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The Toy Fair's Top 10 Strangest Products
FloggingMollyrox writes "UGO looks at the recent 2004 Toy Fair's Top 10 Strangest Products. Forget about Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man, the real stuff was an art farm that grows vegetables, a pogo stick that shoots you over the moon, 'real' shrunken heads, and an educational plush toy based on an alien invasion."
fp
Having just read this Groklaw article, I must admit - I fear poor SnowMold Industries (See toy#2) could be in for a lawsuit!
http://image.ugo.com/FoxSearchlight/ClubDread/club DreadFriday.gif
- it doesn't match normal ad size
- it doesn't match a spammy url
i hate advertisers.
I hate club dread. whatever that is. ill never buy it if i do find out.
Those are great and some even funny...but no matter how many ads I see, or how large they are
I AM NOT GOING TO SEE CLUB DREAD!!!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
And the #1 strangest page layout is (queue drumroll sound)...... www.ugo.com. I don't know where to start -- perhaps the 0 left margin or the giant Club Dread ad maybe. And thank Moz for ctrl + or I would have just moved on. Maybe it looks better in IE -- anyone?
Slightly offtopic, but, did any of you notice that on visiting that page, your CPU usage was at 100%? As soon as I hit back to reload slashdot, it dropped. wtf?
You mean i seriously wasted 5 mins waiting for this story anxiously only to find out about crappy toys?????
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
Let's rock and roll / Working on a sex farm / Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay
Scratching in your henhouse
Sniffing at your feedbag
Slipping out your back door
I'm leaving my spray
Sex farm woman
I'm gonna mow you down
Sex farm woman
I'll rake and mow you down
Sex farm woman
Don't you see my silo risin' high
Working on a sex farm
Hosing down your barn door
Bothering you livestock
They know what I need
Working up a hot sweat
I'm scretching in your pea patch
Plowing through your beanfield
Planting my seed
Sex farm woman
I'll be your hired hand
Sex farm woman
I'll let my offer stand
Sex farm woman
Don't you feel my tractor rumbling by
by-by-byyyy
Working on a sex farm
Wolfing down some cornbread
I'm turning on the tv
Joining the grange.
Thomas Sowell
m l
Big Lie of the year
It may be too early in this election year to determine which will be the biggest of the Big Lies in this political campaign. However, my feeling is that it may be "the working poor." While there are working people who are poor, most poor people are not working full time, not working very long, or not working at all.
These are not matters of opinion. Census data make it unmistakably clear. When it comes to full-time year-around workers, there are more heads of
households who fall into that category in the top 5 percent of income earners than in the bottom 20 percent - in absolute numbers.
There was a time when you could legitimately contrast the idle rich and the working poor. But that time is long gone. Nevertheless, the image is still politically useful, so you are likely to see that image invoked again and again by candidates practicing divide and conquer politics, sometimes known as class warfare or by its more fashionable name, "social justice."
There is even a book by a New York Times reporter titled "The Working Poor." It was previewed by a long article in the New York Times and then given a huge and favorable review in - you guessed it - the New York Times. Journalistic incest lives.
The thesis of both media liberals and political liberals is that there are vast millions of people who work hard all their lives and still remain poor. The next chorus of this song is that only the government can save the day for such people. The grand finale is that politicians need to take more money out of your paycheck to buy the votes of those to whom they give it.
They don't express it like that, of course, but that is what it amounts to. Are there genuinely poor people who stay poor? Yes. However grossly
exaggerated the numbers, there are such people. But studies that follow the same individuals over time find that most of those in the bottom 20 percent of income earners are also in the top 20 percent at some other time in their
careers.
Only a fraction of the people who are in the bottom 20 percent in income at any given time will be there for more than a few years. Of those whose pay is at or near the minimum wage, for example, most are young people or part-time workers, or both.
How much political traction can you get by wringing your hands over some high-school or college kid who is picking up a few bucks flipping
hamburgers, while living with mom and dad?
The solution to this problem, in both the liberal media and among liberal politicians, is to ignore the typical person who is simply passing through
the lower income brackets on his way up and talk exclusively about the atypical person who stays at the bottom for life.
By focusing on those who work hard all their lives and still remain poor - no more than 3 percent of the population - and telling their personal
stories endlessly, liberals can present the Big Lie with a human face. There is an even bigger lie behind all this. That lie is the implication that the purpose of all this hand-wringing is to help the poor. But the poor are just the bait in a political bait-and-switch game.
The fraud becomes apparent the moment anyone suggests that there be means tests, so that the taxpayers' money will be spent only on the poor. Those who pose as the biggest champions of the poor are almost invariably the biggest opponents of means tests. They want bigger government and the poor are just a means to that end.
Whether the issue is housing, medical care or innumerable other things, the argument will be made that the poor are unable to get some benefit that the government ought to provide for them. But the minute you accept that, the switch takes place and suddenly we are no longer talking about some benefit confined to the poor but about "universal health care" or "affordable housing" as a "right" for everyone.
Bait and switch advertising is illegal when unscrupulous businesses engage in it. But it is standard operating procedure in politics. especially during election years.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell.ht
This is Slashdot. It's not meant for politically-charged comments such as this. While, I understand and appreciate their feelings of duty, responsibility, and motivation, they need to realize that this isn't the place for this. Voice your opinions on this subject elsewhere, and I mean no disrespect. They're only doing what they think they should be doing. You shouldn't have modded down this person, they were only saying what they felt was right and meant no offense to anyone.
nothing.can.stop.me.now
How is this especially News for Nerd, Stuff that Matters?