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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."
Either way.. I suppose it's an interesting concept... and they are kind of cute...
Buy the President
fp
The anti-salmon
and was too normal or poor to get
They hoped to make a killing selling Simpsons-branded "Ralph Wiggum Nose Goblins". Then they found out that all the kids could easily make these themselves.
A few hours browsing at souvenir shops or department stores in the Akihabara district will teach you the meaning of 'strange'. These toys are soothingly ordinary in comparison.
And don't get me started to the Tokyo fish market *shudders*
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Baboochi left their planet because they were invaded by the evil Zartans and came to Earth to find a new home in the arms of children.
Baboochi(TM) will help teach your children to brush their teeth, clean their room, share with others, and many more important lessons that parents want their kids to learn.
Holy shit WTF. I must own one of these.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Having just read this Groklaw article, I must admit - I fear poor SnowMold Industries (See toy#2) could be in for a lawsuit!
It's Log!
It's Log!
It's big, it's heavy, it's wood!
It's Log!
It's Log!
It's better than bad, it's good!
hang on The Cheat...we're takin this baby TO THE MOOOOON!!
Hi. I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such toy-fair debut documentary films as "Tickle-Me Elmo - the NC-17 Version" and "Coleco Adam: Miracle in Silicon".
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.
Tellmi's illuminated quills are made of soft rubber and viciously vibrate when he's turned on. I'm not going to examine the double uses for such an item, but at the very least, I could see some necks being massaged.
Yes. Necks. That is the only thing this will be used for, i promise. Cartman's mom is on the other line wanting to order one....gotta go!
The earliest/weirdest toy I ever got was a drawer full of these weird plastic canadian locking blocks.
My parents, coming out of their hippy-ness, got them for me to "expand my mind and creativity". Being 7, what did I make with them? guns/firearms/rocket launchers/etc.
*sigh* good times.
Don't forget to Vote Nader in 2004!!!!!!
The SCO-MOLD squeezes your somewhat generic *nix operating system into a form that SCO can demand a license and sue you for.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You know, for a minute, when I saw the last item, I thought somebody had come out with a plushy version of these little bouncy guys. Ah, well.
This sig no verb.
http://members.fortunecity.com/chippy3/songs/log.h tml
I've read that toy companies target adult buyers via product design, with products for young children- teddy bears for example, have proportions similar to babies, which supposedly triggers a [mat/pat]ernal instinct in parents.
Tellmi's figured out a much better instinct to trigger in the parents, it sounds like :-)
"Mommy, stop borrowing Mr. Quills! Every time you do his batteries are dead!"
I see this as a great strategy. A second one gets bought shortly after the first, for sure. The second one is in part responsible for the purchase of the third, anywhere from 9-36 months later...perfect! What's their stock symbol?
Please help metamoderate.
Check out "Orgasmic the Hedgehog", that blue sex toy thingy shown on the first page.
Looks like someone already got their hands on a Flybar. With video!
This sure reminds me of my favortie Christmas present of 1979, this, although the modern one is so big it must include an expansion set.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Flat Eric. Not that the Baboochi isn't a good start, it seems that toys that grown-ups can laugh at through one marketing channel and kids can appreciate on their own level will always endear themselves more effectively than simple flat blue animals.
Not unlike the Buddy Lee campaign... which succeeded both as doll-based jingle silliness for TV people and as more mature viral webmercials for the internet set...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
Tellmi's illuminated quills are made of soft rubber and viciously vibrate when he's turned on.
So do mine.
I may be a fat bastard, but having...a pogo stick that shoots you over the moon...doesn't make me a cow! -Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Oh damn... they left out "Bag O' Glass" again!
it's a plush head containing fake vomit, bugs, moldy cheese, rats and worms. -- you just never know which disgusting, vile thing will pop out of his mouth, ears or nostrils next!
Watch out for the lawyers. This is a direct infringement of SCO's business strategy.
while sco {
wget -O
}
#1 - TELLMI (Digitspace): interactive hedgehog with blinking lights and moving limbs
#2 - THE SNOMOLD (SnoMold Industries): plastic bag filled with snow makes instant snowman
#3 - BLADE RACERS (Dynatech Action): "High velocity infrared racing system"
#4 - VOOT-VUE FARM (HSP Nature Toys): plexiglass box to see vegetables grow
#5 - MARVEL MYSTERY BAGS (Visionary Concepts): Plastic Marvel figures hidden in water-dissolvable bags
#6 - THE REAL SHRUNKEN HEAD (Witch Doctors?): "extremely lifelike", or deathlike, as it were, plastic shrunken human heads
#7 - THE FLYBAR (Flybar Inc.): Pogo stick.
