Where's Your Barbie?

Overview

As kids, most of us played with store-bought toys. Bombarded with commercials for toys during Saturday morning cartoons, we began our initiation into American consumerism via the desire to have the latest and greatest toy trends from Barbie and GI Joe to Transformers and My Little Pony. Do you still have your toys? Probably not. What happened to them? Where did they wind up? Where's your Barbie? This piece questions not only the final resting place of our playthings but also our impact on the earth through pollution, particularly with plastic. It is sad to think that something we love so dearly as a child might wind up in the ocean or as part of the great pacific garbage patch, but this is the harsh reality.