Some Assembly Required

Hey, remember when we were kids, and we would get a toy, and we were able to just take it out of the packaging and, like, play with it? Oh, occasionally mom or dad had to go find a screwdriver and some batteries, but toys used to be ready to go right out of the box. Not no mo', my friends.

Just getting them out of the packaging takes a bionic hand and a machete. That's one of the reasons why I'm no longer such a fan of Christmas. Ainsley gets half-a-dozen assorted dolls or electronic games every year when she's over at hubby's family's Christmas Eve party, and I sit in the floor, surrounded by cheaply-made toys from China, tearing my fingers to shreds untwisting a hundred million different twisty-ties and plastic clamps just to get Barbie's slutty little sister and her two little prematurely-pubescent friends out of the packaging before Ainsley's head explodes. She'll be standing next to me, jumping up and down, near tears and asking, "But can't I play with them NOW?" while my torn fingernails begin to pile up next to me in a bloody heap.

Once you get them out of the boxes, you still have to deal with the high-tech-ness. Case in point: I spent the better part of my evening yesterday programming a Barbie Fairytopia Magic of the Rainbow Elina doll.

Ainsley and hubby had the day off together yesterday and spent the afternoon at that wonderful and magical place known as Totter's Otterville. For those of you not from around here, Totter's is an indoor activity center where kids can play with every toy imaginable in a variety of rooms and themed areas. It's inside the largest independent toy store in our area, so it's kind of a given that if you take Junior there, you're probably walking out with a toy, too. I usually don't cave to the toy-begging, but Ains still had some birthday money to spend and thus came home with a fancy new Barbie.

Jason thought it was just a Barbie, but it turns out this doll is also an interactive game piece. You can put in the special DVD that came with Elina, and program the doll to work with the DVD player to do kind of a starter version of a flight simulation game. The DVD knows when your child has tilted Elina to the right or to the left and will "fly" on-screen in that direction. Pretty cool if you're five.

Problem is, programming Elina is a complicated mess that involves watching a DVD tutorial (they recommend you watch it twice) and reading a set of directions. I watched hubby listen and learn and try and fail the programming twice, and I took the doll from him with what can only be described as a tone of superiority. Give me that, I said. How hard could it be?

15 minutes and two tries later and Elina still wasn't flying. I was ready to concede.

I consulted the written directions again, and realized I had been pointing the DVD remote at the red jewel, not the clear one, and that I had been holding the remote further away from Elina's necklace than the recommended 1-inch. The directions also said you needed to be at least 10 feet away from your DVD player while doing all this. Sigh. So I grabbed Elina again, moved to the back of our living room, pointed at the correct jewel, watched for the red jewel to flash three times (it had only flashed once on our other attempts, which is apparently a bad sign), and followed the directions as meticulously as if I were disarming a bomb. And then: success!

And all this time programming meant, after all our work and all of Ainsley's excitement, she had about 5 minutes to play with the doll before bath time. That went over well.

The sad thing is, as much as Ainsley loves Elina now, in a few weeks the interactive game and the wing-fluttering action will grow old and she'll be looking ahead to her Santa gifts. If she gets anything like this Elina doll from Santa, the elves making it work on Christmas Eve night may have to be committed to the North Pole loony bin before daybreak.

Maybe we'll be lucky this year and she'll just want, I don't know, a football. A nice, simple, unpackaged football.

Who am I kidding? The coolness of this doll is going to spark her interest and I'll be knee deep in walking, talking, needy little dolls this Christmas. We're going to have to set something out far stronger than milk and cookies this year. And let us not forget some Band-Aids.