Tag Archives: Stocking Stuffers

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: Day-to-Day Desk Calendars

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I’m not going to try to make an excuse as to why I didn’t update yesterday. I take full responsibility. We all need a day off sometimes.

Today’s item is something that, without fail, myself and millions like me will receive in some form from some person every year of our lives, even if we tell everyone we know again and again that we don’t want it… It’s an item that asks for our full attention and participation for an entire year, a request that’s impossible to honor and frankly unfair to begin with. The item is the day-to-day desk calendar. Here’s a picture of one you’ll read more about later:

I don’t know about you, but my morning routine hasn’t really changed that much in the past five or six years. I tend to set my alarm for 10 minutes after I’m supposed to be up anyway, and generally ignore its ringing until 5 minutes after the time I was supposed to leave my house to be able to do the very important things I have to do on time.

The trip to the bathroom (a scant 10 or 15 feet) immediately after getting up is something I don’t ever remember much of. It’s the most confusing, jarring part of my day, and I’m lucky if I make it into the shower without falling or running into something and severely hurting myself. There is absolutely nothing on my mind at this time. I wouldn’t have access to it even if there was. My mind and body are not working together yet.

The morning shower helps a little, but does little to curb my growing anger and frustration as my mind begins to start working and I realize I have another long, milestone-less day ahead. The rest of the morning is a sprint to dress, get ready, scrape off my frozen windshield with an old credit card, and get to wherever I need to be before someone notices I’m not already there. I’ve accepted this routine, and really only ask that no one tries to disrupt this or add any other useless little hindrances to it that will set me back even more.

Then Christmas comes (Christmas yeah!), and it’s time for stockings at the Kingma house. We barrel down the stairs, almost bursting with excitement to see what’s waiting for us on the couch (or the chair. Krissy’s stocking is on the chair), even at 21, 23 and 24 years old. The only thing keeping us from bursting is the sinking knowledge that we’re going to get another one this year. We know the day-to-day calendar is waiting for us. And since mom feels the need to get us a different one every year, each successive year offers us one that has less and less to do with the things we like.

Our fears are confirmed once again… there’s one waiting for each of us. Mine this year? It’s hard to say… but since all of my interests and loves and hobbies belong to long retired day-to-day calendars, it’s a toss up. All I know is that it’s going to be more impersonal than ever this year. I wouldn’t count out the “insult-a-day” calendar.

With the gifting of the calendar comes a responsibility. We know mom spent time picking these out, and we have to respect that. But I hope she knows (and if she doesn’t, I’m telling her now (hey mom!)) that there’s no way this thing is going to be used the way it’s supposed to. The calendar starts on January 1st (obviously) but, chances are, it won’t even make it out of the box until mid-march, when we find it hidden in a bag in our closet during spring cleaning.

We dig it out of the bag, take it out of the box and inspect it. Spring cleaning is a time of change and renewal, so we promise ourselves at this moment that we’re going to keep up with the calendar from now on. We try to read through some of the “insults” (or whatever the topic is) on the sheets from days long past, but we get bored quickly, and end up just tearing a chunk off until we’re current (let’s say March 15).

The next morning, our regular routine goes virtually unchanged, until we meet eyes with the calendar. We’re in no mental state to read at this hour of the morning, and though we try to start our first day of the day-to-day calendar right, it’s just not going to happen. We may tear off yesterday’s page, but we’re so uninterested in what we know we’re going to find on the next page that it’s not even worth trying to read. And that’s where it ends. The rest of the year, that thing will stay at March 16th… until next year, when we take out our new one that we find in the same place we found last year’s.

And the cycle never ends. Parents: stop buying these calendars for your kid (or your young adult). The last thing we want at 5 in the morning every morning is to be insulted (literally in my case) by a little paper calendar with a cheap plastic stand. If we want to know the date we’ll read it on our phones when we’re ready. If we want to be insulted, well don’t worry. We’ll be at work in 20 minutes. We’ll get our fill there.