SANTA CLARA, Cuba. – Disguised with a Santa Claus hat and a bracelet with flashing lights, a toy saleswoman shows her potential customer the doll with the cheapest price in the business. It is packaged in plastic, measures just 20 centimeters and costs 1,500 pesos. The store is well stocked with all kinds of artifacts that enchant any passerby and strategically located a few blocks from several elementary schools in the city.
Even though it is the end of the year, when many private establishments close, Liudmila, the person in charge of the stall, assures that she will continue working to take advantage of the advent of Three Kings’ Day. In just one week he has sold dozens of pieces, including some that cost the average monthly income of any family. “Just today a couple came with their daughter and they told her to choose whatever she wanted and they took a 12,000 dollhouse,” she says pleased, but she justifies herself by claiming that she is not the owner of the store, although she gets a percentage for it. each management.
Inflation has also had a direct impact on the high prices that imported toys reach today, one of the few options for parents who usually save for months to guarantee a gift for their children. Years ago, when toys were still sold in the Currency Collection Stores (TRD), the official media complained about the popular disapproval of these offers due to shortages, low variety, high cost and poor invoice of the items. Also they recognized that there was no “a defined strategy for monitoring the production, distribution and marketing of toys” in the country.
The issue was even analyzed in the sessions of the National Assembly in July 2017, in which several deputies they agreed in which local industries did not produce toys and that even during the so-called Special Period At least there was “something to play with.” “Before we inherited toys from our parents and grandparents, soon there will be no toy to inherit,” a Matanzas deputy ventured to predict at that time.
From that date forward, the scenario has become much more critical. Now private businesses that import and resell toys stand out, while the stores in MLC continue, if anything, with a rather expensive and poor offer, especially in the interior of the country, where there are not even state toy stores.
Those who still romanticize the era of the “Soviet bonanza” remember with some nostalgia the regulated allocation of toys by the supply book, known by the classifications of “basic, non-basic and directed.” The items in the first and second categories were the most requested by families, who stood in long lines from early morning to be able to get everything from a velocipede or a rope train to a pair of skates. The one known as “directed” could consist of a game of Yaquis, a swiss or a rubber doll. The latter were less expensive, but simpler and poorly made.
“Practically all of us kids had the same snacks, the ones that moved from one place to another without falling,” remembers Ana María Cruz, a Santa Clara native who visited private toy stores in search of a small bicycle for her grandson, whose Prices exceed 40,000 pesos. “With that same money I buy him a tablet and entertain themselves with virtual games,” he calculates. “Now in schools they talk naturally about Three Kings’ Day gifts, but in my time that was frowned upon. People who professed the faith were forbidden to mention to their children that the Three Wise Men had brought them toys.”
For her part, Elizabeth, another customer who looks at the offers at a private toy store, laments how bad things have gone: “Before, at least there were some toys in the stores that you could pay for. My daughter has been asking me for a Barbie since December, because many of her friends at school have them, but they cost almost 40 dollars and that is what I earn in two months of work. “She will have to settle for a Creole doll, which is what I can afford, and making a tremendous sacrifice.”
In another of the many establishments that operate under the license of seller of birthday items, there are other less extravagant options, but of artisanal quality, made with recycled plastic. Yandro Mena, who transports all types of artifacts made from the reuse of this material in his mobile cart, agrees that they are not that economical either. “They are not very pretty,” the seller acknowledges. “As they are made from molds, they sometimes come out with defects and do not have that shine of outside toys.”
In recent times, some enterprises have emerged in Cuba that reuse wood or plastic to create toys, especially for educational purposes, but many of the mothers interviewed agree that these are not the gifts that most of their children ask for. Three Kings Day. “Customers with money have come here and take three or four of the most expensive dolls, but they are the least,” says Liudmila, the salesperson at the imported toy store. “I also have children, and every day I suffer when I see the children who leave crying inconsolably when they pass by here.”
