I’ve been helped to understand a significant truth.
I’ve noticed the craze of “silly bands” – as a teacher, I can’t avoid them. For those of you who are not between the ages of six and twelve, they’re stretchy bracelets that form different shapes when relaxed, in all different colours. (Like the 2010 version of jelly bracelets, except boys have them too.) They are collected, traded, played with, confiscated, argued over, and obsessively admired.
To me, they’re just another craze, to be wrested only from the cold, dead hands of the children… wait, sorry. That’s the wrong image. But you know. It’s just like the furor over the Webkinz…
the Bakugans…
the Tech Decks…
or the Tamagotchis.
But no. It’s been explained to me in no uncertain terms, put into perspective by one of my Grade 4 girls: “Madame, they’re SO popular. Bigger than Justin Bieber.”
WELL THEN.
***
I think they are great! (well, mostly. .. ) A cheap fad! Hooray for parents! Hooray for teachers who don’t have kids crying when they lose one/have one stolen/break one etc.
How about BeyBlades? Yu-Gi-Oh cards? It seems as though there are legions of children’s marketers just ready to slide their newest fad-in-waiting into the stream of popular consciousness…only now it’s not enough just having a Saturday morning cartoon tie-in and Happy Meal toys. There must be feature films, video games, facebook pages, Web sites, addictive online social gaming communities…. These bracelets seem refreshingly slinkyesque (or, perhaps, frisbeean) in their simplicity and Skye, I think you hit the nail on the head. Hooray from me, too!
I have to admit, I kinda like them. I haven’t seen much arguing over them, although I have confiscated a few (and joked that I’ll easily be able to start my own collection if they forget to ask for them back at the appropriate time). So far they’ve been far less annoying than the tech decks in my room. I think I like a fad that gives grade 6 boys common interests with, well, the whole school.
BIGGER THAN JUSTIN BIEBER???????
Did you know that jelly bracelets started a long time ago with the black plastic rings used in – what? plumbing, I think. Kids got the ideas they could wear them, so they started doing so, and someone quickly noticed that they could be duplicated in colours and undoubtedly be even more popular… So coloured rings were born. Note: coloured rings (made of something different and cheaper) are not suitable as plumbing gaskets.