Remember the good ole days when you could send your child to the computer or television to play a video game instead of parenting as a reward for good behavior?
Well, straightforward video games just don’t exist anymore. You can’t just make a single purchase and let your children play until their eyes bleed for thirty minutes. Activision, Disney, Lego, and other video game companies have turned a simple babysitter activity into a parental torture system designed to steal our money, sanity, and souls.
If you haven’t heard of the “toys-to-life” fuckery phenomenon, here’s how it works. They hook your child with a starter pack that includes a portal that plugs into your video game console. Think of this like an IV bag for your child’s video game addiction. They provide the first few “hits” by supplying a couple of figures to place on the portal and “transport” into the game.
But the rest of the characters for the games are sold separately.
“Collect them all!” the marketing assholes types tout. They might as well have said, “Hook up your veins and bank accounts, kids, because you’re now our bitches.”
Those greedy corporate bastards won’t be satisfied until they’ve sucked every last penny out of our children’s college funds. Because there are FIVE FUCKING MILLION little figures. Each with unique abilities. And, of course, that one bad guy can only be killed by that one extremely rare figure—sending parents on sadistic and expensive scavenger hunts all over town.
So my son is basically an addict now. He doesn’t want all of those figures; he NEEDSALLTHEFIGURES. Completely obsessed with figure acquisition, he counts his dollars and the days until his next fix. He brags to his friends about his latest score. He meticulously tracks (using the poster the game companies have maliciously graciously included) every character he has bought and every character he still needs to collect.
Toys “R” Us is our new suburban drug store.
What happened to good ole Pong? That game was so much simpler. And there was so much less to talk about. Now, I am forced to endure insufferable conversations:
With my child: “Yes, that was quite an impressive fart out of StinkBomb.”
With the grandparents: “No, he’s not asking for an actual lightning rod. It’s the name of the character.”
(But we love the grandparents because they buy most of the figures.)
As long as I’m not holding back, here’s why I hate them the most. They’ve created a major storage problem in my house. The game pieces aren’t like building blocks—I can’t just dump them into one big bin. Careful placement of the game pieces must be taken. Otherwise I have to suffer through massive meltdowns, emergency repairs, and/or scouring the Internet for expensive replacements. My house is slowly turning into a plastic museum of horrors.
So basically, the game makers can all bite my ass. (Not in a good way.) I hate them all.
I just wish I had thought of it first.
Cover Photo Credit: sifotography / 123RF Stock Photo
17 Responses
You make me appreciate my approaching empty nest so much more.
I’m looking forward to that. Maybe…
We did this…wait until he decides he doesn’t like the game anymore! It was an overnight decision at my house. We tried to trade-in the “guys” at Game Stop. Oh no, they don’t take them, they’re not worth anything because there are so many of them. Yay! A giant box of plastic junk. I dropped the box off at Goodwill, too bad, I could have sent it to you!! OH and one more thing, we had 2 portals for different game systems…don’t get me started on that one!!
Game Stop actually had the nerve to give my son a gift card with 20¢ on it for a figure he traded in! Total waste… of everything!
GAH! It’s all money down the drain.
Hellacious. I knew I wanted another girl.
My daughter loves the Disney Infinity game.
Ah, yes, I know it well. Though I do like the fact that I now always know what to get my nephews but it doesn’t really take the pain away.
It makes it a *little* better.
This has irked me since my triplet boys want all differant characters, we had a boatload. Now they don’t play anymore, but they think they’re collectables and will be worth something in the future. Dream on- heard of Beanie Babies?!?
Plastic crap, right?
Haha, wait, there’s a good way to bite a woman’s ass???
My kids have some of these, but I don’t understand how they work. I guess they’re not addicted yet. Maybe I need to intervene before it gets there. Wait, Santa did bring a 3.0 version of something or other because 2.0 wasn’t cutting it, so maybe we are there and I just don’t know because I’m not so good at paying attention to my kids.
There is indeed a good way to bite a woman’s ass. There’s probably nothing else important about this post. 😉
The teenager and I play games on the Xbox together, never had to deal with the plastic characters.
You are a very lucky man.
I just read everything you wrote and I still don’t even understand what this is or how it works. What I DO know is that I’m going to enjoy every bit of modern society while I can, because once I have kids, we’re moving out into the woods where there are no video games or tween sexting or in-app purchases.
Dirt, rocks, and sticks. You’ll be much happier.