Episode 62: Happy Easter- here is a rip off food set

Happy Easter to everyone who enjoys celebrating the death- and rebirth- of Christ by eating ham and biting off the ears of chocolate bunnies. For me, personally, Easter is kind of a wash holiday. I like it because it signifies the start of spring and there is a lot of candy involved. At the same time, there are a lot of aspects that I don't care for. There is always mandatory church, mandatory family meal time (which means mandatory visits to other family members homes after meal time, too) and the usual blatant over commercialism. Worst of all, it always seems to sneak up on me since it is on a different day every year. It is not uncommon for this conversation to take place leading up to the holiday.

Monica: "Did you get Easter off?"

Me: "When is it, like next month?"

Monica: "No, idiot, it is next weekend."

Me: "oh, um. Yeah, it's all set" (begin panicking and going through employee phone list in my head).

I also don't care for the Easter season because of the whole lent thing. I am not going to get in to my religious beliefs much but I was raised pretty hard core Catholic, which means I was taught guilt and intolerance from an early age. Since I have become rather disenchanted by the whole thing, rather than giving up something like food, beer or candy, I choose to sacrifice in other ways, like giving up not eating meat on Fridays. God and I have an understanding. Don't worry about it.

We did make an attempt at the egg coloring thing yesterday- something that went better than expected. The eggs aren't exactly award winners, but the baby didn't drink 16 oz of vinegar, so we'll count that as a win.

As is the case with every religious holiday, gifts are exchanged on Easter. (Fattening the wallets of the toy company CEO's across the country- most of them Christian, I'm sure. OK, I'm done). This time, they are stuffed in to a cute, Jesus era (wait- that's not right) wicker basket. My biggest victory this year is that I have managed to avoid buying the $20 stuffed bunny from Walgreens that is twice her size and managed instead to appease her with a smaller, yet still fluffy and appealing $9 sheep from Walmart.

Of course, when you are Av, you often don't need a holiday or birthday to receive gifts, you just get them. Recently, Monica got her an 'Easter gift' that came a few weeks early. That would be the Circo 90 piece toy food play set similar to but not the same as the one below.


This was purchased to accompany a play kitchen that is at her grandmother's house, but has somehow managed to become a part of the toy pile in our apartment instead. I will admit that when I first saw the play food set I was super excited. There is nothing I enjoy more when it comes to toys then small novelty replicas of real things. Toy cars, realistic stuffed animals and plastic food. Awesome. This would also be the perfect toy to compliment her plastic meat basket.

We opened up the food set to find immediate disappointment. The packaging advertised a 90 piece set, which it was, but it did not indicate that there would be such a large number of repeats and shitty paper boxes. Sure, there are plenty of fun, interesting plastic foods in there- like a croissant, a tomato and the full line of citrus fruits, but there are also stupid paper packaging toys depicting things like milk, candy bars and truffles. This is the worst possible thing that you could give a child. Almost all of the paper toys have hit the trash within a week of buying a food set. They fall apart and they get soggy. Crap. Also, I have a serious problem with the amount of repeat foods. The '90 piece food set' gets off easy by giving you like 10 potato chips, 10 hot dogs an 10 french fries. This is cheating. If you want to include chips and french fries, make a plastic bag instead of the food itself. C'mon, Circo people, think.

Perhaps most infuriating is that, despite having a grocery aisle of food, it is almost impossible to actually pretend to make anything. Unlike the set in the picture, which we would have bought if it were at the store, there are no buns, condiments or any other items needed to actually make a real meal. Again, lazy cheaters. How about you ditch the paper stuff, cut down on the repeats and help a brother out here making some meals. Even worse, there is no dessert. No cookies, no cake, no candy. There is one doughnut that looks completely out of place. What the hell is that about? This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are a kid- or an adult trying to entertain a kid- this is frustrating. I think that I need to get a job as an executive at a toy company.

I hope that everyone has a lovely weekend no matter which, if any, religious tradition you are taking part in. I am sure the baby will have a grand old time playing with all of her new toys and smashing up Easter eggs.