Thursday, 17 September 2009

• Mr. Potato Head Is Not A Secret

  He is timeless. He requires no batteries. He does not flash or make noise. He is a potato head, that’s Mr. Potato Head to the world. I don’t think the version they have now has changed much since the original one. Here is the link to the history, but if you don’t feel like going there, I’ll say a few things. The year was 1952 and the plastic body parts were originally going to be prizes in a cereal box and mommy would provide the potato for hours of fun. I can see my kids sitting there with a potato punching pieces into it while I bake a cake from scratch. However, WWII was over, and people didn’t like the idea of wasting potatoes, but I bet the “people” were either childless or dads like Don Draper who were in an office all day and didn’t have to worry about how to entertain a child. Plus if we are going to try and save food, we shouldn’t put a toy at a bottom of a cereal box, but that is just me.
  
  The actual plastic potato and all his body parts came together soon after, and everyone has loved him ever since. He has branched out a little with a Mrs. Potato Head and the spuds. You can go to the Mr. Potato Head website for cool ideas if you can’t figure out yourself he can teach body parts. My brother and I had a lot of fun screwing him up, putting his teeth where his shoes should be, stuff kids all over America have done forever. I would like to add that our potato head had a pipe! Who else had one with a pipe? They didn’t take Frosty’s pipe away, but that is another debate for later.
  
  Mr. Potato Head has made his way into cinema. He had a leading role in Toy story. He introduced children to Picasso, which I appreciated much more than Pollack’s applesauce in the kitchen. Men all over the world can take a lesson from him as he sat in the Barbie convertible, “I’m a married spud, I’m a married spud.” 
  
  My favorite Mr. Potato Head scene is from the 1983 movie War Games. Here we have a very young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy talking to two computer hackers about how to break into a system. The big line: “Mr. Potato Head! Mr. Potato Head! Backdoors are not secrets!” Does this mean that a backdoor is so simple someone that can play with the toy can break into a system using the secret password only the system designer knows? If I could follow the conversation it can’t be that difficult. What looks better with age: Matthew, Ally, the computers, or the potato head? I love that scene, but don’t stop watching. In the next part of the clip Matthew answers the question, “What did we do before Google?”
  
  Teachers are all over Mr. Potato Head. When I started teaching Spanish, one of the first things I got as a gift from a fellow Spanish teacher was a Mr. Potato Head. I have taught Spanish from Pre-K to high school and all of my students get psyched when you pull out that potato head. All the hands go up in the air. Everyone wants a turn to push a body part into a potato and say “La nariz.” I love it.
  
  When Frances started speech therapy four years ago, the first thing that skinny-minnie young pathologist did was pull out a potato head. The first thing my daughter did was scream and run away. For the first month Sally* would try to get her to point to body parts or ask for a body part and for a month my daughter would thrash and scream. Now, I don’t want to start a health care debate, but fifty dollars for thirty minutes of my own money was a lot for her to scream at a potato. I was also very pregnant with baby number two, and one day during a session I couldn’t wait any longer so I left the room to go to the bathroom and as I came back I looked through the window. There was my daughter pointing and signing and sitting nicely. She was working that potato head while mommy was out of the room! After that day, I started taking a People magazine and waiting in the lobby. Sorry. She also went through a phase where she only wanted potato heads. Her attention span was very flighty, so in a way it was good that he had so many parts. She could put them all on, take them all off, and start over again.
  
  I guess I should thank Mr. Potato Head for all of his years of service: in education, in Speech therapy, and in pop culture. My baby is discovering his goodness and began playing with that potato head I was given (gasp!) thirteen years ago. Mr. Potato Head, you are my favorite carbohydrate: baked, scalloped, French fried, Spanish tortilla, oh have mercy……
  
  
  

  

  
  
  

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