Freaky toys for freaky people

It's TOY SEASON. I mean, Christmas, Joyous Noel. But seriously, as my mom told me during our exhausting shopping excursion today, "It's really for the kids." Well, my kid doesn't even know what Christmas means. We don't go to church and he actually doesn't have a concept of God, so for him, Christmas means ordering toys from Santa. He even brought a catalog last year to show Santa the exact makes and model numbers. He's very practical, my kid.

I wanted to bring my movie camera into the toy store so many times this year, but of course I always forgot each time we went. And it's too late now. The shelves are getting picked clean like Christmas carrion. And chances are, even if I'd brought my camera, the toys wouldn't have worked properly. Like the time I walked down a baby-doll aisle at Target and a whole line of dolls "woke up" and started cooing out to me, crying, trying to mechanically climb out of the boxes, designed to look like cribs, and basically scaring the be-Jesus out of me. If I had my camera. They would have just sat there, looking innocent and in need of batteries--I'm sure of it.

So here's a brief round-up of weirdness at the toy store. It's all about the economy. And Baby Jesus, of course.

Fisher Price Bigfoot. No comment. Just see for yourself. Many children would not forgive or forget if you gave this to them. Others would LOVE it, and those are the ones you should watch with an eagle eye at all times.






Barbie Sweet Talking Ken Dollwas just released in time for the holidays and what a find. Girls record sweet-talk into his chest, then push one of three buttons on his back for deep-voiced Ken, medium-voiced Ken, and I guess, girl-voiced Ken. I know when I was a teenager, I would have gotten a lot of use out of this, recording the choices phrases I heard yelled from the quarry-truck drivers as my friends and I walked to school on their route each day. Hearing Sweet Talking Ken bellow unspeakable obscenities back at me would have given me the incentive to throw him over the roof of our house over and over again. How cathartic.










Monster High Dolls. The sexualization of our teenage monster dolls has got to stop, don't you agree?

I haven't watched any Phineas and Ferb but apparently this is a Perry karaoke system. I believe Perry is, judging by his pricey electronics line, some kind of angry blue platypus, though he looks merely perplexed here. Could be because he resembles a footstool more than a karaoke machine. He's also a digital camera and an alarm clock, none of which costs less than $60. Disney Channel markets to children like the free-market system is imploding into a black hole any moment now. You gotta admire their immediacy of action when it comes to leveraging their hit shows.





Face Bank! Eats and burps. Just like a real...face.