Christmas Shopping Guide 2009

It’s December and we all know what that means: time to stimulate the economy by shopping. Tonight I will be bringing you some of the must have toys of the season. Remember parents, if you do not have these under the tree on Christmas morning it means that your children will grow up hating you and will spend their entire adult telling their therapist how detached you were until they decide to put you in the low-end nursing home. No pressure though.


Zhu Zhu Hamsters: I always love it when the must have toy of the year is dumber than anything that I wanted as a kid. No one could ever fault my desire for the Death Star playset but you have to wonder why we all needed to have a Sit and Spin. It was the only toy that was less exciting than just spinning yourself in a circle really fast until you got dizzy. But even that looks like the epoch of toy making when compared to robot hamsters.

Yes, the top toy of the season are robot hamsters with individual personalities such as the one who likes to eat, which is rather disconcerting given that it is a robot and therefore doesn’t have to eat. And don’t even get me started on the laidback, surfer hamster as I believe it breaks the laws of physics. It’s bad enough that we are giving our children a national debt that is unsustainable and a planet that consists mainly of concrete and smog but now we can’t even give them good toys.

(Also, I am so pissed that I did not invent this first. Do you know how many robot animals I have made in my lifetime? Robot squirrels, robot wildebeests, I even made robot bunny rabbits that would actually procreate like, well, rabbits. I thought they would teach kids the importance of spaying and neutering.)

DJ Hero: From the makers of Guitar Hero (where people with absolutely no talent get to act like they can play guitar and pretend to be famous, much like Sleater – Kinney) and Band Hero (where in addition to guitar you can clumsily play bass and drums while singing off key all while professing your immense talent, which is surprisingly also like Sleater – Kinney) comes this latest edition in the fake being a musician line of titles. Except that you are faking being a musician who fakes being a musician. Yes, no longer do you need the skill of choosing a record and pressing play to be a DJ. Now those songs are chosen for you. This is roughly the musical version of Excel Hero.


Nerf N-Strike: When I was a wee lad Nerf provided you with a number of ball related toys. You had the Nerf football, which allowed you to play football in the yard easier with the added bonus that it did not hurt quite as much when it was whipped at you out of spite. You also had the Nerf basketball and rim, high on my list of my personal favorites due to the endless bedroom dunkathons and one of my mom’s least favorite toys as she had to deal with four boys who decided to turn their upstairs bedrooms into the Chicago Stadium. But now Nerf has apparently decided to branch out and become an international arms dealer.

Seriously, this is a toy gun? This really doesn’t fall into the cops and robbers category. More like “Organized tactical assault on a heavily fortified compound.” I’m not sure that seven year olds need to be trained as to how to properly operate chain loaded machine guns. Though as an adult I have to say I so want one of these.

Transformers Constructicon Devastator: Yes, I have reached the age where my past is being mined for children’s toys. In this case we have a reimagining of the Constructicons: Five Decpeticons who hide out as construction machines until they transform Voltron style to form the mighty Devastator, who in a rather neat bit of irony can only destroy things. In my time these were little green toy robots who were pretty meaningless by themselves but all sorts of awesome in their combined form. Now, well, it still looks pretty kick ass. I might need another degree in engineering to design it but it still looks kick ass.