Tag Archives: Holiday Shopping

Amazon.com “Pick” of the Day: Mr. Potato Head Dolls that Look Nothing Like the Characters They’re Supposed to Look Like

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Mr. Potato Head owes his life to Toy Story. Without his coveted lifetime spot in the Franchise, it’d be difficult for you to find these things anywhere but the bottom of a dirty toy barrel at your local Salvation Army (the one you used to go to for cheap, ironic t-shirts when you were young and didn’t know any better). He had that spot though, and Mr. Potato Head (along with his lovely wife) has taking advantage of every second of the spotlight since.

At first, it was innocent, like every fledgling toy franchise is. It started out with just the male version of the doll, but quickly diversified to add a female, probably due to sheer demand… not very different from the story of Pac-Man and his girl… even Adam and his woman, Eve, much longer ago. A man eventually needs a wife, after all. And it was good.

Smart companies know when their franchise has reached its peak, and know when to stop. Mr. Potato Head had a chance to do this, especially after the popularity of Toy Story. It didn’t really need to change its recipe ever again. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head could meet and fall in love over and over again in children’s rooms all over the world for eternity, and everyone would be happy. Unfortunately, Hasbro got greedy, and decided to turn popular franchises into Potato Heads, creating the grotesque, unidentifiable “creatures” you’re about to see.

1. The Star Wars Potato Head Doll

If I didn’t tell you this was a character from the long-running, beloved ‘Star Wars’ franchise, I’d challenge even the greatest of Star Wars fans to be able to identify this disaster… and I’d throw a lot of money on the table for the person who could do it. Even if I did tell you that this was a Star Wars character, many would still have difficulty. I see a big smile, pretty dark skin (even for a potato), a decent-sized blaster, a long, manly cape, and some kind of strange, poorly designed, unidentifiable utility belt. Huh. Uh… Lando Calrissian I guess?

Nope… we’re looking at Princess Leia. Now, I never thought Carrie Fisher was particularly attractive, but this is an insult. When the only thing you can get right is the shape the actor’s hair (not even the color), you need to take a step back and really think about the following question: If we realistically cannot make this look anything like the real person, should we still go on and make hundreds of thousands of them? My guess is… probably not. Star Wars fanatics have standards, too… just like normal people.

2. The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Potato Head Doll

When you’re planting one of your new Potato Head Dolls on the foundations of a franchise that decided to fast-track a sequel and sacrifice literally everything to get it out early (literally everything… acting, storyline, special effects, continuity), you never really had much of a shot in the first place. Still, stranger things have happened, and it could have maybe been successful. But not this time. Riding the coattails of a doomed movie franchise, the intelligent folks at Mr. Potato Head decided to turn ‘Bumble Bee’ into a Potato Head Doll, to horrifying effect:

Think back to a Halloween you may have had as a child… a Halloween you were extremely ill-prepared for. It was Halloween day, you hadn’t made a costume yet, and all of the stores were sold out of costumes in your size. There were only two hours to go until prime trick or treating time, and you were desperate. So you went into the basement, scoured through old, moldy boxes of broken glass, torn clothing and old Tupperware containers, and you put together a Halloween costume with what you found.

Chances are, it turned out looking like “Bumble Spud” up there. And it was the worst Halloween of all time. Most of the houses probably didn’t even give you candy, because they were too embarrassed of your weak attempt at a franchise costume to even open the door. Mr. Potato Head recreates that awful Halloween for us with “Bumble Spud,” the most disappointing thing any child will receive this Christmas. It’s biggest virtue, perhaps, is that it looks nothing like the Transformers in Revenge of the Fallen. You’d garner even less respect if anyone knew you bought a toy celebrating one of the worst franchise sequels in cinematic history.

3. The Toy Story Potato Head Doll

I know what you’re thinking… “whoa, wait, you’re gonna make fun of Toy Story Mr. Potato Head Doll?!” Don’t worry, friends. I respect the Toy Story Mr. Potato Head more than I respect a lot of human people in this world. What the folks at Hasbro have done in this final segment stands among the greediest things anyone at any company has ever done. Even the good, honest people from Enron would shuffle uncomfortably on their jail cell benches at the sheer amount of greed Hasbro displayed with their newest Potato Head:

Woody. Apparently, having two of the most popular, classic, and nostalgic versions of the Potato Head franchise in your movie isn’t enough. Hasbro wanted to see how much money they could squeeze from Toy Story fans by changing its most popular character into a Potato Head… It really doesn’t get more cocky than this.

