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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
