Well, the holidays have come and gone and most of us have recovered from our injuries.

My daughter was able to finally free her curling iron from the plastic case. We don’t think she’ll need stitches after all.

When she cried over the cuts inflicted by the plastic shards, I could think of nothing but what my grandmother used to tell me: “To be beautiful, you have to suffer.”

I wasn’t as lucky with my set of mineral makeup. Although I did manage to tint my eyes and cheeks by dinnertime, it was difficult with three bandaged fingers. Fortunately, the scar ointment I used didn’t come hermetically sealed.

Why does so much come just that way?

Why is it relatively easy to get to medication that can kill you if you drink a bottle of it, when, in the next aisle, My Little Pony is protected as though it contained yellow cake instead of pink polyurethane?

I know that there was huge and justifiable fear several generations ago surrounding packaging. Several people, including young children, were murdered in 1982 with tainted Tylenol. At that time, the ease with which the nefarious could pollute what needed to be pure was examined. Surveillance was tightened. Packaging was tamper-treated.

All that was good.

And I know that medicines need to be kept out of the eager hands of children. I know that contamination of food leads to hundreds of cases of illness every year.

But why must a baby doll be bound neck, hand, leg and wrist even after we’re able to wrest it from its clear plastic cocoon? The obvious answer is that the genial toy maker is thinking not of us but of himself and the stack of complaints he’ll have to ignore if even one hair on Baby Bountiful is out of place.

He’s thinking of the profit margin that will sink below 100 percent if one Baby B is bashed in.

What about the stack of complaints from parents whose kids sustained ER-worthy injuries getting to the baby doll’s bottle? Is there a special category for those kinds of lawsuits? For this is getting out of control.

Why do I need a chainsaw to get to a tube of sun-block cream when my four-year-old could blithely dump a batch of botulism in the supermarket bagels – which are at his level and protected only by a flip-top lid?

Why do I need only my thumbnail to free all the ingredients I need to cook up a batch of crystal meth but have to attack the shell of the Matchbox cars with a machete?

I’m going to start an investigation: None of the major toy manufacturers and packagers has, as yet – to my surprise – responded to my calls. But I won’t let this defeat me. After all, I prevailed with the cookie frosting, despite that cheerful red tint it has, and nothing will stop me now.