I’m not saying that this doesn’t look like Woody. Any self-respecting Toy Story fan would recognize him instantly. That’s not the problem. The problem is that Hasbro is willing to disrespect Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head this much to make a little extra money. Hasbro’s basically coming out and telling Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, “I’m sorry, classic, traditional potato heads that were so funny and awesome in the movie: you’re not enough for us. There are bigger fish in the Toy Story ocean… and we can make more money from them than from you… even if we use your bodies to do it.”

Hasbro, shame on you. Parents: don’t buy your kids these embarrassing, and sometimes even greedy, versions of the potato head dolls. Chances are, your kids won’t even know what they are anyway. Stick to tradition. It’s timeless for a reason.

Amazon.com “Pick” of the Day: The (Gummy) Life Savers Christmas ‘Storybook’

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With the the advance of human civilization all over the world come great increases in population. As a people, we have to learn to not only deal with the often limited amount of space we’re afforded to sort our lives out in, but flourish in it. For some of us, the first opportunity to learn this skill comes in the form of a small dormitory in college, or maybe a shoebox ‘first apartment’ in Manhattan paid for by our new modest, post-college ‘first job’ (if we’re lucky enough to get one, of course).

For most of us, however, the first opportunity we get is at a very young age. You see, for a child, the most valuable pieces of real estate are not found in the ritzy neighborhood you mortgaged your life away to live in… no… they can instead be found in the unnecessarily small neighborhood that is their Christmas stocking.

Its design allows for the storage of very few presents (on purpose, no doubt). If you’re a child with, at the very least, an average level of intelligence, you understand the implications of this tiny amount of space, and try your best to capitalize on it… maximizing the awesome, minimizing the not so awesome. It’s a lot like monopoly. You’ve gotta use your real estate wisely, putting just the right amount of houses in just the right places. Except this is real life and your Christmas can be ruined if you do it wrong.

Some time ago, when we were innocent and didn’t understand too many things, the Life Savers storybook was one of the items most deserving of a piece of the stocking’s available real estate. They came with the real, hard-candy life savers we all used to know and love so well (the exception being butterscotch, which managed to almost single-handedly ruin the entire roll). And they came in the form of a book with a typically awesome Christmas story based on the Life Savers universe.

It’s not 1993 anymore, though. For some reason, Life Savers in its hard candy form haven’t fared too well in the most recent years, and the books they can be found in are all but extinct. Taking their place? Gummy Life Savers “storybooks.” This is a huge problem. Here’s one:

I know what you’re thinking. Looks the same as the ones we had as children, right? Well, you’ve just judged a book by its cover. Actually, you’ve ignored the most important detail on the cover: the word “gummies.” If you’ve ever had a gummy Life Saver, you know what I’m talking about… a horrible, almost flavorless little ring of poor ingenuity.

There is not another candy in the world that gives such wonderful fruits such a bad name. They all taste the same, and they all take about 6 1/2 minutes to chew. The bitter aftertaste lingers, often for weeks. And this book comes with 2 rolls of them… ensuring the rest of your Christmas vacation will not be enjoyable in any sense of the word. But that’s not the whole story. The rest of the story, ironically enough, is that there is no story.

Apparently, the creative team at Life Savers is unable to create a decent narrative storyline with a Christmas theme anymore. Instead, they’ve replaced this usually wonderful section of the book with Christmas “games” – you know the type… the same type you find on the backs of cereal boxes in lieu of the awesome toys you used to find inside the box, before the world got so cheap… the “help Santa get through the maze to his reindeer” or “help Santa unscramble the names of the kids on the “nice list” before Christmas” games. Terrible, horrible, unexciting games that kids don’t ever want to play. And the book’s full of them.

This wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to get if it didn’t take up 45% of your stocking. But these things are huge. And when the rest of the stocking is full of Sweet Tarts’ uninspired, poorly flavored take on the candy cane, you’re in for a rough Christmas morning.

Parents: before you buy what looks like the classic Christmas stocking stuffer you used to know and love as a kid, read the fine print. Chances are, it’s a shell of what is used to be. It’s easy to not notice, but trust me… your kids will. And they won’t ever forget it.

Amazon.com “Pick” of the Day: Whatever You Ordered Too Late

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Today brings you a special edition of the Amazon.com “Pick” of the day posts you’ve seen on here so often. It involves a form of Christmas “gifting” that has gone on in my house for years, and is one I’m sure at least some of you have faced yourselves on the more forgettable, regrettable Christmases of your pasts.

We’re going to move right into a scenario for this post, as it seems the best way to get where I’m going with this without writing 1500 words like I usually do. You’re the parent of young Cindy Lou Michaels, an adorable 6-year old girl with a very modest Christmas list. You see, Cindy Lou lives and breathes Dora the Explorer, the wonderful TV show in which, through an entire season, Dora explores the world and teaches you 3 or 4 arguably useful Spanish words along the way.

All Cindy wants for Christmas is a Dora doll that she can play, eat and sleep with 24 hours a day… one that will utter a few encouraging phrases every once in a while to keep things just interesting enough. Problem is, it’s December 22… 5PM… and you haven’t ordered it from Amazon yet.

You knew you had to order it by 9am on the 22nd to ensure that Amazon’s two-day shipping would bring it to your doorstep by Christmas. Problem is, you went out with some old friends last night and drank… oh I’d say about 6 too many martinis. With your tendency to be hit hard by a hangover after a night of hard drinking, there was no chance you’d wake up before 3PM. In fact, it was a Christmas miracle you made it home at all.

So you start scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. Dora’s all that Cindy wants for Christmas, and you couldn’t even come through on that. You spend the next two days making calls to local stores that might have it, but the wells are dry. Everybody loves Dora. There was never a chance. Christmas day arrives, and Cindy Lou pulls the Dora-sized box (carefully calculated by you, the parent) out from the back of the tree in unmitigated excitement. She tears the wrapping off, opens the box, and sees it.

Are her eyes deceiving her, or is… is that a picture of a Dora the Explorer doll? Unfortunately, Cindy Lou has perfect vision and a sharp enough mind to use it. Yup. You figured the next best thing to giving her the real thing was to give her a picture of the real thing from Google images as a “promise” that the item was coming in the mail in the coming days.

The problem? This is the first Christmas Cindy Lou will remember, and you gave her a piece of paper… one you didn’t even print out in a decent quality… you chose fast draft, because you didn’t care. Sure, she’ll get the doll a few days later and will play with it for years. But it’s not the gift that’s necessarily the most important thing to Cindy Lou. It’s the entire experience of Christmas: the excitement of pulling out a tangible object from a box and being able to play with it incessantly for the remainder of Christmas Day, a historically unexciting afternoon if you don’t have new presents to toy around with.

Instead, she gets a poor quality photo of the doll she was dreaming about playing with the night before to put on the refrigerator so she can stare at it for the next four present-less days. The worst part? So often, parents lie about what happened. “Oh, Honey, the mailman was very sick and wasn’t able to deliver it” or “Oh, sweetheart, Amazon must have lost it in the warehouse” (they didn’t… we don’t lose things at Amazon).

Bang up job, Mom. You didn’t just ruined this Christmas for Cindy Lou. You tarnished the idea of Christmas morning for her, something she won’t ever recover from. Parents: if you’re going to give your kid an “it’s coming soon” picture gift to your child (we don’t recommend that… we think you should order things on time like the parents of happy children do), at least tell them the real reason they don’t have a gift on Christmas morning.

To the parents of Connor, a bright young boy whose only wish was Rock Band: don’t be afraid to mention your family’s troubling legal situation to Connor. Honesty is a better gift than a present somtimes:

To the parents of Sophie, your little superstar who desperately wants a convertible for Barbie, who’s never had a means of transportation around the living room before: don’t be afraid to share the little illegality you’ve been promoting for the past year and a half that finally turned around to bite you:

Trust me, parents: as difficult as it is to share your troubles with your children, they’ll learn a lot from it. And it’ll give them something to think about during the 8 grueling hours of nothingness they’ll deal with after Christmas lunch and until bed. Or, better yet, you can just avoid all of this and order your presents on time for once. Everyone wins!

