Boy Versus the Machine - A Tale of Christmas

The holiday season is here and so is the annual, massive, barrage of mind pollution that is targeting the malleability of children. It’s easy to for me to understand how kids are beleaguered during the holiday season by the seemingly harmless barrage of advertising. The brain washing worked very well on me.

By implementing creative combinations of jingles, slogans, songs, and peer pressure I became a Pavlov dog drooling in front of a black and white, mental control machine that masqueraded as a friendly, living room, television.

As a child the machine gave me stories of tough cowboys, adventurous swordsmen, brave soldiers and blissful lives of happy families. I was swept into a world where animals could talk, heroes could fly and the good guys always got the girl. The talking box was my friend.

I was unaware that the TV and I had a symbiotic relationship. As I got what I needed from the TV the machine also got what it needed from me.

In between the stories that kept me glued to the living room light, the machine told me what I was going to need to be “just like other kids.” The machine told me what I needed and how much I needed it. The TV told me what I was supposed to tell my parents to buy for me. Sometimes it even told me how to tell my parents what I needed.

I did my job.

It was not until I had made a series of childhood mistakes that I learned that the machine fed on me as much as I fed upon the machine. When I was a kid I fell victim to several advertising campaigns for products. They ranged from medical devices, foods, toys and where my next nickel would be spent on candy.

The products, that I was told that I needed, seemed endless. And in most cases, they never lived up to the promises that the machine made for them.

My first disappointment presented between stories on the TV showed kids my age darting around the neighborhood with smoke coming from the soles of their tennis shoes. The product was P.F. Flyers. The TV promised that if I wore these shoes I could “run faster and jump higher!” Who doesn’t want that to happen?

I knew that I wanted to be the fastest kid on the block. I wanted to jump higher. My parents gave into my wishes and bought me a pair of the miracle shoes under one condition. The condition they gave, because  “I already had a perfectly good pair of shoes from Sears.” was that we had to buy the shoes “big enough for me to grow into.” This meant my P.F. Flyers were two full sizes larger than my current foot size.

I did not run faster or jump higher. I stumbled quicker and fell further.

The shoe let down did not dissuade my faith in my friend the TV.  A boy named Marcy convinced me that I wanted a breakfast cereal named “Maypo”.

Maypo was a maple flavored oatmeal cereal. Marky had a great sales technique to which I fell prey. He looked at his mother and screamed,” I want my MAYPO!”

That was all. Marky kept screaming, “I want my Maypo!”

Since Marky wanted Maypo so badly I was sure it was like eating a sugar coated bowl of chocolate ice cream for breakfast. 

My mother bought a box. I requested a bowl be made before she had put the groceries away. She handed me a bowl of steaming, mushy glop that smelled like boiled tree bark.

“What’s that?’ I asked.

“Maypo.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She showed me the opened box and the soiled pot. “Want a spoon?”

“I’m not eating THAT!”

“Told you so.” Mom emptied the bowl in the trash.

Another product that I remember demanding from my mother was a medical product. I did not want the products that were advertised continuously on the box. I did not need the aspirin that would stop the hammer in my brain that gave me headaches by pounding on an anvil in my head. I also had no desire for the medicine for my upset stomach. If you used this product, a small fireman with a hose put out the fire in your stomach because you ate too many meatballs. At the age of five I did not know the proper workings of the human anatomy so these commercials scared me.

The product I needed was a box of bandages. A company that made bandages had invented bandages in the shapes and colors of authentic military insignias.  The bandages came in a metal package, which looked like an army ammunition box. The box was filled with miniature bandages made for children. They were shaped like the chevron stripes of a soldier, the blue stars of a military jet, naval braids and many more familiar icons. The medicinal covers for childhood scrapes and scratches would make me look like the soldiers in my favorite war stories on TV.

All it would take for me to look just like my black and white war heroes was a series of cuts and scrapes, a box of these bandages and convincing my mother to buy them.

I could readily and would willingly supply the necessary wounds. Convincing my mother to buy the product would the toughest part of my quest.

After the Maypo affair I knew that I had an uphill struggle on my hands. I was only five but I had a keen sense of timing. Timing would be the essence of my success. I knew that my mother could deny my request easily at home. I knew had a chance to get my bandages if I could get the product in my hands at the store

When we got to the store I knew exactly where to find my bandages. They were conveniently located in the first aisle of the grocery store. I slyly removed one package from the store shelf without my mother noticing me. I then followed my mother down every aisle as she pushed the slowly filling cart. I held the bandages next to my heart and remained silent. I knew that if I could get them to the cash register I had a better than average chance of getting them home.

We started down the final aisle and headed for the checkout. Mom removed all the items from the cart as the lady in the smock with a name tag punched in numbers and bells rang. The lady paused as she readied to make a move towards a giant button on the cash register that read ”TOTAL”.

“You want what the boy has or are you putting it back?”

My mother grabbed the package of the bandages out of my hands and threw it onto the moving counter that pushed the groceries out of the way. Without making a sound, she then yelled at me. She yelled with a stern, silent stare. She was silent, but I knew that she was yelling. I lowered my head and said, “Thank you.”

