MyThreeDaughters

The Disney Co. has put us all in a check-mate situation by offering refunds for its Baby Einstein videos.

If only I had watched Baby Einstein videos

It’s typical Disney brilliance, to be honest. They’ll hardly shell out a penny. (I’ll explain shortly.)

See, the orginal inventor of these videos, came up with them because she was a classical music fan, and upon birthing a child, wanted to find a way to enjoy classical music with her offspring. Apparently lacking a CD player, boombox, record player or even a simple radio within reach of an NPR signal, Julie Clark came up with a video.

She eventually sold out to Disney for a figure too high for a writer who grew up without Baby Einstein videos to comprehend. She even, because she had to license the name, made the real Einstein — the dead one — rich. But the problem was that marketing materials sort of suggested that if your kid watched these videos, your kid would be a baby Einstein, or at least smarter than the average nuclear engineer.

So they’re offering refunds, but here’s why they won’t pay out much.

Let’s say you’re a really, really smart parent (say a pediatrician, even): You might’ve figured from the get-go that having your one-year-old staring at flashing images on a video screen isn’t going to make  him or her smarter. You didn’t buy any.

Let’s say you’re just average smart: You might’ve bought a few Baby Einsteins, looked at the tiny figures moving by, and figured it out. Next time a garage sale rolled around, they were gone.

Now, let’s say you’re a few bricks…let’s say your elevator doesn’t…let’s just say you blame the world because they didn’t have Baby Einstein videos when you were growing up and you had to get one of those Sally Struthers degrees?

You might think Baby Einstein videos were the greatest parenting invention since the truly brilliant Diaper Genie. And you ain’t sending those videos back to Disney — even if they do refund you whatever $15.99 times four is.