The Reasoning of 3+ Toys

Over the weekend we attended yet another kids birthday party, this time for a 2 year-old. We’re getting allot more birthday invites to these days ever since we had a baby - it’s like we weren’t either welcomed before, or a kid is the price of admission. Whatever. The hardest thing for us about these things is searching for an age-appropriate gift. We went to the Disney store (which should be a pretty obvious place for a toddler gift) and found that nearly every toy was for ages 3 and up. Even this one play set with figures bigger than my fist!
I stood in the store staring at the box for a while wondering how in the world can a toddler swallow that thing? I bet they must have found some troll kid in the hills that did for them to slap that label on it - or an over-cautious lawyer made them do it. My wife went on to look for other stuff, like clothes, but I found myself still holding the box trying to judge whether this kid’s mouth was even big enough to fit this toy in her mouth (she is a little on the small side, but pudgy, she is a little manly for being a little girl). Besides it was on sale and to me that’s a deciding factor. In the end we did end up finding clothes (on sale). But at the party, I convinced myself that we could have gone ahead and bought the play set. And that there are mutant children somewhere; living in the forest with huge mouths.