Whale Eating Fish

Mmmn. I am a simple soul. If you haven't guessed this already. With the pure heart of a child. A-hem...

So one of my favourite gifts of the season, given to me by The Old Man, is a tin toy called "Whale Eating Fish".

Simple me thought that the name on the box meant that the toy represented that very thing... some kind of spunky little fish creature capable of swallowing a giant aquatic mammal aka "a whale".

Wow! That would be some toy.

But No. This Chinese-made toy has a name transformed in translation. It is in fact meant to be a whale that is eating a fish. In my defence, it has to be said that this whale looks mighty like a carp.

It is a hilarious toy for simple-minded souls like me. Hilarious and grim. You pull Small Fish out from Big Fish's mouth... on its cord.... and set them both down on a flat surface... Let go and ... Whoosh... Big Fish pursues Small Fish... and with grim inevitability ... swallows it up into its mouth... Where you found it in the first place.

This is a horribly circular story. Not least when... as pointed out by The Old Man... the engine of destruction for Small Fish is itself... Small Fish being the toy's motor that drags the momentous Big Fish behind it... leading to Small Fish's own inevitable and unhappy fate.

There must be a lesson in there for some of us.