll's diaper and displayed what she said was the teeniest, tiniest poop, I announced in my most grown up voice, "No it isn't. It's dirt."
"I swear to God it isn't," Elaine said looking me straight in the eyes. "I swear to God this isn't a trick."
Elaine went to St. Bernadettes. Elaine knew all about the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. Elaine knew that swearing to God was a serious thing.
And she had sworn anyway. Clearly she was telling the truth.
With my now-opened eyes I studied the diaper more carefully. Yes, it was a miracle. Yes, this doll was real. For the rest of the afternoon, Elaine and I sat on her back steps whispering, watching and waiting for what would come next.
What came next was a soaking wet diaper, though Elaine swore she never fed the doll water, and eyes that blinked, "I saw them," she said, and a mouth that made the softest cries, "They woke me in the middle of the night."
I laugh now thinking how silly all this was, and how dumb we must have been. For Elaine believed as much as I, that her doll was real. The pair of us must have needed to believe.
When Baby Alive appeared on the shelves many years later, I bought it more for me than for my small daughter, who would have been happy with any doll. I begged to feed it and as my daughter changed its soiled diapers, I peered over her shoulder and remembered Elaine.
Last week I thought of her again when I read that Mattel is coming out with a soft baby doll in a pouch that straps around a little kid's belly and makes a child feel what it's like to be pregnant. The doll will arrive in stores by the summer and is called "My Bundle Baby." Children, by pressing a button, will feel what it's like when a baby kicks, and hear the sound of a baby's soft heartbeat.
What a wonderful toy. How Elaine and I would have loved it. But already the "experts" are beating their breasts, and making a negative out of something that is positive, something magical, something every little girl and many little boys will love.
"These toys are going too far," said Dr. David Elkind, professor of child study at Tufts University and author of "The Hurried Child". "It is fine for little girls to play with dolls, but this one is far removed from what they can understand or appreciate. And what happens if it doesn't work? Is the baby dead?"
Is the baby dead? Of course not. If the doll doesn't work, the children will change the batteries.
"The doll is a real invasion of a parent's opportunity to share something precious with a child. Why do we need such a toy?" Harvard professor of pediatrics Dr. T. Berry Brazelton asked.
Why? Because children are inherently curious. Because children are always asking where they came from. Because children love to pretend, love to be other people and this toy will make the being and pretending more fun.
The doll won't thwart opportunity. It will create opportunity for a mother to say to her child, "Feel how the doll kicks. That's how you kicked." Or "That's what it's like now. That's how the baby I'm having moves."
"My Bundle Baby" is being marketed, of course, for little girls. But I have a feeling there will be more than a few little boys who strap on the doll and press the button when no one's looking, just the way little kids will pick up a baby bottle and stick in their mouths when they are alone in a room; just the way slightly older kids can believe, despite what they know, that a plastic doll can be real.
