Encourage children to play with Pinky

Recent incidents of shooting worldwide (but mainly in America) involving young offenders has been quite alarming.

Virginia Tech massacre, perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho (23 years old) with 8 victims followed by a suicide.
Westroads Mall shooting, perpetrated by Robert A. Hawkins (19 years old) with 8 victims followed by a suicide.
Las Vegas school-bus shooting, one of the suspect is 18 years old, arrested in Dever, injuring 6 victims, of which 2 with critical injury.

The above are just to mention a few in US. Some argue that the cause is due to loose gun control in US.

The gun is simply a tool. Yes, making it difficult to obtain helps to reduce the incident, but the perpetrator can still pick up another tool, be it a knife, a stick or stone, or a piece of string.

I am not trying to make a justification for loose gun control. On the contrary, I support tighter gun control. However, we cannot stop at tighter gun control.

In a shooting incident at Euro International school in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, Akash Yadav (14 years old) and Vikas Yadav (13 years old) brought a gun to school and shot and killed Abhishek Tyagi, allegedly a school bully, inside a school bus. The gun control in India is very tight, yet it happened.

If someone really want to kill, one will do it regardless the tight control, either by using a gun, or by other means.

I believe the real cause of all these is that these children are indirectly educated and thus believe that violence is a solution to a problem. It does not happen in a short time. It happen gradually, where subliminal messages were picked up from watching movies or even news on TV, in newspapers and on the internet. They slowly learn to realise that gun could end an argument decisively.

Another source of these undesirable subliminal message comes from the toy they play with when they are young. It is easy to give little boys toy gun or knife, and they love it, often imitating the heroes or villains from the movies they watched. They are given toy soldiers, and toy tanks, and wage their wars.

These toys does not encourage a good development of emotional quotient, which they need when they grow up. If they felt violated, depressed, what is the solution they can think of? If they are never been exposed to a constructive solution, they will reach to what they are familiar with: violence.

So what kind of toys available out there that can develop good emotional quotient? Pinky is one example.

First, the character design gives variety. They have various hair colours, from blond, brown, red, black, to unconventional blue, with various hair style from short to long, with locks, pigtail and ponytail. They have different colour eyes, and some wear glasses.

Most importantly, they have different facial expressions.

Some are happy, some are sad, some are muted, some are contented, some looks playful or mischevious, some with evil grin. Some looked tired or uninterested, or probably just feeling a bit cold? None of the constant happy smile of Barbie and friends, or Bratz. And you do not have to be concerned because none of the Pinky are overly sexy unlike Barbie and friends that comes with D+ breasts.

You could swap their clothes from mini skirt, long skirt, pants, blouse, t-shirt, jacket, trench-coat, school uniform and so on.

With all these variation you cannot stop at one. Soon there will be a group of pinky characters in your collection and they will form a community.

The children playing with these toys will be stimulated to tell a story using their pinky figurines. Why is this girl sad? Oh she lost her favorite book. Can her friend help her to find it? Or another story on the happy girl, whose father just bought her a new bicycle, and found out that one friend is jealous of her.

The kids who played and tell stories will be exposed to different emotions, arriving from daily problems and situations. Adults can supervise them and encourage them to arrive to a desirable solutions, which is civil and just. Enforced with repetition, throughout their growing-up years, these children will become a stable adults with high emotional quotient, and able to contribute constructively to the society.

Some may ask if these toys could encourage IQ growth too. Well, yes but not directly.

Pinky as a basic figurine do comes with some accessories like bags, pouch or handbags. Some comes with bamboo bench, fence and flowers, and others comes with a scooter. But these are not enough. You will be hard pressed to find mini furniture to accessorise the community. You can buy some of them, but you can also make them using paper, cardboard and glue. Those with more craft skill can even venture with other unconventional material like clay. When using paper and cardboard, the children need to translate a 2 dimensional material into a 3 dimensional item, enhancing their geometric skill, either by calculation or by trial and error.

For those who dream to be a fashion designer, they can use markers to draw different patterns on their pinky figurines.

There are two drawbacks of pinky figurines: Balance and Posability.

Their oversised head may throw them off balance sometimes. This, however, can be easily fixed with a small amount of gluetack to the bottom of their feet.

The posability is more challanging. Pinky figurines do not have articulated joins, so their limbs are stiff. You cannot make them sit, unless you replace their bottom half to one that is of sitting position. This drawbacks can be seen as a challenge for those with higher skill of craft. They could venture to the domain of plastic surgery, where modification can be done with the aid of sharp knife, hobby putty, and paints. Do not expect this to be done by children of age 13 and below. Older teens however may love this challenge and improve their patience and hand-eye co-ordination.

In conclusion, pinky figurines does have a lot of educational potentials in it, and not just looking cute and pretty.

Please allow your children to play with Pinky. Oh well, you too can play with Pinky.