The Agony and The Ecstasy: Thomas Live!

Well, I hate to admit it, but I shelled out almost $75 for two Thomas Live! On Stage tickets today.

For those of you living under a rock, Thomas the Tank Engine is a talking train (only he doesn’t actually ever do the talking, various narrators from Ringo Starr to George Carlin are more than happy to talk for him.) 

Anyway, he goes on these adventures with all his other talking train friends and bascially pulls in jillions of dollars licensing his Thomas and Friends junk.

I say “junk,” but of course we own 1/2 the stuff out there — you name it, we probably have it.  And its expensive junk too.

Anyway, my beef today is not with the outrageously priced tickets ($25 in fees alone) but rather with the production itself.  (Now, to be fair — I wasn’t there.  I roped another unsuspecting relative of our little Thomas disciple into going.)

Apparently, just before intermission, they turned off all of the lights (I guess it had something to do with the story line) and scared the hell out of all the 2- and 3-year olds in the place.  (Including our own little Thomas fan.) 

C’mon…who DOES that?  You can’t just dim the lights, maybe?  Or pretend its night time?  Its a bunch of preschoolers in the audience for cripes sake.  I have half a mind to write a letter or an email or something. 

Or boycott all things Thomas from now on.  (Yeah right.)  We already have our tickets for the Thomas movie on September 8th.  I can’t wait to see how THAT goes.

Today’s Baby O’Blog Quote: “Peep. peep.”  Thomas the Tank Engine

Recalls, Recalls…as far as the eye can see.

Sorry to be “off the blog” for so long…turns out a second baby can be a real time drain! (but in a good way!)

I’ve been thinking about all of these product recalls, lately though.  Naturally — everything is made in China and (big surprise) its all turning out to be crap.  Well, not all of it…but a lot of it.  And a lot of it is stuff that babies and kids use (like Thomas trains, bibs, toys…)

This is interesting for me as I’ve been working to develop a product and struggled with manufacturing overseas.  It was daunting at first (as in, how the hell do you find someone to make your product in China?) and so uncertain (as in, would I get quality merchandise or just a bunch of crap?)

Well, if people like Mattel and the Thomas folks are running into all sorts of problems then what does that mean for the rest of us?  The little guy?  The person who is just trying to get their product manufactured and (maybe) turn a decent profit.

I’ve said all along that I was most interested in putting something out there that was a QUALITY PRODUCT.  So maybe I don’t know all of the formulas and margins and all of that for making a (decent) profit, but I’d much rather have something that I was proud to sell and that (frankly) was manufactured in the USA.  Maybe someday down the line I’ll have to look at overseas manufacturing but right now I like supporting local businesses and I know they are sneaking any lead paint into the mats.

And so it goes.  It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.  My guess is there are many more recalls to come, so stay tuned.

Today’s Baby O’Blog quote:  “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”  Henry Ford.