Education World at Home: At the frontier between
humor and commerce!
Okay, so I got a press release saying that all of these products
had been developed by moms, for moms. Interesting. I got the pictures
and descriptions, but didn't hear back from the moms. I guess they're
either too busy coming up with something else to solve a parental
problem or it's just that the school year's starting again and they're
run off their feet like the rest of the parental world this time
of year.
If you want to look at any of this stuff for real, just click on
www.bestproductsmediaguide.com.
Otherwise, I'm just going to enjoy thinking about these, well, very
unusual products.
Okay, so these are PottieStickers, which will be instantly recognizable
to you as the "gold stars" of the getting-out-of-diapers
curriculum. My only question is whether the toddlers will really
recognize the stickers as rewards or think of them as targets.
This
is a book by and for parents, it says, that contains the core Kindergarten
curriculum in a 32-page booklet. I guess that doesn't count the
most important thing I learned in Kindergarten, which was that other
kids are not nearly as receptive to having sandbox sand dumped on
their heads as I had previously hypothesized.
These bags are called Neat Nets, and of course this young-mom-type
model is demonstrating what they're for: To tidy up untidy toys.
However, what is not really seen in this picture is the SCALE of
the bags. This young model is actually a WNBA superstar, six-foot-eight,
and the so-called "toys" are gears from old military-surplus
vehicles, spray-painted in a delightful array of colors. The bags,
in other words, are really larger than they look here and extremely
tough. These bags are for capturing kids, folks, not for cleaning
up their rooms.
This
is BocaBeth, which frightens children in both Spanish and English
with its mesmerizing hand-puppet. For years afterward, in therapy,
children are sure to exclaim, "Avestruz! Avestruz!" which
means "Ostrich" in Spanish and of course is the actual
creature that most closely resembles that scary hand-puppet, except
for the white moustache part, which does not occur in nature.
This
is the Take-Out Time-Out, a portable mat that can make any 18-inch
diameter space on Earth into a cathedral of misery and contentiousness
for your little darling. An optional upgrade provides a continuous
audio loop of motherly sayings from old sitcoms, like "Sure
you can take a bath in the cement pond, Jethro." Superficially
endearing, these old saws from Granny, Aunt Bea, Harriet, and their
ilk eventually correct any behavioral problem you might encounter
with your little one. That is, if submissive obedience and involuntary
whining, "Please, don't play those voices to me again!"
counts as correction.
Editor recommendation: You might want the mat, but leave the audio
tape alone. Fortunately, it's entirely fictional, so you have no
choice.
This
is the "Who's Shoes ID" which is the only one of its kind,
says the press release, that fits all types of shoes, sandals, belts,
swimsuits, and so on, so that you can certainly make sure you label
anything your child will be wearing. Also useful for folks my age,
seeing as how I'm always trying to put children's shoes on, forgetting
that I've had men's size 12 feet for 40 years.
Upcoming products for us older folks: "Where the heck is it?"
stickers you can put everywhere in your house. You may not find
what you're looking for, but you'll feel better for having complained
about it visually as well as verbally. Also, "What was that
noise?" random noise recordings you can program to play at
random on your computer, stereo system, or wirelessly through your
hearing aids, so that when your wife accuses you of hearing things
that aren't there, you can prove to her that they really are there.
Oh, yeah, and then there are those potty stickers ... Stay tuned
...
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