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Would You Buy a "Mud Pie Maker"? For $40?
Filed under: Toys, Funny Stuff, Opinions
Hey kids! It's summer! Time to get outside, play in the mud and -- wait! You're doing it all wrong! You need to make PERFECT pies using the newest toy from Little Tykes: The Makin' Mud Pies Kitchen Set.
And to think it's only $40! Here -- check it out!
What made you think you could possibly make mud pies on your own? Are you a baby Martha Stewart or something? Splish-splashing without state-of-the-art equipment is just asking to fail! Try putting that on your Princeton application: "I made lumpy pies and some of them looked so fake even my baby sister wouldn't eat them."
Sad.
But now, as the folks at Little Tykes say on their site, you can "make a perfect mud pie every time with this amazing outdoor kitchen set." Hear that? PERFECT. The set comes with a plastic mixing bowl, sieve, dirt shaker, ladle, measuring cup and a pie plate/mold. That's $40 well spent! Otherwise, what were you planning to use to make your pies in? A bucket? A bottle cap? Your hand?
And then I suppose you'd use your "imagination" to make the pies seem "real"? Please! Childhood is too important to leave to the imagination! Besides, we've moved way beyond it. It was only in the olden days that kids had to play with sticks -- plain, old sticks they'd find on the ground. One minute the stick was a sword, the next minute a light saber, the next minute a magic wand. But really -- it was just a stick.
Now, thank goodness, parents can get their kids real toys. A real Harry Potter ™ wand. A real Star Wars ™ light sabre. A real Kung-Fun Panda ™ sword. These may take up a lot of space under the bed, but at least today's kids don't have to keep taxing their creativity imagining this, imagining that. And if they want to imagine something else, like a princess or a pirate, well their parents can just whip out their credit cards and buy them everything they need for that, too! Like a Sparkly Arielle outfit for $39.50, or one of those $59.99 Pirates of the Caribbean costumes. That way no one has to keep a box of ratty old clothes around for the kids to play "dress up."
We live in a wonderful era when adults can give their kids almost everything imaginable, so the kids don't have to imagine anything.
And the new $40 mud pie maker?
It's just icing on the cake.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
6-01-2010 @ 11:22AM
Heather said...I will say that I did buy the little tykes mud pie thing for my deck. Not so my kids could make mud pies, they do that just fine in our yard, but because I wanted a sink of some sort for them to wash their hands before they came inside so they weren't tracking dirt through my house every time they wanted to wash their hands. I didn't attach any of the toys though, they are all down in the sand box.
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6-01-2010 @ 2:35PM
Harmony said...I also bought the mud pie maker and my kids love it. I bake a lot and have a stand mixer, so both my 1 & 3 yr. old love that they have a mixer/sink etc just like mommy!! It's a long hot summer so I'm glad to have a variety of outdoor toys for my kids to play with instead of being stuck in the house all day. And I had $15 worth of Toys R Us rewards coupons that I used towards the mud pie maker. It must be a good seller, because my local Toys R Us only had 1 left on 5/28 I bought mine!
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6-01-2010 @ 9:31PM
aaron said...My kids use a "retired" inside play kitchen outside for all their mud pie needs. If they didn't have that I might consider something like this. Not because they can't make mud pies in the dirt . .but because it's fun to pretend in a kitchen like Mom and Dad.
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6-02-2010 @ 8:33AM
PikaPikaChick said..."Mixer head pivots up and down just like Mom's!"
That makes me want to burn things. 90 years after the 19th amendment and they're still pushin' those stereotypes.
If anyone were to buy that ridiculous thing unsolicited for my child I suppose I could always use the sink to put out my burning bra.
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6-02-2010 @ 10:38PM
Geralyn said...Lenore, I laughed out loud when I read this one. Too funny. (Too bad it is all so true!!!!) We made our mud pies by hand and baked them on the concrete sidewalk or stairs. You are so right about marketers who are telling our kids that their imaginations aren't good enough. Enough already! (Not to mention all the junk that is piling up in our dumps - and sucking our natural resources.)
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6-30-2010 @ 2:04PM
jcaritas said...I'm all for letting kids have play kitchens -- my daughter uses hers as a jumping-off point for being cook, maitre d' and waitress, so I do think it stimulates rather than stymies her imagination. I suppose the issue with the mud pie maker is that it's very product- (rather than process- ) oriented -- it makes only one thing, the same every time.
I'd love it if we could eliminate this kind of single-function toy from my daughter's toy box, but as a part of a larger family and community of course she's often given this kind of thing as gifts. Which makes me wonder: Is it better to let her play with imagination-shunting toys, or be so hands-on that we suggest gifts to our family, or edit the ones she gets? We always choose the former (I can't imagine that she's going to become a drone because of a few toys) but I know people who do the latter.
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7-07-2010 @ 8:08AM
Ash said...No, I wouldn't.
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7-07-2010 @ 11:15PM
tatebk said...When I think of how many summers I spent perfecting my mud pie recipe......I was looking to achieve a round flat pie that when dried could be throw at someone and have the perfect break to pain ratio. (shatter satisfyingly and not hurt). In my quest I tried out all sorts of recipe changes (dried grass vs. wet grass vs. no grass was one example). I also experimented with what they were formed in i.e. muffin pans, egg poaching pans, my bare hands, rocks, you get the picture.
Those were many happy happy days and to think, I did it without a single plastic toy. Besides, I was making mud pies with the intention of creating the perfect warm weather "snowball" and I did so with the intention of having mud pie fights with my sisters. I was not pretending to "bake like Mommy". If I wanted to do that, well, I would have baked with Mommy, or at least been in the kitchen. Even then, who needs a mixer? A bowl, a wooden spoon and a cake pan does the job quite well, and those are all things that are in the kitchen to begin with.
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7-20-2010 @ 9:22PM
Greta said...As a child myself, this makes me go: "What?"
Most of the things in this..machine..are fairly common in households or their equivalents. A plastic beach bucket can be a mixing bowl, a plastic shovel a ladle, a sifter, another common-ish beach toy acts as a sieve, and frisbees are great for pie tins.
Anyways, everyone knows mud pies are out anyway. Mud stew is the hot "in recipe" that contains dirt, being a loosely-defined soupy mix consisting of water, various organic materials, and, of course, dirt. Get with the culinary program, Little Tykes!
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8-17-2010 @ 7:09AM
Louise at Tales from the Sandpit said...I laughed out loud at this - but appreciated the sharing of different perspectives amongst the comments - and was glad to discover some more advocates for the child in the early years - not the toy companies or the curriculum retailers - over in the US. I would like to link to your blog and spread the word a little more...
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