Oct.15.2008 Quote of the Day
Maryland is giving sex offenders stickers that say “No candy here” in the hopes that kids won’t come in and get diddled.
“Halloween provides a rare opportunity for you to demonstrate to your neighbors that you are making a sincere effort to change the direction of your life,” the letter states.
[via]
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Oct.10.2008 The 7 most delightfully perverse toy commercials
As a child, there’s so much that goes over your head. For example, look at these seven commercials that you might not think much of as a kid that now seem a little, shall we say, off.
Mr. Bucket has a love-hate relationship with your balls
I don’t really get how this game would be fun in any situation (here, put these balls in a bucket…HAHA IT FELL OUT, what fun!) but Mr. Bucket makes it seem captivating. And vaguely like a dog in a bathtub.
It’s so whimsical the way he requests balls being put in any open orifice. Singing and dancing around, just begging for you to toss them inside of him. It’s like hanging out with the male members of the cast of Rent at their show afterparties.
The Hulkamania Workout Set will make you get sweaty and shirtless with grown men
Hulkamania was a big thing for kids in the 80s. Hulk Hogan taught life lessons, won championships, did copious amounts of steroids…so of course the then-WWF wanted to pass his ideologies onto kids. Through the Hulkamania Workout Set (in a commercial that, oddly, didn’t feature Hulk Hogan, but rather his archnemesis, Paul Orndorff).
I can only imagine this boy’s father coming in to the room at the end of the commercial…
“Son, why is there a giant hole in the wall? And a shirtless man? And why are you also shirtless? Oh you’re just working out…whew! Welp, back to the living room, where I drink copiously and ignore any loud noises. Parenting is hard!”
The Baby Wee-Wee loves indecent exposure
There have been a ton of dolls that pee. I guess that’s fine enough because kids like dolls that excrete things like urine or vomit or blood or chocolate sauce for whatever reason. But this commercial just leaves no mystery to how things work.
So if you’ve ever wanted to see a child doll’s penis leaking fake urine, congratulations! You can now cross that off your Mr. Bucket list. I don’t know why it’s so cute when a doll does it though. Every time I pull down my pants in front of grade schoolers it’s a “problem” and “arrest” and often “prison sentence” followed by a “Megan’s Law”. These injustices will not be forgotten.
Sep.23.2008 9 wholly unnecessary licensed children’s products
Just because kids are idiots who’ll buy anything with their favorite character’s face slapped on the box doesn’t mean that toy companies should take advantage of them. Here’s some of the most odious licensed crap to have ever been hawked as “fun” or “worth buying”.
TOYS
WWF Thumb Wrestlers
What boy didn’t grow up and enjoy a flirtation with wrestling at some point in his life? And what boy doesn’t enjoy a good bout of physical competition of any sort? So you tie those two things together, add one plastic Hulk Hogan and one plastic Roddy Piper (because it’s logical to make one of the only free games people can play less cost-effective) and presto! You get this:
At first glance, you’d think Hogan and Piper must have also spent some time in the showers with Kamala because there’s no way of explaining their overly generous rectums otherwise. Fortunately, it’s okay…the holes are actually in the spine of the toys, not the bung. Still, thumb wrestling seems so much less innocent when there’s shirtless men involved and victory seems to entail forcibly sodomizing your opponent.
Spider-Man Web Shooters
One can only assume that Hasbro bought companies that had an excess of both rubber gloves and silly string when releasing this poor excuse for Spider-Man’s web. Or they just wanted a quick buck, which is stunning for a multinational corporation.
You could certainly see the appeal as a child of wanting to be like Spider-Man, with his web slinging him around, sticking from building to building. Then you can see less of an appeal when you actually buy the product and end up with one gloved hand (like Michael Jackson) shooting a sticky fluid at young young male friends while pretending that it’s web (also like Michael Jackson).
BOARD GAMES
The Simpsons Don’t Have a Cow boardgame
Of course, the first thing that comes to mind with The Simpsons is how careful they are with their brand. Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox were never ones to latch the Simpsons name onto any old piece of crap, of course. So clearly a Simpsons dice game is going to be as revolutionary and unique as the show was.
Roll the 8 cubes which have pictures each of the 5 Simpsons. Try to match classic combinations like Homer and Marge, Bart and Homer or the 3 Simpson kids.
Players bet either against or with the dice roller. Losing bets go to the roller, winning bets come from the bank.
So hold on. This isn’t even a board game…it’s not even craps. It’s basically you rolling dice with little yellow people’s faces on them (which, for the record, you had to STICK ON YOURSELF…lazy child laborers at the factory not doing it for me), hoping that certain combinations come up. You wouldn’t see Ashy Larry with such an inferior product in the back alleys of Brooklyn or at the World Series of Dice, I guarantee you that much.
FOOD AND SNACKS
Ninja Turtles Vanilla Pudding Pies
Image: X-Entertainment
I might be completely off base here, but I remember a different version of this pie pictured above that was yellow on the outside with green ooze on the inside. And even if that was just one of my drug-fueled 5 year-old hallucinations (of which there are many), this is still pretty heinous. Green foods of any sort are just gross, even if you’re a little kid and you really enjoy heinous things. Even ketchup, which is pretty much as simple a sell as you can get, couldn’t get something green off the ground…Heinz’s green ketchup line was discontinued in 2006.
Honestly, I don’t know why the Ninja Turtles made such a strong push towards food. I’m not sure how much stock I can put in the flavor habits of mutants who enjoyed thing like peanut butter and sardines on their pizza. Check out some of their other heinous foods here.
Sep.05.2008 The 9 most eerily cultlike kids shows
These days, children’s TV doesn’t take many chances. Shows are so concerned with being boycotted or sued that you get stuff like Dora the Explorer hanging out with a talking map cleverly named “Map”. But it hasn’t always been that way. Check out these shows and some of the creepy cultlike premises they were based on.
