They Don't Make Them Like They Used To
We bought a lot of toys for the kids this year. And most of them sucked.
Not all, of course. The Woody / Jesse Toy Story 2 dolls are pretty good quality and Jameson loves them. You can't go wrong with Barbie (or so it says on G.I. Joe's bathroom wall) and the cheap RC car we bought behaves like a cheap RC car.
But a couple of the other toys we had big hopes for were just crap.
Santa brought Bailey a game called Elefun. Essentially, it's a battery operated fan that blows tissue-paper butterflies up a 4 foot tube. The goal is to catch them with your net. This is fine, but a butterfly actually comes out at a rate of about 1 every 5 minutes. Kicking the smiling blue elephant might halve that rate and there's some small satisfaction to this action. Essentially, it's not the swirling maelstrom of fun it looks like.
We bought Bailey a $35 Barbie digital camera. Now, before you yell at me for expecting ANYTHING from a $35 digital camera, I at least thought it would take a picture. It turns out, that the camera only snaps when the light source reaches a certain level. I was able to take 2 pictures with all of the lights in my house on. The first, was of my computer monitor from about 10 inches away. The second, was of a lamp...that was on...with a 100 watt bulb. Essentially, I must have missed the label on the box that read "Best when used to take pictures of the Sun."
My in-laws also bought Jameson this V-Tech educational game system. Think a Sega Genesis with educational software and that's about it. Unfortunately, he IS too small and he prefers to watch me play it. I've solved the Toy Story 2 Rescue Woody Adventure 147 times now, thank you.
Honorable mentions goes to the Batman Disc Launcher which has crappy battery contacts and doesn't work unless you apply plyers to the handle to force the contacts.
Oh yeah, and don't even get me started on the cat I spent $150 on. We've seen it about as many times as we've seen Bat-discs fly through the house. Too bad I took the Barbie camera back, I could've used it to document the invisible cat.
When I was shopping for the kids, I actually found an old-school Tinkertoy set. I wish now that I had bought it.
Not all, of course. The Woody / Jesse Toy Story 2 dolls are pretty good quality and Jameson loves them. You can't go wrong with Barbie (or so it says on G.I. Joe's bathroom wall) and the cheap RC car we bought behaves like a cheap RC car.
But a couple of the other toys we had big hopes for were just crap.
Santa brought Bailey a game called Elefun. Essentially, it's a battery operated fan that blows tissue-paper butterflies up a 4 foot tube. The goal is to catch them with your net. This is fine, but a butterfly actually comes out at a rate of about 1 every 5 minutes. Kicking the smiling blue elephant might halve that rate and there's some small satisfaction to this action. Essentially, it's not the swirling maelstrom of fun it looks like.
We bought Bailey a $35 Barbie digital camera. Now, before you yell at me for expecting ANYTHING from a $35 digital camera, I at least thought it would take a picture. It turns out, that the camera only snaps when the light source reaches a certain level. I was able to take 2 pictures with all of the lights in my house on. The first, was of my computer monitor from about 10 inches away. The second, was of a lamp...that was on...with a 100 watt bulb. Essentially, I must have missed the label on the box that read "Best when used to take pictures of the Sun."
My in-laws also bought Jameson this V-Tech educational game system. Think a Sega Genesis with educational software and that's about it. Unfortunately, he IS too small and he prefers to watch me play it. I've solved the Toy Story 2 Rescue Woody Adventure 147 times now, thank you.
Honorable mentions goes to the Batman Disc Launcher which has crappy battery contacts and doesn't work unless you apply plyers to the handle to force the contacts.
Oh yeah, and don't even get me started on the cat I spent $150 on. We've seen it about as many times as we've seen Bat-discs fly through the house. Too bad I took the Barbie camera back, I could've used it to document the invisible cat.
When I was shopping for the kids, I actually found an old-school Tinkertoy set. I wish now that I had bought it.
posted by Mkae at
6:21 PM
2 Comments:
we got my nephew the aquadoodle thomas the train thing. it has a roller where you draw the tracks and the train is supposed to ride along those tracks.
Well, heaven forbid if you draw anything more acute than a 120 degree angle turn. The engine pretty much gives up at that point and just spins in circles.
however...the cream of the crop was the dora the explorer Candyland. Too bad he's beaten me like 5 out of 8 times. I can't seem to topdeck the double purple gumdrop.
By
TheGirard, at 8:43 AM
My in-laws bought a small kitchen "cube" from Germany. It contains no plastic and was built by hand to order. Needless to say, it's the most fascinating plaything I've seen in a while.
By
GiromiDe, at 11:33 AM
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