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January 23, 2009

All I Want for My Birthday is a Cadillac Escalade (and a Kaba Kick!)

Wow, a Cadillac Escalade for kids! This toddler-friendly SUV could be an award-winning toy this year. You see, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has opened the voting for its "Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children Award."*

The TOADY will be given to the toy that best epitomizes... something awful. (So the Escalade Jr. gets points in its disfavor for ecological irresponsibility and mindless consumerism.) Although there are other contestants for the TOADY (link here), my money is on either the Fisher-Price SUV or Hasbro’s repellent Baby Alive (which I wrote about here).

Of course, none of these toys can hold a candle to the Kaba Kick, a plastic gun marketed in Japan a few years back. It was used as a kids' version of Russian-roulette. The barrel was held to a competitor's head and then the trigger was pushed. The gun would then randomly "kick" the unlucky user in the head at unpredictable moments.

* Do you also get annoyed by the selective use of capital letter to make a clever acronym? This should be the TOADTYCA.

3 comments:

dgm said...

I nominate the Bratz dolls. Hussies, one and all.

Bart King said...

Good news! Following a successful lawsuit by Mattel against Bratz muanufacturer MGA Entertainmetn, the hussies should be out of circulation this year. From Wikipedia:

"On December 3, 2008, U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson banned MGA from selling Bratz. He allowed the company to continue selling the dolls until the winter holiday season ended.[16] The ruling will be in effect on February 11, 2009 at the earliest; Mattel and MGA will meet in court on that date.[17] As per the court order, after the end of the holiday season, MGA must remove, at its own cost, all the Bratz dolls from store shelves, including the reimbursement of the cost of the dolls and all shipping costs to its vendors and distributors.[18] The court gave exceptions for some toys if they are packaged separately from infringing toys.[19] MGA has since stated that they are planning to file an appeal."

dgm said...

Great, now they'll become high-priced collector's items.