Dear Fisher Price:
I was a Fisher Price
child. I had a whole world of Little
People to play with, to imagine with, and when I was done playing, to strew
about for unsuspecting bare feet to discover during a 2 am kitchen run.
Now, as a mother, I
have my own Fisher Price kid who enjoys playing with her new and improved
Little People world. As happens in life,
it’s now my turn to fall prey to the dark side of the Little People. Thank
you for that.
As a loyal Fisher Price
customer, I feel it is my duty to alert you to a niche market that you have
somehow missed. We searched high and low in the plumbing
departments of Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware and were shocked to learn
that there is no such thing as a Fisher Price Little People Rescue Kit for use
on toilets! There are heavy duty
plungers, there are expensive snakes and augers. There are new wax rings for when you give up
and remove the toilet from its base. How
has Fisher Priced overlooked this?
Attached is an email
that I sent out to my friends as a public service announcement. Please – I beg of you – get your research
team on this immediately. Parents around
the world are counting on you. And so is
that poor little sheep in the bottom of the porcelain drain pipe.
Yours truly,
Terri--------------------------------------------
To: All parents
From: TerriSubject: Free advice
Free advice to anyone with small children in their
life: The new "improved"
Fisher Price Little People are much larger than their old school ancestors and,
while this may be a good thing for teeny little hands, it's not such a great
thing for plumbing.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 2: An entire Fisher Price farm can be shoved, one by one, into the curved chute in the toilet base that is intended to process things other than the Water Closet Menagerie.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 3: When your husband is finished taking care of business and attempts to complete the process by pulling down the shiny lever, and you hear "Are you @*#&$^% kidding me?!?!!" instead of the expected "Whooosh!", it's best to run for old towels now and save the laughing for later.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 4: Home Depot and Lowes carry a $25 tool called a plumbing auger. Don't waste your money. Buy the $6 wax seal, remove the toilet, free the menagerie, and re-seat the toilet.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 5: Bucket of bleach water, followed by soap and water rinse, and 2 cycles through the dishwasher will bring WC Menagerie back to health.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 6: Wait a week. Why is your little imp walking so purposefully and so quietly down the hall? With a little horse in her hand? Yeah. Might wanna check on that. And warn the old man that the sheep and the chicken are still missing.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 7: Remember that $25 tool? And the wax seal? Forget that. Buy the $3 cheap piece of plastic that looks like it couldn't do anything. It's called a drain clearer and is meant for snagging hair out of sink drains. Buy that. Because it will free a sheep and a chicken in seconds.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 8: Remember that toilet lock you bought 6 months ago and that your husband has had sitting on the back of his toilet since the first Great Flood? You might want to remind him to actually use it.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 9: It is perfectly acceptable to laugh at your husband over all this because it all happened on his watch and you've told him a billion times to shut the bathroom door because you know your imp is fascinated with the big porcelain bowl of water.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 10: Thank your mischievous little imp, because all that time sitting on the bathroom floor staring at the base of the toilet will make your spousal unit realize that indeed the linoleum IS pretty much shot and ugly and he will concede that it is time to pick out new flooring and call the guy.
Free advice To Fisher Price: You really should market your own cheap piece of plastic with grabby things on the side and sell it as a handy dandy Fisher Price Little People Getter Outer Tool.
-------------------------------------Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 2: An entire Fisher Price farm can be shoved, one by one, into the curved chute in the toilet base that is intended to process things other than the Water Closet Menagerie.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 3: When your husband is finished taking care of business and attempts to complete the process by pulling down the shiny lever, and you hear "Are you @*#&$^% kidding me?!?!!" instead of the expected "Whooosh!", it's best to run for old towels now and save the laughing for later.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 4: Home Depot and Lowes carry a $25 tool called a plumbing auger. Don't waste your money. Buy the $6 wax seal, remove the toilet, free the menagerie, and re-seat the toilet.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 5: Bucket of bleach water, followed by soap and water rinse, and 2 cycles through the dishwasher will bring WC Menagerie back to health.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 6: Wait a week. Why is your little imp walking so purposefully and so quietly down the hall? With a little horse in her hand? Yeah. Might wanna check on that. And warn the old man that the sheep and the chicken are still missing.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 7: Remember that $25 tool? And the wax seal? Forget that. Buy the $3 cheap piece of plastic that looks like it couldn't do anything. It's called a drain clearer and is meant for snagging hair out of sink drains. Buy that. Because it will free a sheep and a chicken in seconds.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 8: Remember that toilet lock you bought 6 months ago and that your husband has had sitting on the back of his toilet since the first Great Flood? You might want to remind him to actually use it.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 9: It is perfectly acceptable to laugh at your husband over all this because it all happened on his watch and you've told him a billion times to shut the bathroom door because you know your imp is fascinated with the big porcelain bowl of water.
Free advice to anyone with small children in their life part 10: Thank your mischievous little imp, because all that time sitting on the bathroom floor staring at the base of the toilet will make your spousal unit realize that indeed the linoleum IS pretty much shot and ugly and he will concede that it is time to pick out new flooring and call the guy.
Free advice To Fisher Price: You really should market your own cheap piece of plastic with grabby things on the side and sell it as a handy dandy Fisher Price Little People Getter Outer Tool.
Admittedly, I sent this to
the FP office because it amused me and I thought, perhaps, it would amuse some
secretary in the corporate office and she would laugh and carry on with her
day. A few days later, I found a form
letter from FP in my mailbox letting me know that they don’t accept unsolicited
idea submissions but if such a product happened to appear on store shelves, the
idea was all theirs and I had no rights to it.
I have yet to see any results from my suggestion,
which leads me to believe that FP may have some financial connection to the
plumbing industry. Things that make you go “hmmm”.
By the way, we never did find that poor chicken.
By the way, we never did find that poor chicken.