Fraggle Rock
Aired: HBO, 1983-87
Cult interests: Elaborate musical performances, living like Al Qaeda
The Fraggles were an odd group, held together by a dreamy, guitar-playing leader named Gobo. He was usually pretty even-tempered, presumably excluding the times he played Wonderwall for Fragglegals Red and Mokey in an effort to coerce them into “dream sharing” together (you see, Fraggles could share a common dream by laying together with heads touching as they go to sleep). And they were a cohesive unit, other than Wembley, the “out there” Fraggle. In this clip, he’s daring to fly.
Look at the way the Fraggles seem disgusted by how Wembley dares to be different or unconventional. So dismissive they are. Then again, when your cultish cohesion leads to beautifully performed numbers like the Fraggle Rock theme, I guess that’s a sacrifice you can afford to make.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Aired: Syndicated/CBS, 1987-1996
Cult interests: Weapons training, cross-promotional ventures on everything from bath bubbles to pies with green goo in them
A group of immature, driftless mutant turtles are held together by two things: the rigid structure of martial arts and Splinter, their mutant rat father figure (who was basically just a random dude with no real relevance to their lives). Even their theme has an odd brainwashed type of repetition to it.
Donatello could have been a great scientist. Leonardo could have been the first Turtle-American nominee for President. Raphael could have been a famous personality. Michaelangelo…was kind of a retard, but he’d have figured it out. They all could have done great things, but instead they were living in a sewer, eating pizza with weird crap like peanut butter and polar bear entrails on it, being forced basically into slave heroism, and hoping that April O’Neil would through them a pity boning.
On the plus side, Uncle Phil from the Fresh Prince was the voice of Shredder in the original cartoon. Man, you learn all kinds of crazy things on the Internet.
Power Rangers
Aired: FOX, ABC, Disney, ABC Family, Disney again…1993-wow this thing is still going
Cult interests: Robots saying “ay yay yay”, bad voice dubbing
This is an odd one because, of all these shows on the list, the kids who made up the original Power Rangers were the most normal. They were good looking, athletic, charismatic, intelligent. But the siren song of controlling giant robots and listening to a talking floating head and his robot domestic partner was too much of a lure to keep these kids on the straight and narrow. I mean look at Zordon, the floating talking head in question, in his glory in this oddly enrapturing clip below.
Look at him, all floaty. Dreamlike. Who wouldn’t be sucked into that? Plus I’d get to learn kickass martial arts and drive around a badass robot (or a frog if you’re the black dude). Huh, you know, other than the always being on call and constantly having to explain to your parents why you smell like sparks and oversized monster, seems like a sweet deal. You have to wonder though what the Rangers’ Angel Grove was like before all this. Were the monsters just integrated in society? What was Zordon up to? I’m going to guess a lot of daytime TV.
Sep.03.2008 Barney has a filthy mouth
I saw this on Digg this morning and thought it was funny enough to post on its own mettle. You may recall that censored version of The Count from Sesame Street’s theme, this is in the same vein, albeit slightly more perturbing since the kids are in on the act.
As if there weren’t enough reasons to not want oversized purple dinosaurs in your life. Look at him there with those soulless eyes. How can you trust him with your children? Aren’t his people supposed to be extinct? Why isn’t Chris Hansen looking into this???
Aug.22.2008 China’s pretty awesome at the Olympics
While watching the coverage on NBC, you may sit back and wonder, “Gee, how are the Chinese so good at so many sports?” The answer is the same as that shitty joke about how you get to Carnegie Hall…practice, practice, practice.
No, this isn’t my basement. It’s the Chinese training camp for young Olympians. And they don’t seem too delighted. But hey, fuck ‘em, they don’t look like me and they make delicious sodium-filled food! USA USA USA!
[More vaguely depressing images here]
Jul.08.2008 Beer Pong video game has trouble a-brewin’
See what I did there? Man I am clever. Because it’s beer, and beer is brewed. Anyway someone developed a Wii game about beer pong. But Connecticut’s attorney general isn’t pleased with its release.
Connecticut’s attorney general isn’t happy that a video game called “Frat Party Games: Beer Pong” was rated suitable for children as young as 13.
Richard Blumenthal said Monday that the Entertainment Software Rating Board made a mistake by clearing the game for young teens and he worries other games in the yet-to-be-released Frat Party Games line will also be approved for those same gamers.
“Beer Pong” was designed by Las Vegas-based JV Games Inc. as a downloadable game for Nintendo Co.’s popular Wii game system.
JV Games Vice President Jag Jaeger informed Blumenthal last month that the company is renaming the game “Pong Toss” and eliminating all references to alcohol.
The company’s Web site still promotes the game as “Beer Pong,” but that’s supposed to change soon.
“We stopped this game, but that is only a minor victory if it is followed by others,” said Blumenthal, who believes the game glorifies alcohol abuse and binge drinking.
Video clip from the EVIL EVIL Beer Pong Wii game. Alcohol = the devil’s drink.
I guess it’s kind of silly to promote drinking to minors but at the same time, calling something “Pong Toss” just sounds dumb, so I’m not sure whose side to take. Last summer, my godmother had told me about how my two little cousins (ages 8 and 10 respectively) saw one of their friend’s older brothers playing beer pong with friends. So they started playing it too. Not with beer, but with water. On the one hand, it’s awesome to think that my little cousins will be so well-trained with beer pong by the time they’re able to drink beer. On the other hand, it’s kind of disturbing that they’re well on the way to getting deep-dicked at a frat party. Possibly before they get a driver’s license. Sigh, kids these days. Always getting deep-dicked.
