Because this week is the last time you’ll be reading my words here before the holidays (you are reading them, aren’t you? If not, I don’t expect you’ll be reading this parenthetical statement), I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Kwanzaa, a Restorative Incontinence Celebration, Happy Holidays or a wonderful whatever-it-is-you’re-celebrating this season.
Typical gifts for giving have changed over the years. Electric razors no longer just shave your face but are available with a small whisker catcher, are adjustable to handle any length of whiskers emerging from your face or any other part of your body (which then are called “hairs” so as not to be confused with the hairs growing out of your face, which are called “whiskers”), can shave your sweaters, shear sheep, mow the lawn, trim your hedges, spackle drywall, or communicate with aliens.
Some perceptive individual started a company that manufactures and sells artificial dead houseplants. These save buyers the time and expense involved in creating real dead houseplants, i.e., the watering, feeding, providing sunlight or plant lights and creating the proper atmospheric conditions, just wasting valuable time and energy waiting for the inevitable. Cut out those middlemen and all the muss and fuss. The artificial dead houseplants are very realistic in appearance and, as real dead houseplants do, have the added benefit of no chance to suddenly spring back to life one day, starting the cycle over.
There are some new Barbie’s Dream House® accessories available this season and a couple are quite practical. For Barbie’s bathroom, you can add a Barbie Plunger and rubber tube with a squeeze ball that attaches to Barbie’s toilet. When you fill the ball with water or other simulated sewage and squeeze it, Barbie’s toilet overflows. Time to grab the Barbie Plunger! Then call Chelsea to clean up the mess. Add a pink Barbie Guillotine accessory to Barbie’s Dream House for Barbie to activate in case Teresa, Nikki, Midge, etc., should get too overly friendly with Ken; it even includes a pink basket to catch the separated plastic noggin of the offending female, or, even Ken’s if he should succumb to their advances.
Tickle Me Elmo® was not content with just giggling, so for 2022 there’s Touch Me Elmo And I’ll Punch Your Lights Out. Depending on where he’s touched, Elmo can holler out to DCFS, while the sound of a police siren blares in the background. Touch Me Elmo And I’ll Punch Your Lights Out includes a ten-foot pole for the more cowardly child.
Another sure-to-be-a-favorite educational toy added to the Mr. Potato Head® line this year is Mr. Potato Butt. It comes complete with various sized hemorrhoids, tubes of simulated Preparation H® (sure are a lot of these “®s” popping up), small, medium and large syringes for different types of inoculations, a combat boot that will leave a temporary boot mark on Mr. Potato Butt, all of which allow children (or sadistic adults) to make Mr. Potato Butt as comfortable, or miserable, as they see fit. Similar to Mr. Potato Head, the kit comes with the plastic potato butt or, for more realism, a real potato can be used. There is a Spoiler Alert listed on the carton stating that if using a real potato, do not eat it after inoculations (if it’s been inoculated with something other than sour cream) and even though the simulated Preparation H is completely harmless, it may cause severe lip shrinkage in some people.
I don’t know about you, but these new gift ideas for 2022 make me want to ingest vast quantities of rum-laced eggnog, give fruitcakes, and see what comes to the market on Black Friday, 2023.