The sometimes controversial L.O.L. Surprise! dolls have added a range of three magical toddler dolls who really fly, helicopter style, to their lineup—and apparently they’re set to be one of the biggest toys this Christmas. As someone old enough to remember Skydancers, feels a little bit like a source for concern.
Skydancers, for those young enough not to experience back pain yet, were a series of fairy (and sometimes dolphin?) dolls that you could launch into the air with the help of a spinning stand and a pull string. Their wings would fly up and out from the gyroscopic force of the spin and they’d take off, spinning up up up into the sky—or sometimes directly into the user’s face—before coming down hard. Predictably, especially once kids figured out you could fire them at each other, a whole lot of facial injuries ensued, and they were taken off the market after six glorious years of unsafe aerial acrobatics. I think I still have mine somewhere.
So, it was a little troubling, while browsing the top-rated gifts for small children this upcoming holiday season, to see the L.O.L. Surprise! Magic Flyers, which appear to function in roughly the same way as the beloved, very dangerous toys of my youth. Have the lessons of Skydancers been so quickly forgotten by the toy companies (namely that children probably shouldn’t be given hard plastic, spinning projectiles)? I know history is cyclical, but this seems a little fast even by late-stage capitalism standards.
Honestly, when I first pitched this article, I thought I was going to be producing some kind of Cassandra-like warning, but it appears I’ve underestimated several toy companies, or at least, their lawyers and engineering departments, because it seems that this time around, the helicopter fairies are unlikely to knock anyone’s teeth out.
Toy technology has come a fair way since we were kids, and the L.O.L. Surprise! Magic Fliers have been designed with some kind of sensor in them that lets the child guide them with their hands, and presumably keeps them from smacking into anything—whether that’s the wall of your house or someone’s face. L.O.L. Surprise! isn’t even the first toy line to produce these new, apparently safer flying dolls, as Hatchimals already had something similar, and there’s probably others out there, too.
On the one hand, it’s almost disappointing that this isn’t some kind of massive error by someone who didn’t do their research properly, but at least no one’s going to the eye hospital this time around. Probably.
(featured image: Amazon, L.O.L. Surprise)
