Take a toy, rank it against other toys, add some easy cynicism (along with a dash of perversion) and you’ve got VH1’s newest countdown show I Love Toys. From the Magic 8-Ball that says “for sure” when asked “Am I going to have sex tonight?,” to the “Care Bear stare, a weapon of mass care,” the show and its producers demonstrate that there is no limit to the number of obvious jokes they can make in a mini-series.
I Love Toys is a toys-meets-trash-talk effort at plunging viewers headfirst back to their childhood. By picking toys that were monumental and/or totally insignificant parts of growing up, and assessing them through the eyes of talking heads who, as their greatest accomplishment in life, have managed to make their way onto this VH1 countdown, the show manages to take all the fun out of toys and the I Love… concept.
Aside from returning I Love… champions Michael Ian Black, Patrice O’Neal and Mo Rocca, the lineup here makes it seem that the only qualification for being on a VH1 countdown show is finding your way onto their soundstage. And, like other VH1 I Love… shows, the heavy-handed irony can get exhausting.
Commentators who have nothing to do but rank toys on TV may have reasons for seeing the dark side of play, but when people take playing Dungeons and Dragons as a sure sign that you “can’t get laid,” the comparison is too obvious to avoid mentioning — it must mean that appearing on every VH1 countdown show is a sure sign that you can’t get work.
This show, like the other VH1 countdowns, tries to turn boring or inane subjects into comically suspenseful hierarchies, this time without success. Unless you have a strong itch to see where the Brine Monkey ranks in comparison to Wooly Willy, or you have an intense desire to see how the My Little Pony is really a very “dirty pony,” skip all the episodes, go out and buy yourself a Spirograph, because apparently it’s like “tripping – for kids.”
I Love Toys airs starting Monday, March 6 at 9 p.m. on VH1, with a new episode each night of that week.