This Stuff is Crazy

I know that it's only October, but my family is getting together for Thanksgiving and doing our Christmas then.  Anybody have a good mash-up name for this?  Thanks-mas, Christ-giving-mas, Way-too-much-food-mas?

I asked my sis what the little man wanted/needed this year and he wants an ambulance to go with his fire truck.  Because when he grows up, he wants to be a rescue worker.  He watches this old show called Emergency on Netflix all the time and it's about a group of fire rescue workers and he's captivated.  It's pretty funny.

Here's the point of this story.  I searched online for toy ambulances and hospitals and came across Playmobil-it's like Fisher Price gone mad!  First of all, they have a play set for everything-normal stuff like school, farm, pirates, then crazy stuff like Egyptians, Future Planet and Stone Age.  But I'm interested in hospital stuff, so let's check this out.

That's the full hospital play set.  You even get a fake tree for the lobby.  That's nuts.

This is the hospital floor expansion set.  Just like a real hospital, you can add an addition.  And just like a real hospital, you'll have to have some fundraisers to make this happen because this stuff is crazy expensive.  I'll start organizing the Dudra Memorial Hospital golf outing right now.

Take a glance at some of the other crazy stuff available for this playset.

   

That's the ambulance set, rescue chopper and operating room.

Are you seeing where I'm going with this?  These toys are crazy detailed!  I looked through this site and thought how awesome this was, yet how sad.  When I was a kid (and walked through two miles of snow to get to school -blah, blah, blah) I played with shoeboxes and toys from happy meals and made up whole towns using random stuff around the house.  I know that these kind of toys do encourage imaginative play.  For instance, I never gave someone an imaginary emergency kidney transplant because I didn't have the operating room.  I would have been sued for imaginary malpractice due to the poor conditions of my shoebox hospital.  But I did have a great time just playing random stuff as a kid.

How do you resolve all of the specific toys available with the simple creative play from our youth?  Buy the playsets, like the operating room, premie ward, and pediatrician's office and make him house them in shoeboxes and other containers.  That way when you need to do an addition to the hospital, you don't have to have a gala to raise money, you can just raid your parents closet for another box.  

All that being said, yes, the little man will be getting some pretty cool Playmobil stuff under the Christ-giving-mas cornucopia-tree.  But I feel like getting him a hospital playset is really a good idea, because wanting to be a rescue worker is a really wonderful thing.  At least I'm not getting him the Stone Age set because I really don't see how learning to skin a mastodon translates to real life skills. 

Happy Reading!

Full disclaimer:  Playmobil has no idea who I am.  I just saw their website and thought it looked funny enough to share.  Honestly, this stuff looks crazy fun, and I can't wait to share some of it with my nephew.