George,

Kids are growing up faster because the current toy industry today sucks. The toys back in my day were based off of great cartoons. Characters that kids could really look up to and want to be. I'm talking about cartoons like He-man,Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and G.I.Joes. Kids today have wussy characters like Yugioh and the kid from pokemon. Also, it feels like those cartoons sole purpose is to sell a card game to kids. To fix the toy crisis, simply make better cartoons with stronger, manlier characters, throw in a strong female character, write stories that have a plot, and keep the toys simple. If having trouble, look to the old cartoons for inspiration. The new transformer cartoons suck. Most of the characters are whiney with the exception of optimus prime, and stories have no substance. I don't know maybe you can pull some strings and get things moving in the right direction. Because if not pretty soon our nation is going to be filled with wusses. We have children being raised on yugioh, emo rock, and hi-fructose corn syrup.

Adrian Campa (electronic mail, July 9, 2006)