#8 - WHAT'S IN NED'S HEAD (Fundex Games): Plush head containing fake vomit, bugs, moldy cheese, rats and worms
#9 - TKO FIT KIDS (TKO Sports Group): Inflatable child-size wrestlers
#10 - BABOOCHI (Baboochi World): Anthropomorphic blue furry M&M-shaped doll
Can you nominate heads? What about Bill Gates, George Bush, the CEO of SCO, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Eminem?
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
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?
even on the second bounce, one of the demonstrators had to have himself at least five or six feet above ground
Sounds really cool. I wonder if it comes with a padded helmet for indoor use.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
I try to follow the link from work and our firewall has it blocked. If I'm real stupid, I can try the link three or four more times so that IT can start an investigation into my web viewing habits. Wahoo!
Well. That was...disappointing. Here I was, waiting for him to go to the stratosphere, but he just went...about how high you would expect. Feh.
(Still, you deserve +1 Informative for posting the link.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I say they should design real-life action figures of characters like Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, and Steve Jobs! Maybe we can even bundle them in two-packs. I think a Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds would look nice together.
What if we throw a CEO for Motorola and Kevin Mitnick in one pack? You know people would dish out the cash for this.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
I'm just wondering - the concept of Lenny Kravitz underneath at least six feet of water is okay, but what was the point?
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?
I really wonder why the blade racers are called a high-velocity infrared racing system...
Even if they could be steered by infrared remote controls this would be utterly senseless since they'd loose contact to the remote control when doing some loops etc. -huha
second link on this page.
not quite low-earth orbit, but still pretty cool.
My parents would have laughted their heads off if I had asked for this stuff. Back in my day, the toy store was up hill both ways, and we liked it, damn it!
No seriously, this stuff is a joke! My first toy was a set of wood sticks notched so I could make log cabins & stuff. That and a piece of cheap astroturf & I had a farm! Naturallyt he farm required animals so my father swiped a couple of drones from the bee hive. If you pull their wings off they make perfectly acceptable "cows," "horses," or "mules."
My next toy was a little broken down wagon my dad got from the dump. A little sledgehammer action on the axle & some paint and it was good to go. Of course it took about 30 seconds for us to go to the nearest hilla nd go for a ride. My devil worshiping brother helped me go a bit faster than I liked, usually. I've been thrown at speed and straddled a small tree at speed when rides went wrong, which could account for my present baldness.
Surely somebody else bombarded Destro & Snake from "space" with pellet guns & firecrackers?
Kids these days are getting the shaft. Childhood was a lot more fun before safety and responsible parenting were necessities. The fake vomit from Ned might get a few screams from mothers still. I want that now.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
That FlyBar reminds me of a toy we saw a few years ago... The Death Wish Shoes. :D
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
Check out this anatomical mummy bear, for which there is a thinly veiled advertisement at http://summum.kids.us.
These may be wierd in a 'oo! It's japanese and odd' way, but for my money, the wierdest toys ever can be found at Disturbing Auctions. Just look at the emotionally scarring toys and weep. Half of those are home made and beat hands down anything Japan could come up with.
I mean, if some kid combined that with his Habitrail he could put a powerful hurt on his pet hamster...
[I'll get back to work now.....]
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I'm sure many of the ideas on this site really are available in Japan...
I've got to say, that Flybar teaser photo is pretty effective
It is my sentiment that many of you are glossing over this article simply because you have no deeper understanding of the world or the humor that exists therein. To say that you don't have the time to read it is really to try and camoflage your inadeqacies in a blanket of lies and halftruths. With the most heartfelt sentiment, I must request that you, dear reader, try and refrain from such shrugging off of important socio-impactual information.
