It was five days after that one very special
Christmas.
The presents were opened. Boxes and paper
collected and discarded. The return lines at the store began to
thin as exchanges and complaints were tossed at weary customer
assistants. It's the one thing Santa and the elves never had to
deal with. Returns.
No, the elves were all relaxing by the
fire or sleeping snugly in their beds after putting in three weeks
of round-the-clock shifts. Twenty four hours straight. Seven days
a week. The elves knew there were elf labor laws that could seriously
get Santa in trouble, but they loved the jolly ol' soul, mainly
because they couldn't get work any where else. Except, maybe,
at some of the Florida theme parks, but who wants to sit inside
a hot costume in August?
Elves will take the cold any day. Besides,
Mrs. Claus makes a wonderful matza ball soup.
Yes everyone was particularly exhausted
because this was the Christmas that Santa first employed Rudolph.
That brutal winter with blinding winds nearly caused Santa to
cancel Christmas delivery. He feared the lawsuits claiming "pain
and suffering" from the children (more like the children's
parents) who didn't get their little red wagon or plastic pony.
No, they would gladly have Santa and his eight tiny reindeer risk
their lives in 50 mile per hour wind gusts, flying at 10,000 feet
with no airbags or roll bars just so they could get their Baby-Wets-A-Lot.
Thankfully that red nose lit up the sky
and allowed Santa to see twenty feet in front of him. Not much
reaction time, but it gave him enough to steer the sleigh away
from a couple cell phone towers, the Seattle Needle, and a near
scrape with the St. Louis Arch.
Christmas went on as planned and the children
all got what they asked for.
Well, not exactly.
You see, Rudolph made this deal when he,
Hermey and Yukon Cornelius stumbled upon a frozen ice island,
tucked deep in the North Pole, in a place Santa never even looked,
called the Island of Misfit Toys. It was the place that toys went
to when nobody wanted them.
Call it a manufacturer's defect or poor
marketing or simply just a dumb idea, but these toys just made
no sense. And while the designers just shrugged and walked away
from them, going on to make bigger and better designs, the Misfits
had to live with their misfitedness for the rest of their existence.
The term Misfit came to mean two things
in the toy world: they didn't quite fit with other toys in their
class and, because of their flaw, they could not perform their
expected purpose. They were outsiders whose abilities did not
fit with their kind. It appeared very minor, but to toys, it was
a big deal.
In fact, it led to rejection, laughter,
mocking and taunting, not just from the children, but from the
other toys! It became too much for the Misfits who moved to (some
say banished to) the Island.
The Island's founder and curator was a
mysterious flying lion with wings named King Moonracer. Some called
him a Griffin, which was just a fancy mythological name for a
mysterious flying lion with wings. Moonracer's job was to fly
around the world in search of these toys that nobody wanted and
bring them back to the Arctic Circle where they could freeze their
nuts and bolts off with other rejects. A sort of Toy Leper Colony
on Ice.
Few knew King Moonracer's story. He didn't
talk much. Sure he held court now and then when he was in town
and not off jetting around Montana or Mozambique or Maui, which
he spent a lot of time, claiming the toy situation was desperate
there. He always returned with a tan and smelled of fruit punch.
Moonracer was a real lion that flew. Not
a toy. Some speculate the lion community rejected him and his
freakish wings-laughing at him, calling him a misfit. Which seemed
odd since Moonracer could kick some serious lion booty, being
able to dive bomb a pride of ground walkers and steal their fresh
kill. The female lions thought Moonracer was a hunk, but the lazy
males pushed him away, smearing his name by saying he hung out
with bats. His alleged association with bats got him the name
Moonracer, since rumors circled saying he hung out nocturnally
and sucked the blood of sleeping hippos.
Needless to say, the aerodynamic lion knew
what it felt like to be a misfit.
Moonracer tried to start an Island for
Misfit Animals in the Pacific Ocean one time, but most animals
have other animals just like them. Unfortunately, no other animals
were like Moonracer. He was one of a kind and hence rejected.
