The "Learning" Train

Before Abbie was born, I hated all noisy, electronic toys. Their incessant, repetitive, tinny sounds drove me crazy. Plus, it seemed like mindless cheating that a child could hear a song for several seconds after pushing one button.

Maybe I’m being foolishly nostalgic, but I’ve always been fond of toys with an interior noise-making mechanism like I had when I was a kid. We had the old school See ‘N Say that used phonograph technology instead of the new version that plays electronic sounds. I could experiment with that old See ‘N Say by slowing the lever’s rise or the arrow’s spin to slow the sound and drop it an octave, or I could determine exactly how far down I had to pull the lever to give it enough energy to play the entire sound.* Now that’s educational. The only experimentation Abbie can do with her electronic See ‘N Say is to test how rapidly she can jam the lever up and down before it breaks. When I was a kid, dissecting a stuffed animal to find an air bladder that squeaks when shaken was an experience of unparalleled excitement, especially if that animal was commandeered from a friend’s younger sister without permission.

Today we live in an electronic age, though, and everything has a sound chip no matter how unnecessary. We have an infant crib toy shaped like a dog that barks for 15 seconds when pulled, which is educational if the child must sleep through barking dogs on a regular basis. After hearing these toys, watching them captivate my children, and realizing relatives will bring them into my house regardless of whether or not I want them, I’ve changed my opinion on them. I can tolerate most electronic toys because no matter how annoying their sounds are, they keep children happy, and nothing is more annoying than a screaming child.

We have one toy brought into our house for the boys’ birthday that is driving me crazy, though. It’s the Fisher Price Amazing Animals Sing & Go Choo-Choo Train. Why does this toy drive me crazy, besides of course the ridiculously, pretentiously, unnecessarily long name?

For starters, it has five pieces: Three animals, a locomotive, and a car. I prefer single-piece, self-contained toys that can be enjoyed without endless searching for missing pieces. Only the locomotive is electronic, so of course that’s the only piece that the children usually touch. Abbie kind of likes the elephant, but she keeps it in her room, far from the rest of the pieces. The giraffe hangs around the toy box. The car is too big for the toy box and hangs out under furniture. The monkey disappeared shortly after opening the box, and currently may be plotting a coup with the Little People that keep vanishing.

So the only piece anyone usually touches is the locomotive. The idea is to connect the car, insert the animals into the spaces, and watch it chug, light, and sing its way across the floor. Instead, the kids just hold the thing and push the buttons to make it play music in one spot.

Push the compartment floor, and it cycles through one of three different songs. Push the whistle, and it makes one of several animal noises. Push the smokestack, and it moves forward while playing the main song.

These songs are driving me crazy. They’re sung by one of those unrealistically excited vocalists who should be much more depressed after discovering how worthless her fine arts degree is. The music is also stolen from public-domain music, such as “Here We Go Looby Loo,” with “fun” lyrics added, which is a lazy tactic that’s always bugged me. It has a volume switch on the back to let you select “loud” or “really loud,” but the first feature Abbie finds on any toy is how to set it to maximum volume.

The lyrics are horrible. The main song’s lyrics, which I assure you are burned into my memory, are:

Come aboard the animal train!
Come on, everyone!
Learning about animals
Is really lots of fun!
Colors! Sizes! What they say!
If they’re fast or slow!
Learning about animals,
There’s so $%&@ing** much to know!

If she keeps listening to that, I expect Abbie’s first complete sentence to be, “That’s so patronizing.” Those lyrics aren’t educational; they’re an advertisement for the parents.

The lyrics also commit the ultimate infraction: Factually errors. You wouldn’t think a toy that pegs a giraffe’s height as “very very very very very very tall” would get specific enough to be wrong, but consider the following lyric:

Tigers can run very fast,
Hippos cannot!

I give it credit for correctly identifying tigers as “fast,” but hippos are fast, too. The St. Louis Zoo says they can run up to 30 miles per hour. That may not be as fast as a tiger, but it’s fast enough to trample a human, especially one who’s been reared on this toy and mistakenly believes hippos cannot run fast.

The locomotive sits in the living room, and I try to disable whenever I’m in the room with them. It’s not so annoying when I’m washing dishes in the next room. Maybe some day they’ll learn to line up the animals and watch the train pull them across the floor. The animals are fun with bright colors and several moving parts that mechanically click when rotated. I’m not betting that they’ll touch the animals, though; they’re not electronic.

* Obviously, I was a lonely child.
** I add the obscenity mentally. It keeps me sane.