With another whirlwind holiday season starting to fade into the past, I must take a moment to reflect. And by reflecting I mean talking about all the stupid shit my son got as gifts. Let me get right to the first gift from Santa: Moon Sand.
Moon Sand is pretty cool because it won't absorb moisture of any kind but once you get past that initial "coolness" you'll soon realize that it's basically
just fucking sand! The manufacturer claims it's easy to clean up but apparently these studies were done in labs by very slow and meticulous lab technicians with large hand held vacuum cleaners. After about five minutes of watching my son slap and squish and throw globs of Moon Sand (which obliterate into miniscule particles when they hit anything), I quickly retired this little gift for night's over at the grandparent's houses (since they supplied my child with roughly two gallons of this amazing stuff).
Next is a lovely little thing called the i-Tattoo Boys Tattoo Maker.
First, I think it is a little offensive in this day and age to label a Tattoo Maker for "boys" when a lot of young little ladies would probably love to emulate Britney or Paris by putting a nice tat over their ass crack or fancying up their exposed pre-teen belly buttons with a ring of poison ivy or what not. Second, who in their right minds thinks that a machine gun pen loaded with permanant ink is a smart thing to give to an adolescent? My three year old's arms look like they were transplanted from a Manson-lovin', Skoal-dippin', trucker midget. This one goes with the Moon Sand straight to the grandparent's house.
Now this next guy is just plain ugly and it's confusing to boot.
The Monster Tumbler is touted as a flipping, rolling, turning, stuntatistic RC car! However, with its super hard plastic wheels (and large plastic Rollerblade wheel on top that I affectionately call "The Hammer") that are covered in little plastic knobs and it's complete lack of any true turning ability, the Monster Tumbler is really nothing more than an insanely fast piece of spinning terror that will crash into toes, cats, furniture, and anything else that appears innocent or damageable. Even better is that my son has found that it can be controlled from any room in the house because the remote has a range of two miles. It's a nice effect as my son casually watches toons while pushing the levers up and down in a completely random manner. Occasionally, you can hear the wife scream in some part of the house to which my son yells from the comfort of the couch, "Sorry mommy! I'm playing with my car!"
Of course not all of my kid's Christmas gifts were potential hazards. For example this guy was a huge hit in my opinion:
That's Transformers Cybertron Primus and he is almost as awesome as the original Transformers Optimus Prime. Add to it the four bonus mini Transformers that came with it and, well, I just can't be too upset with Santa's performance this holiday season.
