Not too long ago, I wrote about what life will be like when all of our household appliances are smarter than we are. Naturally, this will lead to chaos aplenty, as it will take us at least 45 muinutes to do the most mundane household chore that probably would only take 5 minutes to do otherwise. Now when all of our toys become smarter than we are, then we know that we're in for trouble. Take, for example, The aforementioned ActiMates Barney doll. Sure, a talking dinosaur is something that can keep a toddler awestruck for hours, as is evidenced by the continuing sucess of Barney's PBS show, as well as all manner of Barney merchandise that one can shake the proverbial stick at. Naturally, a product like this is going to appear in a consumer climate like this. not only that, but in order to make the whole thing more appealing to the unwashed masses, you can even let Barney fry his own electronic brain right along with your children! Of course, Barney's cute and cuddly on the outside, but on the inside, a ravenous beast awaits the unsuspecting user. All of the commands and the API used to program Barney to speak his words of wisdom (or turn one's brains to boiling tapioca, whatever the case may be) are apparently 128-bit encrypted, in order to keep hackers from making him recite the [profound wisdom previously conveyed by the immortal (well, not really) philosophers of Generation X, Beavis and Butthead. (I can just imagine this... "Woo-hoo-hoo! This sucks kids! I really like you, so let's burn it!"... Then again, I think I better leave it at that.)
Of course, over the course of the past several holiday seasons there have been plenty of faddish gimmicky toys coming down the pike at the unsuspecting horde of Christmas shoppers. And, leading some to wonder if there's some sort of PBS conspiracy, it seems that a suspiciously large number of these sought-after products seem to come from the fertile soils of that preschool urban playground known to most of us as Sesame Street. I'm sure that most of remember all too well the frenzy last year around Christmastime over Tickle-Me Elmo. Thousands scrambled to throw loads of money at this red fur-bearing muppet thingy, and in the end, some pretty ridiculous sums were paid in order to obtain one of these things. When all this was said and done, however, I'm sure that many a frazzled parent has questioned the wisdom of this action... Tickle-Me Elmo can get to be pretty dang annoying after a while. Of course, that was then, and this is now, as the suspiciously overused phrase says. This year, over the course of my Christmas shopping, I found huge piles of these red critters sitting in a corner of the toy store at discount price. Since there were a few toddlers on my Christmas list this year, I ended up picking one up, but wrapped and got rid of it much faster than we did last year about this time (for more on this particular fiasco, see Issue #23, Tis the Season... But for What?)
Tyco, the manufacturer of these Sesame Streer toys, seems to have been intent on trumping itself this year with the Sing N' Snore Ernie doll. These didn't generate the same frenzy as the Tickle-Me Elmo craze of last year, and eventually ended up being supplanted by what came closest to being the big trend for this year, Beanie Babies. Just earlier today, as I stopped by the local Fred Meyer in search of a couple of new Nerf weapons for troubleshooting purposes at work, I found that once again, a whole pile of these had appeared, and once again at discount price. And even the lowly Tamagotchi, once the rage all over the place (and yes, I've brought the hammer down on these babies too... see issue #57, It's Life, Jim, But Not as we Know it...) is being found all over the place at knockdown prices. And this only leaves us to wonder what kind of rare and unusual toys we'll be flinging money at next year... and finding in the bargin bin come December 26th.