Teeny tiny toys?

We all want to be more charitable at Christmastime, don't we? (Just say yes and nod for now.) And Toys for Tots is without question one of America's favorite charities. Who doesn't want to give a child in need some Christmas cheer? This year you can donate a toy more easily than ever, by selecting what you would like to give and paying for it on the charity's site. No need to break quarantine! 

Or maybe you can donate even more easily... by eating chips! 

When you purchase specially marked packages of Frito-Lay snacks, you give a gift to Toys for Tots! "Give a Gift with Every Bag" it says. Which makes it sound like 1 bag = 1 toy for the cause, at least to me.

Only on the back of the bag in fine print does one discover that a purchase of a specially marked bag results in a 2.5-cent donation to Toys for Tots, capped at $500,000. My math isn't great, but I think that means they have to sell 200 million bags of chips to hit the $500,000 cap. Now, this is not as impossible as it sounds, since according to Food Insider the company (a division of Pepsi) makes 16 billion bags of snacks per year. Still, Toys for Tots doesn't even list Pepsi or Frito Lay on its Corporate Sponsors page, and no mention of this fund-raiser is found in the Frito Lay site's newsroom section. 

I'm in favor of corporate giving, but making people feel like they're really participating when they're only giving the equivalent of 2.5 cents is just stupid. They'd have to be pretty tiny toys to buy them for 2.5 cents. 

This is like my exposé of the Box Tops for Education program in 2017, when I realized that if everyone in town contributed the maximum allowed box tops (each worth a dime) to our local school system (capped at 200,000 box tops), it would fund the education of ONE STUDENT. Actually, not even one student; about 88% of one student. But I dutifully clipped the box tops for donations to our parish school, and guess what? The archdiocese closed it anyway.

The late Don Imus used to grouse that companies that wanted to make a donation should just make the damn donation, not tie it to consumer purchases or other incentives. I think he was probably right. 

I'm just tired of everything not being what it is supposed to be. Charity programs that don't help, voting machines that don't tabulate votes, reality shows that are fake, entertainment that isn't any fun, lockdowns that don't stop the spread of disease, governors who don't govern, district attorneys who turn criminals loose, churches that don't teach faith in God, an ACLU that doesn't support free speech anymore, sports leagues that produce crap sports, news media that don't report news. It's all image, no substance, or worse, substance contrary to the image. 

I'll send Toys for Tots a buck and forgo the 40 bags of snacks I would have to buy to make the same donation. Frito Lay will have to muddle through.