Toys R Us has acquiesced to angry parents and pulled Breaking Bad dolls—sorry, action figures—from its shelves. Nobody wants kids to have meth-makers as role models, but at the Guardian, Rupert Myers thinks there's a much bigger, sadder problem here: These figurines were really for adults, not kids. (Check out a competing Change.org petition if you don't believe it.) And grown-ups, he writes, simply shouldn't be playing with toys. "A dose of escapism in adult life is no bad thing, but one of the greatest defining elements of adulthood is that our mature imaginations do not require physical playthings."
Nor is he buying the line that being a "collector" makes it OK. "The argument that doing something more actually makes it less frivolous is a weak one," he writes. Stop and think a moment what it says about our culture that adults feel the need to play with "doll versions of their TV heroes." You can even buy a Ron Swanson bobble-head doll, even though the Ron Swanson character in Parks and Recreation would ridicule anyone who did. Grow up, folks, writes Myers. Buying dolls is "a cultural crutch leaned on by people who never quite understood why they had to put their Star Wars figures away." Click for the full column. (More Breaking Bad stories.)
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