Toys, Materialism, and Sadness

Looking at Toyfair images, thinking how broke I am, and how no plastic intrigue is going to make me happy, no matter how well engineered it is, or the quality of the paint application.  It may make me happy for a little while, but then there's still the nagging thought that I'm a grown man, looking wistfully at, and buying, toys.  And now I'm a grown man who can't afford frivolities, and I'm filled with self loathing.

There's also this:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/archives/32/3.html

Compact Tribbles were probably smaller than a golf ball. You can imagine some kid ordering them, waiting six to eight weeks with growing anticipation, running into the Tribbles episode in syndication halfway through the wait (it'll be so cool! I'll feed them quadrotriticale in Cheerios form!) then getting the package. He rips it open, expecting, well, tribbles; he finds two pink balls covered with synthetic hair. He puts them on his shelf next to his Revell models of the Enterprise (one was intact, the other was burned to look wrecked and had the decal numbers in a different sequence.) The tribbles just sat there.

He was suddenly aware that it was July; he could hear kids playing outside. He had the feeling that life was somehow passing him by. He would sense that void periodically the rest of his life, and in each case, he would fill it with toys

On. The. Nose.

Of course, now I have the Internet, and whole peer group of people I've never met, that have grown up living nerd culture, and that have never been forced to put away childish things.  I don't know if we're better for it.