So he turned his attention from mammals to toys after one fateful
encounter.
Charlie in the Box and Moonracer met up in Tennessee. Moonracer,
hungry and at the end of his rope, picked through some trash in
the Blue Ridge Mountains and stumbled upon this talking Jack in
the Box who someone mistakenly named Charlie.
Charlie tells the story. "They thought
there were too many Jack-in-the-Boxes in the world. They wanted
something different. Somebody in marketing said, 'Let's call him
Charlie-in-the-Box.' It looked great on paper, but in the end…you
shouldn't fix what isn't broke, I always say."
Moonracer heard the story and felt sorry
for the little guy. He took all of his plans for a Misfit Animal
Island and moved it to the North Pole. Why the North Pole? Humidity.
On a tropical island, toys start to melt, sweat and rot in all
the wet, hot air. Up north they would preserve nicely. As for
Moonracer, not many lions hang out in fifty below temperatures,
but he was out of town a lot, so the location didn't matter.
Soon Moonracer found lots of toys-some
of them prototypes, many just design flaws-and brought them to
Misfit Island. There they supported one another and encouraged
one another with hopeless dreams of ever leaving and finding a
home. Moonracer ran workshops and conferences trying to help the
toys live with their misftedness. Support Groups sprung up all
over. Four or five toys would meet for an hour a week.
The meetings all started the same. Someone
would stand up…
"My name is Train with Square Wheels
and I'm a misfit."
And everyone would respond…
"Hello Train with Square Wheels!"
They would all give their testimonies,
cry, hug, eat some cookies, then back to the camp fire where they
would give their testimonies, cry, hug and eat some cookies. While
many would never say this out loud, they felt Misfit Island was
really a prison and Moonracer the warden.
While they were all free to go, where would
they go? The outside world rejected them. All they really wanted
was what any toy wanted-to be loved and accepted by a child. Here,
they were accepted but stuck with other rejected toys.
Then came Rudolph…
The joy that day of seeing the sleigh appear
out of the haze and hearing the gentle tinkling of the jingle
bells was unlike any feeling the toys ever knew. Rudolph kept
his promise to find homes for all of them and used his connection
to Santa to make it happen.
As the toys hopped into the sleigh, Santa
admitted in an interview with GQ that he knew it would be a hard
sell convincing kids to play with a boat that can't float or a
cowboy riding an ostrich. Kids these days wanted toys that made
sense. That worked. They weren't interested in helping out a down-on-his
luck, homeless toys. They wanted to have fun with the latest and
greatest toys on the shelves of the local Toys-R-Us! "The
toy business is fickle," said Santa. "Trying to predict
what kids will like one year down the road takes just as much
luck as imagination."
As the toys dropped from the sleigh to
the homes of one particular suburb of Philadelphia, Moonracer,
watching from a distance, choked up. Finally, the Misfits had
a home.
He hoped.
Moonracer never had a policy of follow-up
with the Misfit Toys that found a home because, frankly, his Misfits
never found a home. This was a first.
Two days after that Christmas night, Moonracer
sat all alone in his cold, silent castle wondering…what happened
to the Misfits?
Were they happy?
Did the kids love them?
He thought about Misfit Train with his
caboose with square wheels.
Charlie in a Box.
Spotted Elephant.
Jelly pistol.
Misfit Airplane that Couldn't Fly.
The Scooter for Jimmy.
The Ostrich riding Cowboy.
The Nesting Doll with a mouse inside.
The Swimming Bird Toy.
The Boat That Can't Float.
And finally Misfit Doll.
So there Moonracer sat in his lonely castle,
feeling himself more like a misfit then ever before. The island
was dead silent. No murmur of meetings. No loud cries of anguish.
No sighs of despair. Nothing. The toys all had homes and he did
not. He needed to get out, so he locked up the palace and took
the skies.
He decided to check up on the Misfit Toys and see how they were
doing.
Little did he know that his flight was being tracked…
The entire story has been written. If
you're interested in how in ends, please contact me.
© Troy Schmidt, 2006
