Treehumper

Plastics pulled from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have been used to make the newest Toy of the Year!

This year’s Toy Industry Association pick for Toy of the Year is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Kid. Made from 100 percent recycled plastic bits found endlessly circulating in the North Pacific Gyre — commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — these dolls make a fabulous gift for any youngster.

The garbage patch, which some estimates say cover more than 5 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, has never produced such a fun and exciting toy before. In the Toy Industry Association’s award announcement, they wrote that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Kid “will almost definitely not fall apart in your child’s hands, and thus there is a pretty solid chance that she won’t eat little bits of plastic and die like a baby albatross.” Furthermore, they wrote that “only some of the plastics leach bisphenol A and polystyrene onto your child’s hands and mouth, so that’s good too.”

Usually a Toy of the Year announcement sends the winner hurtling off of shelves and produces shortages around the holidays, but this year’s choice trumps that problem as well. There are most likely more than 100 million tons of plastics floating around in the Pacific, so there will be no shortage of material to keep producing the Garbage Patch Kids in the near future.