Opinion || Bags are banned: enjoy your free plastic toy

Many homes will now have Lego sets that are being enjoyed by a second or third generation of children, and can easily share shelf space with hand-me-down toy cars and previously loved dolls.

When you’re a parent and buying toys for your kids, it helps a little when you’re purchasing plastic to know that the items you’re paying for are going to last some considerable time.

Buying a “cheap tat” toy that has a short useful lifespan and many, many decades of rotting in landfill is no one’s idea of a shopping success.

There have long been concerns about the “toy that comes with the meal” at many fast food outlets and just how many of these inexpensive trinkets make their way into bins without ever being taken past the doors of a restaurant.

Given the ongoing social commentary about landfill and plastic’s effects on marine life, you would have to have been living on an otherwise-deserted island to have missed the debate.

Certainly the bods at supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, got the message.

They were very quick to demonstrate their social conscience and ban free single-use shopping bags for the “good of the environment” and insisted that being able to sell a much heftier plastic bag at 15 cents a pop had nothing to do with ditching the freebies.

Having banned single-use bags for “the good of the environment”, Coles turned around and launched the Little Shop range – basically tiny versions of real grocery items –which were all made of plastic.

Shoppers loved them.

Facebook was swamped with trading groups and eBay did a brisk trade, as Coles also sold albums to contain your “set”, as Woolworths did some years ago with their Disney Pixar-emblazoned dominos and Marvel discs.

Buoyed by the huge success of Little Shop, Coles has this week launched its new range.

Named Stikeez and developed alongside the Healthy Kids Association, it’s supposed to be an effort to encourage Aussie children to eat more fresh produce.

Stikeez, and an associated Coles Fresh Rainbow Challenge, is said to be designed to make healthy eating fun, with 24 mini fruit and veggies to collect.

So, we not only have a supermarket chain that banned shopping bags because of the long-term damage to our environment, but now they are giving away plastic fruit.

Spare me the faux-concern about what my kids eat.

If Coles was serious about helping families eat better, the chain could stop spending millions on plastic dust collectors and simply offer better prices.

So many times over the years studies have shown that families with lower incomes have less-than-ideal diets because fresh, healthy food is often more costly than processed packaged stuff.

I’m sure struggling families who have scrapped together $30 to buy some food are going to be delighted to be given a plastic toy zucchini when they couldn’t really afford the real thing.

After winning plaudits for banning single use bags – about which there were many genuine environmental concerns – Coles deserved the kicking it got for subsequently giving away plastic toys while at the same time charging for reusable shopping bags.

But to now attempt to capitalise on the success of the Little Shop range by dressing it up as concern about healthy eating is a bit rich.

We don’t need more tat in our lives.

We are already – and often literally – tripping over the cheap plastic around us.

Call me old fashioned, but how about our supermarkets concentrate on selling decent products at reasonable prices so that families can afford to eat well?

Our kids don’t need more plastic trinkets.

They need good food and well-made toys that will see them through years of play and can keep these treasured items to pass on to their own children.

We all know we need to be more discerning when it comes to the plastic in our lives.

This sort of giveaway just isn't appropriate and is simply hypocrisy writ large.