This story about the phenomenon of what Spike Lee calls the super-duper magical Negro struck a chord with me when I first read it in the Washington Post back in October (yes, that would be October of last year) but I didn't feel compelled to blog it until now, in the aftermath of a Christmas that netted my kids a whole bunch of Fisher-Price Little People products and accompanying videos.

The videos themselves (one comes free with each of the aforementioned FPLP toys) are mostly innocuous - a little sappy with a tendency towards preachiness, perhaps (as is often the case with videos for pre-schoolers, the charming and wonderful Oswald the Octopus notwithstanding) - with surprisingly high production values. The stop-frame animation is painstakingly done by Egmont Imagination in Denmark and each story features annoying and tedious music with vocals by warble-voiced singer Aaron Neville (incidentally, I think it would be a hoot to hear Aaron Neville interviewed by WAMU's resident spasmodic dysphonia sufferer and talk show host Diane Rehm) - I mention these features not to praise the nauseating videos, but merely to highlight the fact that things are not cheaply made.

The Little People(tm) figurines themselves have evolved over the years from ultra-simplistic and comparatively slender mostly-wooden iconic fire-hydrant shaped hatchlings, through a wider, more squat and slightly more detailed intermediate, larval phase into today's highly detailed and decidedly endomorphic lil' dumplings'o'fun. The Little People have been quite PC in their racial diversity from the outset, but what really caught my attention is that, with the fleshed-out "back stories" necessary to sustain 25-minute animated tales, the Little People can count among their number their very own super-duper magical Negro - Michael(tm).

Each of the other characters has their own "defining characteristic", for example, Sonya-Lee(tm) is an Asian chick with a penchant for animals, and Maggie(tm) is a future class president or (worse) aspring politician or future CEO who "loves to lead, and tries to do so thoughtfully" in the words of the song. Michael(tm), however, is not only "clever as can be" (so far so good) but who "likes to do things magically". Ugh. As if we all had the power to do things "by magic" but simply prefer not to.

What really grates here is that Michael(tm) is the only Little Person with supernatural powers. We're not talking about SuperFriends, here, we're talking about a kid that likes animals, a bossy kid, an artistic kid, and so on - and a kid with superhuman abilities to make all sorts of odd things happen to resolve whatever corner the plot-writer has painted them into.

So, needless to say, I can't wait for the day my kids come home from school in tears because they made friends with little Antwan or LaShawna and he/she can't stop the rain, turn back time, or raise the dead.