Propagating instant gratification

IWISH someone could explain to me why Pick n Pay decided to resume its Stickeez promotion. Those little rubbery plastic toys and their disproportionate packaging are the epitome of everyday banal environmental pollution.

Being small they seem insignificant, but in their millions these toys will end up all over in our natural systems when they get lost or are thrown away.

Within less than year of the promotion first being introduced I was horrified at how very large collections of Stickeez amassed by children disappeared into thin air.

In addition to the environmental question, I also wondered why such a massive retail chain distributed useless tiny toy figurines for free when they could use the opportunity to distribute something else.

I far preferred the animal cards collection promotion which encouraged children to actually engage their curiosity in an educative manner, and the cards are actually worth keeping because they have an encyclopaedic function.

You would think that in 2016 a major retail corporation of this kind would be keenly aware of how to better use its power in engaging children.

Yet the promotion of trendy disposable objects goes to the very heart of the psychology that maintains our consumer culture.

Now I am not saying here that Pick n Pay should not be promoting consumer goods. That is their area of business.

But I would be very interested to know how they settled on a promotional idea that adds so little value to children’s lives while they seem to want to brand themselves as a “family values” kind of supermarket chain.

Apart from the fact that you go to these retail chains to shop for your family, I’m not sure how they genuinely embody everyday family values. More likely is that it is merely an image created in our minds.

As a historian and a sociologist, I have studied the nature of corporate branding, modern commerce, urban individualism and the rise of disposability as an permeating value of modern suburban culture.

Our entire business system is built on a foundation of disposability. This is what drives our excessive production and consumption.

In this culture, the notion of recycling and preserving is seen as an obstacle to profit. Thus social values such as resilience and longevity give way to a psychology of instant gratification.

Instant gratification becomes a form of affirmation. If you give the child the toy, the child is happy. Dare you deny them and deal with a tantrum in the shop.

So now when I go into the shop, the teller will pass the useless plastic promo toy to my child. Her eyes will light up, she cannot wait to pop the packet and see what is inside.

I will then tell the teller that, no, I do not want one.

Having so many toys to dispense, the teller will look at me and roll her eyes as though I am being unnecessarily obstinate.

Just take the damn thing, it makes the child happy, the teller will say.

Again I say no, but the father, being a softie, will say yes.

I become Bad Cop in the teller’s eyes. By the way, I get this look from tellers all the time when I turn down plastic grocery packets. It has become a joke at the shop – the black family that comes to town with recycled packets.

I tell them I do not think the retailer deserves an extra 35c from me.

But bringing plastic packets to the shop somehow translates into us being bad consumers – it indicates some lack of sophistication, it seems.

Given these social attitudes, I suspect the policy to reduce the use of plastic packets in South Africa has failed.

Well, we should not be surprised since we teach our children that those infernal sticky plastic toys can be amassed in order to make one trendy, and then thrown out as soon as the next trend comes around several months later.

Our entire business system is built on a foundation of disposability. This is what drives our excessive production and consumption