The Spaceship

One of my earliest childhood memories is waking up in a state of anxiety from a nightmare set in the garden of the house I lived in up until the age of four. A space rocket in the garden was about to take off and my family in their excitement all got on board but forgot to bring me.

I watched the space rocket take off and leave me behind. They forgot about me and left me alone. I was overwhelmed with feeling it was because I didn’t matter to them at all.

My maternal grandparents had six kids of whom four had their own kids all roughly around the same age. I am one of seven cousins. It’s a large family which caught attention of a Plastic Toy Company who had produced a prototype plastic spaceship toy and gave one to my grandparents for feedback from the kids prior to mass-producing it along with an expanded range of similar.  

After we all looked at it without being allowed to touch it we were then individually selected to play with it to provide feedback for the company. Our parents and grandparents discussed whether having a competition would be the best way to decide which children got to keep it. 

All the kids said it was cool. That was about all any of them said. My brother said it wasn’t as good as a famous plastic brick building product. 

I explained the plastic was cheap and unrealistic, it being purple which was unlike any illustrations or photos of spaceships I’d ever seen. They’re usually silver and white. 

The tiny purple figures were comprised of two sections, the torso and legs clipped together so they bent in the middle. It meant they could stand or sit in the spaceship but it also meant they had a flaw because they couldn’t actually stand up, they kept falling over. 

I liked how the roof panels opened to allow access to the inside but had no idea what the different compartments of the spaceship were actually for and also with only one pilot seat why did all the figures need to be hinged? 

Also they’re tiny at two centimetres each most of them would probably get lost especially if you play with it outside. 

While it’s fun there are around twenty identical figures could they be in two colours or have a smaller crew because what are we supposed to do with them all except store them in the cargo bays where they rattle around. 

Everyone else said I had put a lot of thought into it. My gran decided the amount of feedback I had given was sufficient I won the competition therefore I won the toy. 

I felt embarrassed and awful because I was immediately alienated from my cousins who all thought favouritism was in play and stopped playing with me. I was surprised my gran had chosen me because she could never remember my name, always called me by my brothers name. 

My famously jealous brother became even more jealous and made as many of the little figures disappear as he possibly could before anyone got a chance to stop him. He gave them to the other cousins who collectively took them, unifying the cousins against me while covertly enhancing his position in the family ranks by bribing them into sharing a secret. My brothers strategy was feeding on their collective greed, so natural to children having an as-yet-unreleased spaceship toy flashed before their eyes. 

We were told we had the only one in existence at this time, which I questioned because it was moulded plastic and had clearly come off a production line even if it was only a small print run. 

I decided the toy was not worth having because it was a symbol of how the parents and grandparents were manipulating us and causing me to be isolated from my cousins. It angered my brother who I knew from experience would exact his revenge upon me soon and be protected by my parents. 

Lessons. 

Learning through play. 

The gameplay is in the design. 

The bent one is in control (only one pilot seat). 

Everybody can be bent. 

Everyone is interchangeable. 

Everybody is rattling around unable to stand up. 

The next time I saw the toy was over a year later when some of the cousins were visiting. My mother retrieved it from wherever she had hidden it so the cousins could all play nicely together with it. 

The reminder of their jealousy that I had been favourited caused them to stop taking with me. They didn’t want to play with the toy anyway it was something we had all emotionally disconnected from and written off as a toxic entity. I felt so bad about the experience of being alienated I didn’t want to play with the toy either. 

My mother told me I had to play with the toy in front of my cousins to show them it had gone to the right person, that I loved it so much I was still playing with it. She wanted that feedback to come from the cousins to her parents to help them know they had made the right decision to give it to the right child. 

I declined and hid from everyone until after my cousins had gone home. My mother told me since nobody wanted the toy anyway and it took up space she was going to throw it out. None of us ever saw it again. 

That’s how my mother raised me. 

None of the cousins speak with me even to this day.

When I was fourteen I discovered the following information in a White Wolf storytelling roleplaying game book.

“Pentex seek to corrupt the human populous. Many of Pentex‘s products contain low-level wyrm poisons. The effects are subtle; maybe Junior has become more violent and his grades have dropped, but who would attribute this to the new set of wonder guy figures (made from Pentex plastics) that he got for Christmas?” p.54 Werewolf The Apocalypse, 1st edition 

“Pentex is a multi-national megacorporation. Its main agenda is the spiritual, moral, and environmental corruption of the planet. Pentex began its existence as Premium Oil.”

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Pentex

Hence it’s association with cheap plastic products, for example toy spaceships, slipped innocuously into large families to do as much damage as possible. 

That was during the 1980s. Things have changed since then. Pentex has become more subtle than ever. 

Enjoy your plastic-based electronic and digital devices much?