re-educating your kids with Thomas the Train
so…my mom got Sammy a Thomas the Train book for his birthday — the kid LOVES trains!
The book is a little old for him. It’s one of those storybooks with the little plastic panel along the outside edge — throughout the story there are icons that relate to these little buttons on the panel, and you press them to the make sounds that relate to the story. (Very long-winded explanation for something you probably already know about….) Sammy presses all the buttons, over and over, but he doesn’t really flip through the pages yet — he’s more of a “chew on a board book” type of reader, and does not play very nice with paper pages.
Anyway…I’ve always been a bit against the tremendous marketing push that is wrapped up in entities like Thomas, or Elmo (note that I had no problem with us throwing Sammy a Little Einsteins-themed birthday party…because Disney is so wholesome and good for the kids…ahhhh, nothing like sarcasm in the morning). My feeling is that there are plenty of generic trains out there, so why go the way of the Capitalistic express?
Well ladies and gentlemen of the jury (and those of you who are neiter ladies or gentlemen):
Thomas the Train is a communist!
One of the buttons on the book plays this statement:
“Helping others is important, and it doesn’t hurt a bit.”
The voice-over is done in that “the white zone is for the loading and unloading of passengers only” tone, and I almost expect Sammy to press a new combination of buttons to come up with some other re-education nuggets:
“Always respect you mother and father, and especially your fatherland.”
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Do your part.”
“Work is no place for intellectuals.”
“Why ask why? Knowledge will only get in the way of a good day’s work”
and the extra-special, super-duper, duper-super hidden message:
“Soylent Green is people!”