There are many times as a parent that I have worked very hard and been unappreciated by my children. But this time, Soy and I picked the mood and our hard work was rewarded. This thing strapped to Zac's arm is the Ben 10 Ultimate Omnitrix, aka the coolest toy in Zac's universe. Walk into any large retailer and ask for it, you will be told that they can not keep them on the shelves for longer than a day. The fact that we managed to track one down (thanks eBay) and have it delivered before the big day was a miracle.
When Zac first became obsessed with the phenomenon of Ben 10, I was pretty appalled. It doesn't get any more commercial than a Manga-inspired cartoon with 10 different alien characters. There's fighting and evil aliens and lots of running around shouting. Plus they have dreadful names like Rip Jaws and Up Chuck.
But I've watched Zac talk to kids in playgrounds about this stuff, make friends with total strangers because they have Ben 10 shirts on or are speaking in cartoon code words and I realised that when he's a young adult, this is the stuff he will remember from his childhood. These are the TV shows that will define his generation.
So I continue to dislike the show, but I indulge his obsession because I want him to be a child of his own time. And if you saw him playing with the Omnitrix, using it to turn himself into a range of super-charged monsters, you would smile too.
