A few weeks ago I got an email from a Canadian named Darren that said, “Hey, do you want to buy this children’s game featuring a doll of Osama bin Laden?” Darren had found it in a secondhand store in Alberta shortly after 9/11 and held onto it ever since, but with the tenth anniversary of the towers collapsing he figured it was time to pass it on.
I’m no terror-memorabilia hoarder like Martin Parr, but I felt the same pull you feel when you’re at the pound and you lock eyes with a ragged but adorable puppy and think, “I have to have it!” Except instead of a puppy, it’s a barrel that shoots out Osama. Diff’rent strokes, I guess.
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When I finally got my hands on it, I was a bit disappointed: The spring mechanism that kicks Osama out of his barrel home was broken, so you couldn’t actually “play” the game; Osama himself was pretty badly chipped; and the box was as worn out and stained as you’d expect something to be after spending a decade in the back of someone’s game closet. Still, the box said, “BIN OF FUN; BIN THERE; BIN LADEN” and “Suspense! Luck!!”
The origins of this “Afghan Crisis” game are obscure. It was apparently made in China, but there’s no indication of what company manufactured it, or why they thought a toy Osama bin Laden would be a hot-selling item. Some basic internet research informed me that this was a variation of a game called Pop-Up Pirate, which seems to be designed for very small or very stupid children. You play the game by sticking knives into the barrel until one of them hits a button that causes the pirate to spring out of the top, and whoever makes the pirate jump wins. Or loses. Or something. It doesn’t matter, because no one will ever play this boring game. Kids would rather sit listlessly in front of an X-Box, and for good reason. (There’s now a Wii version, which seems about as fun as flipping a virtual coin over and over.)
As a game, this thing is a piece of trash, but what about as a surprisingly subtle piece of foreign-policy commentary? Could this “Afghan Crisis” be an accurate metaphor for the way the US pursued the War on Terror? After all, as we invaded Afghanistan, then Iraq, we were basically just sticking swords into a plastic barrel and hoping Osama popped out. Maybe whatever third-world memorabilia merchant created this game wasn’t trying to make a quick buck; maybe he was trying to warn America that finding Osama would take patience, luck, and not necessarily skill. Was “BIN THERE” a cryptic message that US policy should be more concerned with the rise of China than an all-out search for a bearded asshole who, as far as we knew, could actually be in a plastic barrel? On balance, no, probably not.
So what am I doing with this odd piece of terrorist kitsch? Basically nothing. It had a prominent place on my table for a while, but the cat—who apparently loves America and hates terrorists—kept knocking it over, so now it’s sitting on my shelf as a reminder of three separate mistakes: Firstly, that someone made a bizarre knockoff of a terrible game; secondly, that the US really fucked up in the Middle East; and thirdly, that I bought this piece of crap. Anyone want it?