Knee Deep in Playmobil

About two weeks before his birthday back in October, Jack discovered Playmobil toys while on a playdate at a friend’s house.  This was excellent timing, because usually my children discover a want or a need a week or two after their birthdays or Christmas (for instance, Ben’s iPod screen shattered only a few days before Christmas this year, and now he needs to wait until August to even think of replacing it…this is our usual timing with toys).  Anyway, Jack asked for, and received, Playmobil toys from us and from many relatives.  And then two months later, Santa brought him more Playmobil, and all of the relatives came through for him big time.

We are knee deep in Playmobil.  Would you like to see a picture of my dining room Playmobil Room?

Tiny little spoons and flowers and juice cartons and veterinary instruments scattered underfoot, boxes torn open and strewn about, while the actual Playmobil table is filled to capacity and has overflowed onto my dining room table, and I see I’d better head into the dining room fast and rescue that laptop which is perched perilously at the edge of the table. 

Playmobil is awesome though. Jack will play for hours on end with his Playmobil toys, the detail in these sets is amazing, and I love the creative play they foster. 

They are a bugger to put together, however. 

Santa brought Jack the Playmobil school.  The box warns you that assembly is expected to be 120 minutes. One hundred twenty minutes, people!   Unfortunately, the box, besides being delusionally optimistic, did not predict that the seven year old owner of the toy would dump all of the pieces out, open each bag of posts, floor sections, screws (oh yes, screws!), windows, and desks/books/people/paintbrushes/toilets/flowerpots/etc. and deposit them randomly throughout the first floor of the home.

My lovely, dear Maddie enjoyed putting Jack’s birthday Playmobils together so much, that I just assumed she’d put his Christmas ones together too.  Of course, I didn’t take into consideration the fact that she would rather be trying out her new Harry Potter Years 5-7 Wii game instead of putting together hours and hours worth of Playmobil.   At one point on Christmas day, she actually did start assembling the school but gave up after getting a small section finished, frustrated that the pieces were hard to find, and daunted by the hours that this project was taking her from Harry Potter.

After a day of whining from Jack, I gave in and said I’d put it together.  I really had no idea what  I was getting myself into.  After ten minutes into what I was beginning to call “Mission I Hate This”, I tried to bribe Maddie back to the job, but she was too smart.  For the first hour of the job, I grumbled and complained, loudly and violently to anyone unfortunate enough to walk into the room.  Completely clueless, Jack hovered nearby, singing songs, chattering incessantly, and occasionally pounding out “Rock Around the Clock” on the piano while asking me every ten minutes when I thought I’d be finished, until I finally barked at him and he left the room and told Dave he was afraid to go into the dining room for awhile.  True story. 

Here’s what the directions looked like:

That’s right.  No words.  And that’s only one page out of twenty.  Twenty freakin’ pages! 

After the first half hour though, I got into the groove of the whole thing and actually started to enjoy the whole process. Around Hour Four Maddie joined me and we finished the job together.  I estimate that, including the time Maddie spent working on it the previous day, the school took about 7 hours to put together!  That’s just a tad over 120 minutes, wouldn’t you say?  And then we still had to do the Treehouse, the Gymnasium, the Merry-Go-Round, The Spy Center, The Pool and many, many more.

But look at that detail! (And try not to notice that fence section above…I obviously didn’t notice it when I took the picture.)  Take note of the abacus blackboard to the right of the picture….this is a good example of the detail in this thing.  Each of those abacus pegs needed to be found and then attached to the sliding part.)

The instructional booklet tells me I used 320 screws and 1,000+ parts to hold that sucker together, and I’m telling you, it had darn well better hold together until it’s time for my future grandchildren use it as well.