Remember the Christmases when all you had to worry about with a children’s toy was putting it together?

Now the true struggle comes from freeing the toy from its packaging.

With their combinations of taped boxes, twisted then knotted then twisted some more plastic-coated wires, vacuum-sealed plastic wrap, staples, and in some cases a dial that must be twisted, pulled and turned in a simultaneous fashion that resembles both a bank vault and a particularly difficult child-safe cap on a medicine bottle, these toy packages are like the old riddle wrapped in a mystery coated in an enigma.

In some ways, this toy packaging reminds me of some arcane puzzle piece from a book like “The Da Vinci Code” or some such thriller. 

One wrong move and the toy’s head may pop off. 

Or the more you twist the wiring that’s pinning down Barbie better than chains holding King Kong, the more it becomes a tangled knot. 

Once you have figured, analyzed and deduced how to successfully make your way through the packaging’s series of obstacle courses, instead of learning a great mystery from history, you have successfully freed a plastic Transformer.

Still, opening the packaging can be more nerve-wracking than James Bond sweating out the dismantling of a bomb.

While you’re trying to figure out this one package, more toys and their packages are piling up beside you as a bunch of children zonked out from stockings of too many chocolate-marshmallow Santa Clauses are threatening a full-scale riot beside your recliner.

Twist one wrong wire, and the entire family could disintegrate into anarchy right there in front of grandma and the ceramic Nativity scene.

If you have children, and this being Christmas, alas, you know there is little exaggeration in these remarks. Still, I don’t know why toys are now contained in such packaging.

Perhaps, it is to protect them from shoplifters. I would imagine if someone wants them, they would steal the entire package and open it at a later time and location.

Perhaps, it is to protect the toys from children who may otherwise play with the merchandise in the aisles of the store and then return them damaged to the shelves.

I don’t know.

Perhaps, it’s just a way of tormenting parents. Maybe the packaging is a little immediate punishment for spoiling one’s children at Christmas.

I’ve considered handing the packaging back to the children and saying with great excitement, “Oh! Looooook! Your toy is inside this neat-o, peachy-keen game! It says right here, stand back you don’t need to read this, it says, ‘Test your skills! Are you as agile as Spider-Man? Are you as strong as Superman? Do you have the detective abilities of Batman? Can you do it? Can you free your toy?’”

I have considered making up such a challenge as if it were part of the packaging. Set the children on a course of marketing-packaging adventures and then let them become all the more capable whilst I settle back all the wiser in my recliner with a few chocolate-marshmallow Santas for breakfast …

Dream on, me bucko! Who am I kidding?

Such a declaration would be met with cold, silent children’s faces followed by a revolt of frustration and bleak despair as they wrestle with the packages. That’s no way for a kid to experience Christmas.

No, that’s the way a parent must experience Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times.