Parents, there is a new evil out there, and it is the Clark’s YoToy shoes. Whether you know what these are yet depends on whether or not you have embarked on New Term School Shoe Buying yet.
If you haven’t, then - briefly – YoToys are fairly ordinary shoes, but with a toy (car for boys, doll for girls) hidden in the sole. They are £28.99.
If you have, then you, too, will almost certainly have experienced the full misery of a child, face down on the floor in Clark’s, weeping “I want the YoToy shoes! I want the YoToy shoes!”, as you uselessly brandish an alternative, toy-less shoe above their head.
Now, I am all for joy. To be frank, you could hide a toy in almost anything and I’d be happy. Coats, icecream, contacts lenses. Go on. Stick them anywhere. I don’t care. But if you put a toy in a shoe, children will, fairly inevitably, only ever want to get the shoes with the toy in. Children would happily sacrifice your life for a medium-sized bag of Haribo, so screwing up their feet for a secret toy is a no-brainer. Of COURSE they’ll tell you that the toy-shoe is the most comfortable one, whether their feet have just gone numb or not.
Clark’s are now breeding a generation of crump-toed, heel-crushed cripples. This is capitalism’s answer to FOOT BINDING.
I might have to basically renounce my new-found middle-classness, and go and get some Kickers, instead.