Amazon.com “Pick” of the Day: Good Luck Mini Pigs

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First and foremost, I’d like to make a quick, sincere apology for my lack of updates the past few days. I was scouring New York City for a job at the cost of a reliable and viable internet connection. Hopefully it pays off! If nothing else, I had a swell time. That should do.

Okay! Today’s item is special in that it’s not necessarily the item itself that needs to be addressed (though it absolutely does), but the quantity of the particular item. I’m not talking modest numbers… maybe 5… maybe 10… of this item. I’m talking hundreds. We’ll get to that later. Today’s item is the Good Luck Mini Pig… or, rather, an entire giant farm’s worth of good luck mini pigs… a tub of 192 to be exact. I guess you can never have too many. Here’s a picture of a few of the little guys:

At this point, I think it’s important to stress that I have no idea when it was decided that little hand-painted, “soft to the touch” pigs were a good luck charm. I always thought good luck only came in the form of a battered, filthy, and often disease-carrying penny you find face up on a sidewalk, one you quickly and worriedly picked up because you didn’t want that cute next door neighbor girl of yours watching you scour the ground for some of the world’s most useless currency… or in the form of an old, dried-out rabbit foot covered in brightly colored troll hair from the mid-1990′s.

The person who was able to get these to become a symbol for good luck is extraordinary. Why little hand-painted pigs? Well, the only reason I can think of is that making these little guys was the man’s only gift in life (an idiot savant of sorts), and he apparently had the clout, friends, or distribution network to get these things to sell. How? It’s hard to say. I don’t know the kinds of people that would support this. Either way, he’s rich and I’m not. So I’ll limit my judgement.

We’re much more interested in the kind of person who is buying a giant tub of these things… 192 in all. 192 good luck mini pigs. The obvious guess is that he (we’ll call him Peter) is buying these for all of his friends who either legitimately need good luck or need a cheap, “I’ll do it because you’re my friend” laugh. The biggest problem with this argument is the wildly unfounded assumption that somebody who believes this strongly in mini pigs has 191 friends (if one is for himself). I don’t even have 192 friends that I’d be comfortable giving one of these to, and I’ve met a lot of people.

So who is he buying them for? Is it possible that they’re all for him? That he’s willing to fork over 75 bucks (I know. Ridiculous.) to be able to scatter these things all over his personal world (home, office, in-laws (assuming he’s married. we probably shouldn’t), car, etc)? How many is Peter bringing along with him when he goes out? When I was little, I used to stuff the pockets of my always too large, never too clean Miami Dolphins jacket (this was a longggg time ago I swear) with every little thing I owned right before I went out.

I was better at it than anyone else in the world. I took entire Star Wars star fleets to Little Caesars, and half the world’s known Pokemon to Shop Rite (151 at the time. should have stayed that way. another rant for another day), Pokeball and all. But I never, ever got anywhere near the numbers we’re talking here. It doesn’t matter how large of a person you are, or how long, pocket-filled, and creepy your jacket is. You’re not gonna be able to store 192 of these things on your person.

So what’s Peter doing? Well, whatever the answer is, I don’t think it’s in his best interests, and I don’t think it’s healthy. My best guess is that Peter fills all of the major “love” and “friend” voids in his life with these little suckers. He thinks that the sheer numbers will make up for everything he’s missed out on in life… that he’ll be so overwhelmed by them that he won’t even remember the fact that he hasn’t had a real conversation with an real human being in two weeks… not counting the angry customer service phone call he made to Amazon when his pigs didn’t arrive in 2 days like he expected.

It’s not a stretch to assume that he’s probably engaging in conversations with the pigs, and maybe even hosting weekly (or nightly) meetings with them, much like I did with my stuffed penguins on the long nights that I couldn’t sleep when I was young. The major difference? I was 6. He’s more than likely at least 35.

