“I KNOW HOW the Moon was created.”
For the briefest of moments, I thought we were finally going to learn the truth about that mysterious glowing orb in the night sky but it turns out little Zara from Tyrone was about to repeat the official story. Something about a collision between Earth and another planet. So NASA got to you too, Zara?
Patrick Kielty’s second Late Late Toy Show passed off without disaster, much to the chagrin of every adult with a Twitter account bashing away at their keyboards like Kermit the Frog at his typewriter, each vying to be the one to craft that standout meme of the night. Twitter may be dead, but the #LateLateToyShow hashtag endured over on Bluesky, where adults continue to analyse every frame of the show for any ounce of comedy, intended or otherwise.
As ever, there was no shortage of material. Indeed, this year’s show hit all the notes we’ve come to expect of this bizarre staple of the Irish cultural calendar. Norah Patten showed up to hand out space-trinkets, Irish Olympians Phil Healy and Sharlene Mawdsley took a child to Robin Hood the Smyth’s on Jervis St in aid of the Crumlin children’s hospital, Kielty got through more costume changes than Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour, and a staggering amount of money (over €4,000,000) was made through the Toy Show Appeal. Johnny Sexton even made an appearance to tell us all about the challenges of retirement in a sombre and much-needed reminder of our collective mortality. Hope he’s doing okay.
There was even a book corner, during which one can only assume notorious literacy advocate Ryan Tubridy was sat at home, white-knuckling a shandy and hearing his old lobster costume talking to him through the wardrobe like a Green Goblin mask. Would you jump in his grave as quick, Patrick?
It took less than an hour for the obligatory example of a toy not working — in this case a crystal ball demonstrated by Georgie-Mae — which refused to answer the question of whether Kielty had been a good boy this year. That’s what you get for messing with the occult, Patrick. There’s a time and a place for the dark magic, and that place is The 2 Johnnies Late Night Lock-In.
The promise of this year’s Home Alone theme went largely unfulfilled, in the sense that Patrick Kielty didn’t seem to sustain any life-changing injuries over the course of the evening. There was a child from Wexford whose special interests were WWE and yoga, and for a brief moment one worried that Becky Lynch was about to come out and suplex Patrick Kielty onto the boards of the Montrose stage but thankfully she was busy and Kielty lives to present another day.
In fairness to the team that put this year’s show together, there were moments of true invention. The best friend quiz between BFFs Holly and Phoebe for example, was a neat feature. The only improvement that could have been made was an injection of much-needed tension, pitting the two children against each other for that prized trip to Orlando. The inaugural county parade could also have done with a bit more enmity, but perhaps some purists will tell you that tribalistic fighting is not what the Toy Show is all about.
We would be remiss however, if we didn’t ask: when are we going to address the longstanding Irish epidemic of being unable to clap in time? What’s wrong with us? Thunderstruck by AC/DC is genuinely a song you could use to teach children how to clap in time. We’re not asking you to clap in time with free jazz, guys. The same happened again during a performance of Wagon Wheel, and at this point it seems fair to suggest that we, as a nation, should have our hands bound until we figure out what’s going on.
It should perhaps come as a comfort that in a culture increasingly dominated by smartphone screen-addiction that there remains this cultural product that resolutely continues to foreground books, toys, and kids whose passions seem to lay in the noble profession of egg-salesmanship. It is somewhat mind-blowing the rate at which we can turn out kids who could almost certainly convince the less street-smart among us to part with our life savings for a handful of magic beans.
As always, it’s the personalities of those kids that carry the show – both for the families watching in good-faith at home in their matching pyjamas, and the cynical millennials watching in the hope of some kind of carnage. On that front, the Toy Show has delivered yet again.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say