Holiday season 2011 is quickly approaching, and despite your feeble insistence that no halls be decked prior to Thanksgiving, the holiday buying shit season is in full swing. And with holiday shit buying season comes a confusing barrage of commercials for new toys, some of which immediately strike the sophomoric consumer as — to put it delicately — suggestive. Here’s our rundown of toys that look more appropriate for the aisles of Toys in Babeland than Toys ‘R’ Us.
Microphones. All of them.
Dear toy companies who make kid sized microphone toys: stop making them pink or blue or covered with pictures of Dora the Explorer and changing the end to hot pink and putting three buttons on the side. All you’re doing is making something that looks like a branded Tamagotchi Magic Wand 4 Kidz.
Even “boy” microphones fail at avoiding sexual suggestion. As funny as it would be to autotune oneself as with the new I Am T Pain microphone toy, no one’s kid should want to be T Pain at least until either ball droppage or menarche. Call me old fashioned, but children should not aspire to be in love with a stripper or know how what a reverse cowgirl is.
FAO Schwartz Wooden Pounding Bench Children love hitting things with other things. When my brother was little, his favorite thing used to be smashing casserole dishes and then laughing with delight as my mom ran to scoop him up so he wouldn’t cut his toddler feet.
That being said, “wooden pounding bench” sounds like the name of something featured in an early episode of CSI: Miami. David Caruso is investigating the murder of a high priced prostitute at an underground sex club for the rich and famous. She died on something called “a pounding bench,” one of the show’s nameless extra’s would say. “Looks like we found something even more deadly than the cocaine they were running through here,” he’d respond, removing his glasses, “pound for pound.”
Yeeeow.
Golden Kung Fu Cannon This is the perfect toy for kids who love to spend their free time shooting things out of something that looks like how Ol’ Dirty Bastard always imagined his penis would look in heaven.
Sweet Talkin’ Ken.
It took me approximately 10 seconds to record “Let’s fuck!” in a scary Frank Booth voice and have it played back to me in a much perkier (but still scary) demon Ken-as-Frank Booth voice. Seeing as I’m Luddite and therefore technologically inept, we can only assume that savvy tweens will steal this from their younger siblings and use him for evil faster than Sweet Talkin’ Ken can sing “Deutschland über alles.”
Lite Sprites I first became aware of Light Sprites’ existence when I spent a day at Six Flags back in September. There are screens all over the place there so that kids know what they should be pestering their parents about while standing in line, and the screens alternately play terrible music and commercials for toys with no educational value. This was one of the shilled toys.
Anyway, the “light wand” has probably already been used in a weird porn.
Various soft sword fight type implements
Kids will learn to hit each other just fine over the course of their lives without being encouraged to swing semi soft elongated sword toys at each other.
This should wait until at least college.
My Keepon One of the main problems with My Keepon is that its name sounds kind of like “My Tampon.”
The other problem with My Keepon is that its product description makes it sound like the most advanced marital aid ever created—
You’ll never get tired of watching My Keepon dance to any style of music, from slow ballads to pop music. Each performance is an original and unique interpretation. With an array of touch sensors underneath his playful textured skin, My Keepon responds to poking, patting, squeezing or tickling by looking around, showing his mood and making expressive sounds.
It’s elongated and the end moves around to whatever music you play. It’s sensitive to touch! Instead of penis hats, why not carry a My Keepon to bars during the next bachelorette party you attend? At least someone there would be able to dance.
Everything Nerf makes
To be fair, grown up adult-style guns are basically explodable metal dicks, but kid guns are marketed in an almost comically phallic way; it’s impossible to walk down the “boy” aisle at a toy store without feeling inundated. “OVER THREE FEET LONG!” shrieked one box. The Air Zone Punisher box features a stern faced boy balancing his toy gun on his pelvis, Sly Stallone style. All of these boys on the gun boxes are very serious about subduing you with their soft, squishy fury. All of the guns advertise POWER and BLASTING and the such.
Freud would have a foam darted field day with the toy gun industry.
Green Lantern Power Slingers COSMIC CLAW
Whoever designed this toy went out of their way to make it… veiny.
Fisher Price Elmo Tickle Hands
The product description sort of speaks for itself-
When your child touches a surface to tickle, the Tickle Hands start to vibrate and move allowing your child to feel like he can tickle just like Elmo! But thats not all! Touch Elmo’s nose again and its time to dance! Elmo will give instructions on how to do his brand new dance called, “The Tickle Hand Groove!” This new dance encourages kids to get moving and grooving!
I need an adult.
Generator Rex battle ram cycle and Rex figure
Any time the word “ram” is featured right in the product name, you know it doubles as a substitute penis.
CSI DNA strand kit
Not necessarily sexually suggestive, but let’s hope that any kid who gets this for Christmas isn’t sophisticated or curious enough to explore the reasons one might need to extract DNA or compare it to an existing sample. Paternity test? Murder scene? Rape? Un, genealogy?
