Potato Head controversy is half-baked
Given the outrage this week, you’d have thought Mr. Potato Head joined ISIS.
It all started on Thursday. That’s when Hasbro clumsily announced it was rebranding a toy most of us didn’t realize still existed. In an effort “to better reflect the full line,” the company said it was dropping the “Mr.” honorific. The Mr. Potato Head brand would now just be Potato Head.
I know what you’re thinking: Yeah? And? What’s the problem?
The problem is this hasty potato notice created a giant pumpkin of confusion.
Social conservatives reacted with seething disdain, outraged that an anthropomorphic veggie with no body, let alone genitalia, had fallen victim to the woke. What’s next? Will Humpty Dumpty have gender reassignment surgery? Are Mrs. Fields cookies going to become nonbinary?
“Now any child, of any gender, can look at a Potato Head and dream of growing up to be a plastic spheroid with interchangeable parts,” tweeted conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, a young fellow who appears to have tumbled through a crack in the space-time continuum and is trapped in 1952, the year Mr. Potato Head first arrived.
“Mrs. Potato Head has also been killed off. She will be replaced by an asexual can of Pringles.”
Except … no, Benjamin. No. Calm down. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Potato Head have been assassinated by PC mobs. They are alive and well. You can still buy them for your kids. Hasbro is just dropping the “Mr.” from the product line and launching a “Create Your Potato Head Family” package that comes with two large and one small potato bodies, 42 accessories and the possibility “to create your own families” by “mixing and mashing all the parts and pieces.”
And you know what? It’s wonderful — I mean, unless you’re a kid who was dreaming of an Xbox and are now stuck with a Potato Head. But that aside, how can diversity be bad when it comes to playthings? Why are adults bringing the culture wars to the toy closet?
I won’t lie to you. When I was a kid, Mr. Potato Head scared the living daylights out of me. He had shoes but no feet. You could scramble his facial anatomy and go full Picasso, putting his teeth where his eyes should be. His ears jutted out like satellites in free fall. Even his big red nose seemed possessed by an evil spirit just waiting to steal my soul during naptime.
But despite being ghoulish, Mr. Potato Head was also whatever I wanted him to be.
That’s not nothing when you’re a little kid. I didn’t have a toy that “looked” like me. There were no Gandhi action figures. The only toy that even remotely resembled anyone in my family tree was Chewbacca. My childhood identity was, at best, reflected in a Wookiee.
And that’s why I will always cheer on toy companies striving to be more inclusive.
Yes, Mattel should have a diverse line of Barbie dolls that better reflect modern society. And, yes, more female trains are needed in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe. By all means, add some boy dolls to the American Girl franchise. When it comes to toys, the more choice the better.
It’s simple: toys that celebrate differences in childhood bring us together as adults.
This doesn’t mean every classic toy needs to now be put under a microscope. We don’t need to debate the possible ageism of the Cabbage Patch Kids or issue a blanket condemnation of Rubik and wonder if there should be a Roberta’s Cube. But future toys should do a better job of making every child feel like his or her life is perfectly normal.
The world is a very different place from when Mr. Potato Head used to stare at me with his giant dead eyes or when my younger brother got teased mercilessly because his prized possession was an Easy-Bake Oven. The gender stereotypes of yesteryear are vanishing.
Good riddance. As a parent, I’ve hosted countless playdates and parties over the years and the vibe is the exact opposite from when I was a kid. I’ve seen little girls who want to play with monster trucks and little boys who want to dress up as Disney princesses.
It’s heartwarming to see kids just be who they are.
And that’s why this Potato Head “controversy” is so ridiculously half-baked.
Spuds will never have genders. But kids will always have feelings.