I won’t talk.

I could make you talk, but boys, boys. Torture? No, he has a job and is being a good employee, we should leave him alone.

Thank you!

All right, no torture. Still, Sven, I am now burning with questions. Burning! You have to tell us what you’re working on! Please? Cartoon tie-in toys? Those are always fun!

No they aren’t.

What do you mean they aren’t?

Tie-in toys can suck, Mark.

Why are you both getting mad?

This is about …

Don’t say it!

He-Man?

Argh!

What is the problem with He-Man?

What is the problem? What is the problem? Did you ever watch He-Man?

Even I watched the He-Man.

Right. Everyone watched He-Man, Jake. Only you had a problem.

Untrue! Look. The show was a lot of fun, and you wanted to get the toys, because the show was so much fun.

Fun? It was all right.

Jacob here adored that show. We were kids. He watched it every day after school. You couldn’t play with him when that show was on. But, and this is important, he had only ever seen the toys in the TV ads.

What?

My parents were going through a phase. Anti-materialistic. I wasn’t even supposed to go in a toy store. But that passed! And the first thing I asked for was as many He-Man toys as possible.

It was all he would talk about for a week.

Wait, Mark, dearling, here is something I don’t understand. Why did you not get a He-Man toy and let Jacob play with it?

I wondered that myself.

I didn’t like He-Man that much and my parents knew it. Asking for the toy, pushing for a toy I didn’t like, I knew Jake’s parents would give in and buy their kid toys again.

Calculating for a small child.

Because what he really means is: He would only ask for other toys.

Go-Bots ruled!

Go-Bots?

Knock-off Transformers? You liked them?

He loved them.

They were fun! Stupid Transformers weren’t as cool. But that’s not the point! The point is, Jacob got some He-Man toys.

And they sucked. Big bulky toys that didn’t move much and were just these lumps of plastic and … there weren’t fun at all.

So you abandoned He-Man, and lived with this dark bitterness your whole life?

Yes!

But you saw the ads. They had pictures. How could you have not known what they were like?

I just thought it would be different. And then to top it off, Mark set fire to Man-E-Faces.

By accident.

You lie.

There was a barbeque. Jacob was whining about how much he hated the He-Man toys. I was playing with one of them. They did suck. But I didn’t…

You threw him into the fire.

I tripped.

So you claim.

You two need couples counseling. But what has any of this got to do with finding out what Sven is working on?

Yeah! Sven!

No, tell me more about your He-Man fetish, Jacob.

Ha! What are you working on Sven?

If I tell you, it can never leave this apartment. Promise?

Of course.

Yeah, man!

Oh, dearling, for sure.

All right.

TO BE CONTINUED