The drive home seemed longer than the drive to the store. I was having trouble waiting for the arrival home to open my treasure. In fact, I did not wait.

Since protecting children in a moving vehicle is a somewhat new concept: I was not tethered and could move freely about the moving vehicle. I silently crawled over the backseat of the station wagon into what was called the “way back”. I scoured the bags and found my bandages. I returned to my appointed seat and I opened them.

When we got home my father opened the tailgate and started unloading the bags and boxes of groceries. My mother opened the back door to unload her son. She found me smiling proudly. Every part of my body that was not concealed by clothing was now covered with a military insignia bandage. “I’m a soldier!” I exclaimed.

Mom took my hand and took her soldier inside. She showed me to my father. He laughed at me loudly and silently just as my mother had yelled at me silently in the store. My mother took me upstairs and put my pajamas on me. That night the soldier slept in uniform.

My friend the TV had more in store for me as Christmas was approaching. The device pounded my senses with ads for new toys for Christmas. This year, there were newer toys. There were toys just like the kids on TV shows. There were toys that would make me look like my heroes on TV. There were toys that would make me the luckiest kid in the neighborhood. There were toys that would make me the envy of every kid on the block.

The toy I had to have this Christmas was called, “Mr. Machine.”

“Here he comes, here he comes. The greatest toy you’ve ever seen.

And his name is

Mr. Machine.

He is real. He is real.

And for you he is ideal.

And his name is

Mr. Machine”

Mr. Machine was a mechanical, wind-up robot that, for the lack of a better description, resembled the love child of Abraham Lincoln and the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.

To see the 1960 Mr Machine commercial click here.

The commercials said that Mr. Machine was the perfect playmate. Mr. Machine would always be there to play with me. All I had to do was wind him up. Since I had three older sisters and no brother, I believed that Mr. Machine would fill the sibling void.

Throughout the holiday season I kept asking my mother, “ Can I have a baby brother?” When she would say that I could not then I would tell her, “Then I want a Mr. Machine.”

My sister Faith was the oldest of my three sisters. She was 16 when Mr. Machine hit the airwaves. Faith had always taken pride in getting the best gifts for her baby brother. She decided she was going to use her own money to buy me my most wanted toy.

On Christmas morning the entire family began opening gifts. Faith didn’t open a present. She just gave me a two-foot high, meticulously wrapped box. I ripped away the paper to reveal Mr. Machine. There he was. My new best friend was in a box and in my hands.

Faith helped me open the box and remove my new friend. She wound him up by the giant key that protruded from his posterior.

What my sister did not know is that earlier that week my father and I had watched what has become one of my favorite movies. We watched “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

In the movie there was a giant robot that could melt tanks, jeeps and people with an atomic ray that came from his eyes. The spaceman that owned the robot told all the people of the world that they must behave or the robot would kill everyone on earth.

I believed him.

Faith hit the start switch.

Without hesitation Mr. Machine began to perform just as he had on TV.  His clear plastic body began to reveal churning gears, uncoiling springs and ringing bells. His plastic arms and legs began pumping like Nazi’s on parade. His giant disproportionate head began to move and his lower jaw began to open and close emitting strange utterances. The demonic, plastic menace charged me as fiery sparks began to spew from his chomping mouth.

“What is this monster?” I thought to myself. And I began to run for my life. “Where are my P.F.Flyers when I need them? I must run faster and jump higher!”

The kitchen table was a safe haven that I often sought when terrorized by my sisters. I crawled under the table shivering with fear.

Mr. Machine kept spinning and churning. He was headed for the kitchen.  He seemed to loom larger, louder and fiercer with each approaching inch. I found myself thinking,  “What were those words the guy in the movie said? How do I stop this monster? Gork Snafu Veranda Maypo! It was something like that.”

From under my kitchen table bomb shelter I could see Mr. Machine enter the kitchen. I was now crying and screaming in fear. I started to cover my eyes when I witnessed a scene similar to a different monster movie that I had seen. A giant hand came from the sky and clutched Mr. Machine from the earth.

I heard the smashing of plastic on the kitchen counter and saw tiny gears and springs falling like a mechanical rain to the linoleum floor.

“I told you that he was too young for this stupid thing,” rang the gruff voice of my giant robot killer. “Come on out, Scotty. Mr. Machine is dead.”

Once again my friend the TV had let me down. I was beginning to realize that the TV was not my best friend. From that point forward I decided that I was never going to trust my old friend. At least, not all the time.

“Dad! Mr. Machine was supposed to be my new friend. I think he wanted to kill me.” I told my father as he carried me to the living room.

“Well, Scotty, things always look better on TV. And that’s how they getcha.”

“That’s how they getcha”. No truer a statement has ever been said to me. I have had to remember it all my life. I have had to remember it a few nights ago. That was when I saw an infomercial for a new tool that was a combination grass-blower, weed-sucker, leaf mulcher that could spray wax my car, trim my dogs’ toenails and remove unwanted nose hair. (I didn’t know that there was wanted nose hair.)

I remembered my Dad’s statement just in time. “It worked great on TV.  And that’s how they getcha!”