It’s taking every ounce of this 28-year-old’s willpower to write today rather than just sit in front of the TV screen counting down the hours until Toy Show time. It’s so hard, though, what with a deluge of articles reminding me of the great craic Patrick Kielty has in store for us later.
Because of those articles, I can’t imagine I’m the only adult having to endure work today rather than enjoy it. Fortunately for kids, who love the Toy Show but don’t use news sites so much and who are stuck in school anyway, they’re spared those articles that so perniciously target the rest of us. Adulthood ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I laughed and cried my way through an article last night detailing the 10 thoughts we ALL have while watching the Toy Show. “The Toy Show is the best form of birth control” in particular made me gasp. Someone gets it.
“The maternity wards will be dead nine months after the Toy Show because no one in their right mind would want to have a child after watching all that chaos.
“They should show this in all secondary schools as part of sex education curriculum. Yes, picking out baby clothes is cute, but can you deal with the two decades of chaos that follows and is best illustrated by the hyper Toy Show participants?”
Preach, sister. Besides, they’d just distract you from watching the show itself. Stupid kids. They should start phasing them out of the Toy Show as soon as possible.
First thing today then, I was hit with It’s Toy Show day! by RTÉ. As though I could forget. My sympathies went out to whichever writer was asked to take on The 23 Best Toy Show Moments Ever! – where did they even begin? How did they limit themselves to 23??
Late Late Toy Show 2024: Everything you need to know about the TV night of the year, read another headline in The Irish Times. “Will it be worth the wait” it asks in the first paragraph. Come on now, you know yourself. I bookmarked it for the lunch break anyway.
It’s all too much for me, but then it has been all week.
I tried to get a bit of headspace by heading out for some shopping during the week, only to be confronted with more Toy Show bundles than I could shake a stick at. Sweets and treats galore to get you through the night, in a whole that costs far more than the sum of its parts. Naturally, I took ten. One for everybody in the audience, said I with a resigned chuckle.
Whatever pain I’m enduring this year in the leadup though is nothing compared to the pain we Toy Show fans felt at learning the long-awaited musical bombed to the tune of €2.2 million in losses back in the winter of ‘22. I remember incredulously reading reports that RTÉ had forecasted revenue from the event as being worth €3.2 million, which would have required selling over 90,000 tickets. In the end, just 11,044 tickets were sold across 27 performances.
My incredulity wasn’t caused by RTÉ’s overestimation in public interest – it was born out of disbelief that they didn’t aim higher. We Irish are capable of great things when we set our minds to it – we flattened the curve for almost two years, after all – but we do need some unfortunate cajoling from the State. Mandatory attendance at the musical in a manner similar to jury duty wouldn’t have been out of place.
Sara Keating’s review of the musical in the Irish Times (which unbelievably gave it only two out of five stars) noted that it sought to elevate “the annual TV show beyond its status as a contemporary cultural tradition to that of a national holiday”.
“The Late Late Toy Show may have become an important element of an Irish Christmas, but the musical tries far too hard to make a case for its significance. Despite the talent evident on the stage and behind it, it is difficult not to feel cynical about the artistic intention of what is essentially a spectacular, self-congratulatory marketing ploy,” she wrote.
A musical about the Late Late Toy Show a “spectacular, self-congratulatory marketing ploy” – how dare she. What could be further from the truth?
The Late Late Toy Show is about making me feel like a child again, that’s the beating heart of it. It’s about bringing the nation together when so much threatens to divide us. No better organisation to do that than RTÉ, no better man than Patrick Kielty. Worth every penny of that €725 million.
For me, though, I’m off to engage in the millennial madness on social media that descends every Toy Show day. Work will probably suffer, but it’s my employer’s fault for making me work today.
“To employers who scheduled the office Christmas party for tonight, actual Toy Show night, who hurt you,” writes Irish Times columnist Jen Hogan.
Hear, hear Jen. Toy Show über alles.