You’ve gotta give Peter a little credit though. At least the little lifeless, soulless, plastic toys he’s buying have a good luck stigma attached to them. So you never know. With any luck, these things will be in a box on the top shelf of his bedroom closet by the end of the month, when he finally meets the girl of his dreams (Ramona) through a series of online singles database searches… knowing full well she’ll leave him if and when she gets a glimpse at the dark, lonely, and altogether creepy road he walked on before he met his new love… one that wasn’t full of decent women like Peter described in his Match.com profile… but was instead dominated by 192 identical little plastic mistakes he paid way too much for.

Peter: trust me. You’ve gotta make your own luck in this world… letting hundreds of under-paid, under-appreciated Chinese workers to do it for you (the inventor of these pigs has inevitably outsourced) is no substitute. Go out there and realize your dreams! Use the $75 to take that girl from work who you awkwardly meet eyes with and even run into sometimes out to dinner. Real company is a lot better than plastic company… even if you’re not seeing the numbers you used to with your pigs. You only need one.

Amazon.com “Pick” of the Day: The Jacob Doll (Twilight Series)

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There is a moment in every parent’s “career” when he or she will have the opportunity (and responsibility) to help decide what kind of person they want their child to become. These moments often come in the form of a very important decision the parent will make on behalf of his or her child. Normally, these moments are vastly different from parent to parent, and are (probably) unique to each parent more often than not. However, this holiday is different. This holiday millions of parents can, together, make one single, simple choice to help turn their daughters into good people.

The choice is to not buy today’s item of the day. Unfortunately, many parents are not making this choice. And America’s going to realize the irrevocable consequences someday. The item is the Jacob Doll from Twilight. Here’s a picture:

This picture really kind of writes the whole article itself without my help. However, something this important can never really be spelled out enough. First of all, I really don’t have a huge problem with the Twilight series. I think it’s wonderful that a socially anxious girl who never really had a chance to learn how to act reasonably (in real life or on screen) became a star. I think it’s great that a lot of girls are spending time reading these books when many would otherwise be spending it seeking out and engaging with the country’s creepiest and most desperate individuals on aging and irrelevant social networking sites.

I do, however, have a problem with how this series is being marketed to America’s impressionable young women. Specifically, the “Jacob” character. I know nothing about him, and I plan to maintain this ignorance through this entire article and, hopefully, for the rest of my life. It is unmistakable, however, that this Jacob doll does not come with a shirt. Now I know (from word of mouth) that Jacob spends much of the series without one. What I don’t understand… is why the makers of this doll don’t even give girls the opportunity to dress this little guy appropriately.

If a girl wants to take off a doll’s shirt to replicate sequences of the film or simply admire its machine-made plastic mini-abs, she’s free by the great laws that govern this land to do so. Giving girls no other option, though, reveals different intentions by the maker of the doll; intentions that will skew the emotional and romantic development of these girls for the rest of their childhoods.

Making a doll and selling it without a shirt, without question, sends the kind of message that literally begs girls to focus on the “physical perfections” of this doll. Jacob is leaving almost nothing to the imagination, and as girls spend more and more time with this doll, its perfections will be embedded deeper and deeper into their minds. Since the Twilight series generally removes girls from real life social situations in the first place, they’ll grow up with this doll as the only major male influence in their lives.

By time they’re ready to date, their standards are going to be so high that they won’t accept anything less than a Jacob. Unfortunately, many of these girls will never be able to get a Jacob of their own. There aren’t enough to go around (thank God), and even if there were, many of the Jacobs themselves would have standards that are too high to be met by many Twilight fans. The girls will all fight over the few Jacobs that they can find, a losing battle inevitably resulting in overwhelming sadness, defeat and rejection for the majority of the adolescent human race (male and female).

I think it’s admirable that parents want to get their kids what they want for Christmas. But parents: instilling some kind of moral standard for your kids’ Christmas presents is not a bad idea. In fact, it’s an essential one. Keep Jacob out of the house. Your daughter will thank you later on in life when she’s a normal, happy girl whose standards are more geared towards personality and communication and less towards a fictional werewolf man.