Bear Toys

2016 has been the year of the doom themes and the themes have been brought out of the theme box as toys are out of a toy box. And like any good toy box when one toy stops working or gets boring it can be put back in the box and replaced with a newer exciting one.  It certainly feels as though the rate of cycling through the popular bear toys in the last few weeks is seeing a market unsure as to which one actually works. But let's have a look in the box


China - Brio train set.

It's an ageless classic. If the modern newfangled toys are out of batteries fetch it out of the cupboard and build a story to fit your own arguments with all your favourite pieces - The SHCOMP station, the currency curves, the debt tunnel and the capital flight points. If you have enough pieces you can even extend it to Australia.

High Yield - The chemistry set.

You are given grown up looking vials and wraps of exciting sounding ingredients that in themselves are fairly innocuous with instructions on how to make them react with each other. The mission of course for most users is to make the biggest bang and to do this you raid your dad’s weedkiller supplies. Though the set is pretty tame, when someone manages to produce an explosion the set is banned from the shops.

Recession - The Lily Drone.

This is the toy I ordered last year because as soon as it was announced it was an obvious 'must have'.  Did it arrive? No, there was something wrong with the original design and though it's now promised to arrive a further four months down the line, I am waiting to see if it ever turns up.

Oil prices - The Slinky.

Push it down the stairs and it keeps going down on its own. Pretty boring really as no one has found a way to make a slinky go up. Not even the Russians. In the end the thing gets in such tangled mess it ends up unused.







Negative interest rates. - The phone game app.

It came free promising to be really awesome but charges you more and more as you play. The final bill is unexpected, huge and certainly not worth your time wasted on the game.


Greece - An old power rangers watch

It had an alarm on it that someone once set but never knew how to cancel. It beeps loudly and regularly from a box somewhere in the cupboard but rather than find it and fix the 'off' function it’s easier to ignore until its batteries finally die.







Italian banks - Tonka Toys. 

You are sure that you broke this 5 years ago but there it is still chugging along. The tyres have come off the wheels, the string in the crane has gone and it is chipped and dented to hell. But no matter how hard you try to break it it’s still going and available for fun when the going gets tough.




Deutsche Bank CoCos - The oversized remote control car. 

Fast and exciting for all of week crashing around into the furniture but the batteries quickly die and replacing them costs a fortune, so it’s left in the cupboard with that huge bank of expensive batteries slowly corroding and leaking over all the other toys.





Total Global Debt - The jigsaw 

When it's a rainy day and none of the other toys can be found get out a trusty old jigsaw and create your own picture using 1000s of different shaped pieces. Bang the pieces hard enough and they will fit but the picture you create might not reflect the one on the box.









US politics - The dust at the bottom of the box

Desperation sets in and the box is empty. Apart from the dust in the bottom. This trusty dust may appear to be dull and boring to the rest of the planet but a seasoned dust modeller can have hours of endless fun fabricating the most convoluted shapes from political statistics and opinion polls to create a wonderful tale as to why the US and hence the world is screwed.