Potato Toys Are All Right with Me

As a person who grew up during the Cold War, I'm more than familiar with our American trope of belittling the Soviet Union by showing its lines of people waiting for goods at stores, or empty shelves, or the poor-quality goods they had available.

This book, which I saw on the Twitter account Soviet Visuals, reminded me of all that:


That translates as Potato Toys and it's a Soviet children's book from 1931.

And yes, you could say it's pathetic that children were being taught to make toys out of potatoes... but in this age when many American children live in the midst of piles of toys they never use, fast-fashion and fast-everything else leads to ever more waste of petroleum and other earth-derived resources, and we all know the best toy is an empty cardboard box... who has the last laugh on making your own toys out of potatoes and sticks?