I guess I’ve become sort of the official playmobil-weirdness defender over here after the discussion of some previous outrages.
Let me say this, aimed not at you but at the vaguely defined imaginary outraged “won’t you think of the children”-er: if you think it’s not appropriate for your children to play with toys themed after crime/police/hunting/religion/racial or gender stereotypes/nuclear power/pirating or whatever it is that ruffles your feathers, good news: you’re the one, as a parent, who gets to educate your child as you see fit. Stop expecting the damn toys to do the educating for you.
Playmobil has always made toys mirroring the parts of our own culture they think boys and girls might already be interested in enough to want to play with, including “bad guys” and even some stuff that some might find exciting and others distasteful. Are those themes verboten to you and yours? Channel the outrage into forbidding them in your household, leaving them for the children of less virtuous parents to consider as they see fit, and everyone is happy.
I prefer that arrangement to the blanket, overwhelming political correctedness that pervades the era, but feel free to disagree.
(It just occurred to me, too late, that I could just link to what I said exactly one year ago and save myself the trouble, since it’s the same counter to the same reaction, all over again.)
