Living: In All Seasons, Toys Are Us

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Today, children can look down to the Cabbage Patch Kids with begging mouths, saucer eyes and adoption papers certifying their plight. Some $250 million worth of these, including Cabbage Patch Babies -- tiny, even more pitiful infants -- will be sold this year, and they are not the only miserables on the market. Pound Puppies are dogs afflicted with melancholia and creased bodies that only a child could wear down to a nubbin. Their competitors are Canadian-born canines called Wrinkles, with hides like unmade beds and crumpled expressions the young find irresistible. And why not? As Samuel Johnson recognized, "A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization" -- even when the poor mutt is covered with plush.

THE LITTLE PEOPLE. Elves, dwarfs, gremlins, leprechauns -- all seem to intrigue the young, possibly, as Critic Leslie Fiedler says, "because a child may have come to feel that compared to an adult he himself is a Midget." Each period seems to invent new little people: gnomes were first described by the 16th century alchemist Paracelsus. Lilliputians were the creation of Jonathan Swift in the 18th century. L. Frank Baum made the Munchkins part of Oz in 1900, and in 1937 the Hobbits hatched out of J.R.R. Tolkien's brain. As Walt Disney's Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Bashful and Doc, dwarfs were Snow White's backup group a year later.

But even those optimistic singers would have to change their tune if they looked at the tiny terrors of Christmas 1986. There are a few benign leftovers -- Muppet Babies, Smurfs -- and the menagerie of huggable little creatures is more stuffed than ever. But the truly fashionable items are Madballs -- grotesque heads with such sobriquets as Wolf Breath, Swine Sucker, Screamin' Meemie. Madball Inventor Ralph Shaffer says, without irony, that the minispheres "will take the world of cute-ugly into a new direction" -- not a bad idea in a season when there are also foul-smelling toys named Victor Vomit and Mackerel Mouth. Grossing out grownups has always been a gas, of course, and ugly ducklings or princesses who are willing to kiss frogs are long- standing reassurances that physical perfection is not a precondition for love and success.

Given these long historical roots, given the crowded shopping malls as the countdown to Christmas narrows to days and hours, December 1986 should be a happy time for both the givers and the gifted. But through the tinsel melodies of Silent Night and Silver Bells, an off-key tune is being sung by critics and consumer advocates. Some of the rancor is prompted by the toys themselves, but much of it is engendered by the performance of that greatest of all supervillains, television.

In Boston, for example, it is possible to bracket the school day with synthetic cartoon adventure shows that are nothing more than program-length commercials for the toy-objects they feature: 6:30 a.m. Voltron; 7:00 Challenge of the GoBots; 7:30 ThunderCats; 8:00 Defenders of the Earth; 8:30 My Little Pony. Time out for school, then: 2:30 p.m. MASK; 3:00 She-Ra; 3:30 He-Man; 4:00 Transformers; 4:30 G.I. Joe. Usually these shows, offered to local stations by non-network syndicators, are written and produced under the control of advertising and marketing specialists working for the manufacturer of the featured toy. Sometimes those same toys are then specifically flogged during the commercial breaks from the story.