Great Bad Gift Ideas for Children
Two presents kids will love, but parents will stick on a high shelf.
It can be hard to buy children birthday gifts. Kids like toys that parents might not approve of, after all. These two gift ideas are great examples of this phenomenon.
A while back, my brother mentioned that he'd given a gift of bongo drums to his friend's toddler son. "Is your friend still talking to you?" - was my reply. My brother was well-intentioned, but clearly he had no kids of his own. I mean, bongo drums don't even come with an Off Switch!
That interchange came to mind as I was thinking about ideas of bad birthday presents, and What Not to Buy for Christmas. To qualify, a gift has to be something that a child might want (so no tube socks), but that would make parents blanch and, perhaps, curl up in a state of abject terror.
The first kids gift item that caught my eye (in an infectious disease kind of way), is the Giant Microbes collection. What child doesn't like cuddly stuffed animals? Especially when they're huge versions of athlete's foot, the Ebola virus, and Mad Cow disease? The Giant Microbes toy selection is exactly what it sounds like: Plush, 5-7 inch stuffed replicas of all sorts of nasty viruses, including HIV and the Hepatitus virus. Imagine your child saying "My uncle gave me Gonorrhea for my birthday." Imagine your neighbors overhearing. Imagine how you now feel about your brother.
Not to say there isn't something perversely charming about this collection of stuffed animal microbes - I find the Bad Breath plush toy particularly appealing. How'd they manage to make halitosis look a little like a baby harp seal, anyway? The Lyme Disease toy is strangely reminiscent of "Springy" from my favorite middle-school arcade game, Q-bert. And don't get me started on the flesh-eating toy; it's emblazoned with a tiny fork and knife.
That's a pretty bad birthday gift idea for a little kid. I found some other bad gift ideas, of course, but one that defied categorization was the Jack Spade Frog Dissection Kit. (The link is to a description at PETA's website, and it goes without saying that they're very unhappy about this concept.) The Frog Dissection Kit includes a dead frog, plus a ruler (how fancy!) and a handi-wipe (tres cosmopolitan!) Jack Spade is a men's store that sells manly versions of what its sister store, Kate Spade, sells; bags, apparel, that sort of thing. Kate Spade, by the way, does NOT sell dead frogs in formaldehyde. I guess it's not considered an upscale accessory to this year's luxury handbag.
So, if you're into bad holiday or birthday gifts, and believe traumatizing your children goes hand in hand with a solid foundation in science education, buy a Giant Microbe or the Frog Dissection Kit. Nothing says Merry Christmas like the smell of spilled formaldehyde on your kid's carpet, followed by the Happy New Year scent of Decomposing Leopard Frog from under your bed. What? You thought it wouldn't end up there? Welcome to parenthood. ...You know, those bongo drums aren't looking so bad, after all.
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