A great many of you will attempt to disregard my writing as the blatherings of a troll or flamebaiter, but this is clearly untrue if you delve deeper into what it is that I am saying. A common misdeed of the Slashdot community in general is to just trot past an important and socially contrite comment like this. Quite non-apropois for the tardizens of a site like Slashdot. Instead of courageously embracing the important and worthwhile concepts that lie before you, you choose to turn away and feign distraction with the words "Ooooh Shiny" when presented with something as useless as an XM satellite radio or cell phone.
How base! How disingenuous! How fey! At this moment as these words are passing from the monitor to your eyes and hopefully somewhere in that shallow mind of yours, there are people around the world developing better and newer ways of stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain with what is essentially the equivalent of a psychological French Tickler. And YOU ARE FALLING FOR IT!!! I advise you now! If you have any respect for yourself, the grey matter held within your vacuous skull or the furthering of science and the human mind, for God's sake get rid of that television young man! It rots the brain!
Instead, do something useful and productive. No matter how small your contribution may be, it's important to leave something behind before your last breath exits the alveoli. And NO, offspring do not count! Instead, learn a skill or trade and then do it for free to take money away from the corporations. This is the first part of the plan to undermine the captains of our prison. Release your intellect (or what passes for it) and free it from the jail of endless pleasures that are mass produced for our own incarceration.
As that ancients once said: "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis"! The time is now to make a difference! Throw down the new shackles of our corporate masters and spit in their faces! Put that mouse down son! We'll craft a new world of our own in which today's leaders will be tomorrow's punch lines. I believe it can be done if only the brightest and the best of us work to dismantle the system of corruptions that was set forth in 1927. Don't fear change. Fear the reefer!
I am with you friends. Even at this dark hour, I have crafted such a virulent meme, that will sweep over us like locusts! You shall see. You shall believe and you shall have THE POWER that is being denied you now! Go forth and spread the word my brothers. Incite riots. Change opinions. After all, ballot box fixing isn't just for the pros in the Bush administration! It's our tool too!!!
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
The video is really unimpressive. It shows less than 2 feet of air, I'd estimate. (Though his article says he could get 4 feet, which is still less than the claimed 5-6 feet.)
At least there's Russian Rails (scheduled) to come out this year, Comrade(!)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You are all a bunch of ass monkeys. (As suggested by a friend)
Un-news
Java makes baby Jesus cry.
Not ugo's main site, but Digitspace's, due to all of us sickos that want a vibrating hedgehog.
Did anybody notice that none of the "Major" toy brands made the list??
It just goes to show how much a company will go to, just to attract consumers!!
I always though that the slinky was the strangest toy!!
Hmm
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
Spongebob Joystick
Root view?!? This toy looks about as much fun as watching grass grow...wait a tick...I AM WATCHING GRASS GROW!
How is this especially News for Nerd, Stuff that Matters?
Bart: Hey Lis', check it out, Pogo Stilts. These were banned in all 50 states
[they fly off his feet and hit Homer]
Homer: Oooow!! Ow! What happened!?
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
No mention of Giant Microbes? They now include such cute cuddly toys as the Black Death and Ebola!
Well that's a relief. I hadn't imagined that they'd use that appendage as the joystick. I was quite disturbed there for a moment.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well, regardless of the story, Baboochi rhymes with a ton of words, wheter you pronounce is i or e
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
An obvious cover story, it's the invasion of the body snatchers I tell you!
They're here already! You're next!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
At least the monster isn't named "Xenu"...
+1 Informative would be ideal. Thanks ever so much.
Fifty dollars says the company requires a release form for purchase.
Fifty more dollars says someone dies using a Flybar in the first week of sales ANYWAY.
SIG. This has been a test of the emergency S.I.G. System. If it were a real SIG, it would have been shorter. Again, this is only a test.
Just drop acid, already, and invent something better... or quit your whining.
Now with a deluxe model for reaching hard to get areas.
Great detective work, glk572 (if that's indeed your real name ;)
I knew the story sounded a bit too much like some scientology spiel, but never thought about googling the name of the toy's creator.
http://www.geocities.com/electricmonk.geo/cthulhu. html
:D
Great old ones for the little young ones
But did they really need to make these things anatomically correct?
A simple game for simple kids, Ned's Head is sure to bring frowns to at least a few parents, but come on....name any six-year-old who isn't fascinated with things like vomit and old cheese.
Uh, girls? The other 50 percent, remember?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
...or punch cards, take your pick!