Toy Story

Let’s raise a glass to the toy I wanted but did not buy.

The SuperScope was a simple toy. Primarily it was an elongated white cardboard box, three inches by three inches and three feet long. At each end was a cut-out and an angled mirror. See where I’m going with this? You look in one end and you can see around a corner or over a wall from the safe distance of a yard away.

I always envisioned myself in World War II combat fatigues, belt of grenades, M1 rifle, canteen, and my SuperScope. Scrambling through the wreckage of some shelled-out European city, peering over crumbled walls, scouting out the German position. Or else hacking my way through the jungles of southeast Asia, hunkering down behind some forgotten and nameless mud hill, scanning the fields below me for Japs. My SuperScope would provide endless hours of imaginative fantasy.

I was in a store with my mother that summer – 1976? 1977? – and remember she held it up to my face. I looked in the end and saw her face three feet above me. But no, I said I didn’t want it, I wanted something else. Probably something stupid like a paddle-ball game or a water pistol or a pack of Star Wars cards. Whatever I got in place of the SuperScope, it played no role whatsoever in my life. But I never quite forgot the toy I didn’t buy.

Perhaps I can buy it for the little ones. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. And the three of us can fight the Nazis in the comfort of my living room.