TROPE TRACKER: GOTTA HAVE IT TOY

Watch as many holiday-themed TV episodes as I do and you’re bound to start noticing some recurring themes.  When I started to actually keep track and notate my holiday viewing, I created my trope tracker, identifying the shared plot points that crop up from show to show.  You could view these tropes as sheer laziness on the part of TV writers, but I’ve always found them rather comforting, lending a sense of continuity and familiarity to decades worth of TV programming.  Rather than just update the blog’s trademark trope tracker as I always do, this Christmas season I’ve decided to spotlight and more closely examine a few of the biggest Christmas TV tropes.

Definitely in the top 25 Christmas TV Tropes list is the “Gotta Have It Toy.”  This plot point is simple and well-trod (because duh = trope): a child desires the season’s hottest fictional toy, leading their parent/guardian/aunt/uncle/whoever to go to great lengths (usually at the last minute, on Christmas Eve) to acquire it.  This is a trope that springs from real life; in the recent past Cabbage Patch dolls and Tickle Me Elmos have inspired toy store stampedes and countless news stories both decrying and feeding into the idea of an annual must-have Christmas toy.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this type of holiday story is the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Jingle All the Way.  Jingle All the Way is by no means a good Christmas movie, but it’s not the worst way to spend 1 hour and 35 minutes this December, either.  The story is one improbable slapstick scenario after another, as Arnold attempts to get his hands on a Turbo Man action figure for his son (played by notoriously terrible child actor Jake Lloyd, of Anakin Skywalker fame).  At the time of its release the filmmakers were criticized for releasing a real-life Turbo Man tie-in toy, the sort of cheap commercialization that the movie was meant to be spoofing.

Over the year many TV shows have also embraced the Gotta Have It Toy storyline, some more successfully than others. I’m always especially interested in seeing what toy sitcom writers come up with to be the star of the season. In the short-lived Gene Wilder sitcom Something Wilder, it’s a “Mr. Monster” doll that’s in demand.  For Family Matters it’s a “Freddy Teddy”—apparently the most popular toys are also the most alliterative. 

Just Shoot Me! offered up “How the Finch Stole Christmas,” a fabulous episode with just about every tried and true Christmas storyline, including a battle over a “Sneezing Charlie” doll.  Mya wants one of the hard-to-get dolls for a poor child she mentors, but her rich dad has bought them all up for his equally rich clients.  Mya gets her revenge by rigging up a hidden microphone and convincing her dad the talking dolls are possessed and angered by his lack of Christmas spirit, leading him to hand them over to needy kids (except for one, which he has disassembled and buried in the desert).

In the Frasier episode “Frasier Grinch,” the titular Frasier Crane jumps through hoops on Christmas Eve to buy educational toys for his visiting son, only to learn at the last minute that what Frederick most desires is the season’s hottest item, the Outlaw Laser Robo Geek (which Frasier was snobbishly dismissive of earlier in the episode).  All seems lost until Frasier opens his own present from his prescient father, Martin, which is an Outlaw Laser Robo Geek for him to gift to Frederick.

“Moroccan Christmas,” a Season 5 episode of The Office, is not a particular favorite of mine, but it does put a nice O. Henry twist on the Gotta Have It Toy trope.  The episode’s B-story involves Dwight buying a stockpile of that year’s top toy and then re-selling it to desperate dads for outrageous prices at the office Christmas party.  The toy in question is “Princess Unicorn,” a Barbie-esque princess with an ungainly unicorn horn protruding from her forehead (and yes, this is one Gotta Have It Toy that I fully see the appeal of!). 

Sad-sack office worker Toby plans on buying one of the dolls from Dwight for his daughter, but by the time he tries Dwight has just sold his last one to warehouse worker Darryl.  In a slightly uncomfortable scene rife with genuine emotion, a desperate, despondent Toby begs Darryl to let him have the doll.  Darryl happily sells it (at an even greater mark-up, naturally), only for Toby to discover that the doll he purchased is the African-American version.  It’s a great moment in which Toby struggles to keep his disappointment from registering lest he offend Darryl, and another hollow victory for the very Charlie Brownish character of Toby.

As you can see, TV shows have long utilized the Gotta Have It Toy trope to provide fodder for their Christmas episodes.  As tropes go it’s generally a successful one, as who among us hasn’t at one point in our lives longed for that one special toy upon which an entire Christmas’ success rests?  For me it was the Mighty Max Skull Mountain playset, which I coveted more than anything one Christmas. I can still summon up that “all is well in the world” feeling expressed by Ralphie in A Christmas Story when he finally lays hands on his Red Ryder BB Gun, a mixture of relief and joy I too felt upon ripping off the wrapping paper of my very own Skull Mountain.