Look, I know I shouldn't waste a single minute on the Mr. Potatohead controversy. But sometimes I just can't hold back. I can't speak for anyone's Mr. Potatohead experience except for mine and my sister and brothers', but here we go. When we were children, we found that after you dutifully put Mr. Potatohead's eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hat and body in place enough times, it starts to get boring. And we started to do imaginative things like have his legs stick out of his nose and an eye on top of his head and a hat hanging from his ear and so forth. We also used real potatoes sometimes so we we would not be bound by where the manufacturers put the holes and could put his features in even crazier places. I honestly don't remember if we had a Mrs. Potatohead, but if we did I am sure we mixed up their features in the same spirit of childish transgression.
I generally don't approve of children's toys these days. Children's toys seem to have two main purposes (1) to be expensive, and (2) to have one right way to play, determined by the manufacturer and no doubt related to (1). Children's toys these days seem calculated to destroy children's imaginations and normal childish transgressions. So by all means, if the new Potatohead stops telling children there is one right way to play with the toy and lets them use their imaginations, I am all for it. Even endorsing mixing features takes the transgression out of it.
