Give me battery free toys or give me death

For Christmas this year we bought Jake a $40 interactive WALL-E toy robot. He had been eyeing it for awhile and always wanted to play with it at Toys R Us. After we bought it we noticed there was a warning label on it that said something like "do not touch the head or he might break." Great. Try telling a three year old not to touch the head on ANYTHING much less a cool robot that talks and moves his head around.

We figured we would go ahead and give WALL-E a shot. Come Christmas morning Jake unwrapped this present and got so excited to get it out of the box to play. Needless to say, WALL-E's head didn't even make it out of the box still attached to his body. I'm not kidding you that this is the most poorly designed toy ever in the history of toys. I know there was a warning and all but really! We tried gluing the thing back on but it just didn't work. So here we sit with a decapitated robot. He still works though. He's just headless. It's a little creepy. Kind of like a praying mantis or a chicken with its head cut off running around.



It just got me to thinking that I think I would like to go battery free around here. I get so tired of buying batteries, changing batteries and trying to figure out how to dispose of batteries. You know they're not supposed to go in landfills, right? The sludge that leaks out of them is bad for the environment. You have to take them to a special place to dispose of them and I can't ever seem to find out where that special place is located. So, I'd like to go green. Give us toys that Santa and his elves would make. I'm pretty sure they don't mess around with batteries. One good option I've seen around lately is from Green Toys. I especially love the recycling truck. Of course the other option would be to just stop buying toys forever. I would seriously be okay with that. Our house is over run with them. Besides, I'm thinking the kids would do just fine making mud pies in the backyard or whacking the head off of a praying mantis.