Build-A-Bear

Last week, as a birthday treat, my daughter chose to go to Build-A-Bear Workshop and make herself a new teddy bear. I'd been there with her before a couple of years ago, and cynically thought it a very effective way to get people to pay three- or four-times over the usual price for a stuffed toy, whilst getting the schmuck customer to actually do the work of assembling it instead of some underpaid ten-year-old in a Korean sweatshop. This year though I had a slightly different interpretation. Let me describe to you the process so you can see what I mean.

First, the child chooses a "skin" for her new toy. You can get traditional bears, or other critters such as dogs or pandas, or even characters from movies such as Alvin and the Chipmunks. Then the child may optionally choose a "voice" - a little box of electronics which roars when pressed, or says "mama" or various other options.

Then they must choose a "heart". One choice was a box of electronics which beats when pressed. You feel the pulsation quite clearly. My daughter thought this was rather creepy, and so did I (but nonetheless I can think of quite a few uses for such a thing. I don't know if you can purchase just a heart from the store, or if they will only sell it as part of a bear. I'll bet I could find them on the internet). Anyway, my daughter chose a red silk heart.

A member of staff then instructs the child to rub the heart between her hands "to warm it up". Then to hold it next to her heart "to fill it with love". And finally to kiss it on both sides "to seal in the love". Then it is inserted in the skin along with the voicebox, and the staff member fills the bear with fluff and ties it off to seal it shut.

There are a few other steps. Briefly, the child brushes the bear under jets of air to fluff it up, names the bear, fills in a "birth certificate", may optionally buy clothes and accessories for the bear, and gets to take it home in a house-shaped box complete with windows and doors.

I was struck by how closely this process resembled the making of a hand or a sachet or a poppet. Into a carefully chosen bag (which may resemble a person or creature) are placed specially chosen items. In witchcraft these might be herbs, dirt, slips of paper with things written on them, fingernails, whatever. The spellcaster might have to perform ritual actions over some of these contents, or over the whole bag. These steps imbue the item with magical power.

Do you see what I am getting at? The process of building a bear (rather than buying one from Toys-R-Us for a fraction of the price) endows it with extra significance for the child. Such a bear is more likely to become especially loved and treasured rather than piled on a shelf with all the other random meaningless teddies. And if the child ever feels sad or is hurt or lonely, the magically-empowered bear will have extra powers to cheer and heal the child because of the mojo in it. This is real magic, albeit a very plastic, commercialised version. But this time I was happy to hand over the extra money.