A Redditor took to the platform to vent about a popular toy brand that has also raised some eyebrows.
Posting in the r/Anticonsumption subreddit, they shared a picture showing "Mini Brands" toys and expressed their confusion about what their purpose was.
"Mini brands?" they said in the post title, "I do not see the point to these."
Mini Brands are part of the "blind box" trend in toys that has exploded in recent years. In them, you get a mystery box that contains a random toy from a series of toys or collectibles, with the potential to find one that is incredibly rare.
In the case of Mini Brands, the collectibles are miniature replicas of the packaging of hundreds of different name-brand items, from Dawn soap to Coca-Cola to FedEx shipping packaging.
While Mini Brands are a popular collectible, they are a troubling window into the modern consumer landscape. They serve no purpose beyond being collected or being used as props in dollhouses, and their blind box nature encourages people to buy as many of them as possible to make sure they get the one they might be looking for, while also creating waste by giving you duplicates of ones they may already have, or may not want.
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They represent consumption for the sake of consumption, and even their packaging generates a disproportionate amount of plastic waste. They come in plastic balls, which are immediately discarded, generating plastic waste that feeds into the creation of microplastic pollution. Microplastics can hinder crop growth and have been linked to serious health concerns in humans.
Commenters were quick to add their two cents to the equation.
"Make things very smol. Smol is cute," one said. "All those mystery package toys are so obnoxious, and then advertising ginormous brands on top of that? F'ing garbage."
"They're not even dollhouse or barbie scale," said another. "Utterly useless."
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"I bought these for my kids and I can confirm they are garbage," said a third. "I used to love tiny dollhouse stuff but this didn't hit like that at all. My kids opened them and pretty much threw them right in the trash. This is a terrible product and I was bad to buy it."
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