For Christmas this past year, my youngest daughter received a kid’s easel as a gift. It was the perfect gift that allowed her to do two of her most favorite things in the world, draw and paint. When she unwrapped it though, she made a face and seemed as though she didn’t like it. Thinking that she didn’t quite understand what it was, I tried to open the box to show her. These attempts were met with an ear-piercing and animated resistance.
Personally, I figured that she would be thrilled by something like this. If anything, it would keep the gang-inspired Crayola graffiti off of our kitchen table… Strangely though, she wanted absolutely no part of it.
Throughout the remainder of the morning, we noticed that she kept looking over her shoulder every so often in order to check on the status of the box. Once content with its position, she went back to her other presents. We even noticed that when she left the room, she walked well clear of the box, watching it carefully as she passed. I was baffled.
Several hours had passed before my wife was finally able end the mystery and decipher the issue. On the box was a picture of the easel…and a little girl playing with it. Yes. Apparently, she thought that the little girl was in the box as well.
After a couple minutes, it made complete sense. Once I understood where her apprehension rested, the kid on the box really started to creep me out as well. It was those eyes. Like the paintings in all of those Scooby-Doo episodes, the eyes observed you and followed you around the room.
I had to wait until she went down for a nap that afternoon before I was finally able to open it and put it together for her. I’ll stand by my story that I used the knife simply to open the box. However, there may have been a slight personal protection element to it as well. Just in case something decided to pop out of the box when I opened it.
“Red rum! Red rum!”
Upon waking up from her nap, the box had been physically exorcised and the easel was set up for her use. This time, she happily embraced her new art center. Happiness probably solely based on the fact that she didn’t have to share it with the disturbing “Chuckie” kid from the front of the box. The box, now safely and discreetly disposed of in a black lawn-and-leaf bag, was left at the curb. A sprinkling of holy water and ten “Hail Marys” added as safeguard.
“This house…is clean.”
Although we all got a good laugh out of the episode that morning, it was these types of advertising miscalculations by kids in-general that got me thinking. How a box containing the picture of a sweet little girl playing with an easel turned into an Amityville Jack-in-the-Box in the mind of a three year old.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there was a commercial on TV the very next day for some new product that the kids were all clamoring for. The advertisement was for a personal ice cream maker, coincidentally shaped like…you guessed it…an ice cream cone. As the commercial built up to the inevitable climax, the announcer spun his tangled web of treachery and deceit.
“Just pour in the ingredients and shake for three minutes. Instant ice cream!”
Judging from the appealing visual of picture-perfect ice cream at the end of this process, you would have thought that Ben and Jerry themselves were somehow crammed into that thing. A more appealing thought than the satanic easel kid being jammed into a box? Eh…not so much. However, I could already see the sugar plums dancing in their heads. The wheels were spinning.
“The ability for them to make ice cream for themselves, by themselves, whenever they wanted?” Of course they were going to go bat guano for it!
Unfortunately for my children, their dad is a battle-worn skeptic when it comes to these advertisements. I have personally been fooled more than one to three dozen times. From experience, I tried to explain that the product most likely didn’t work that well. Further, I explained that advertiser’s often used mashed potatoes instead of real ice cream in their commercials because it can be molded into more appealing “shapes” and it doesn’t melt while shooting. They didn’t want to hear any of it.
“The commercial said that you can make your own ice cream. Not mash potatoes, dad. Ice cream.” They certainly wouldn’t “lie” about such things on TV!
We’ve all been on the receiving end of those inevitable disappointments though. Ordering that product that you expected to be extraordinary. Amazing. Over the top. Only to be scammed. Shafted. Hoodwinked.
One childhood instance that immediately came to mind was those memories of the “Scrubbing Bubbles” bathroom cleaner advertisements of the late 1970s. The claymation scrubbing bubbles in the commercial emerging from the can and into the bathtub revving their deafening high-performance engines. They would then proceed to tear around the bathtub like a chase sequence from “The Dukes of Hazzard” until it shined like freshly waxed porcelain.
Suddenly, in jaw-dropping awe of this commercial, a question occurred to me. Why had I been excluded from this exhilarating, chaotic madness for the whole five years that I had staggered around this meaningless planet? My mom must have been hogging all of the tub cleaning fun for herself! If cleaning the bathtub was that awesome, I wanted in…and I wanted in now.
But alas, standing over the bathtub several days later, I saw no animated scrubbing bubbles. No thundering sounds of high octane V-8 engines. No chase sequences. Just foam. Stupid, stagnant foam sitting there and doing absolutely nothing. I also remember the horror as I watched my mom reach down into the tub with the sponge. Wait…not only do the scrubbing bubbles obviously suck at doing any cleaning, but those scrubbing bubbles don’t actually scrub anything? At all? Apparently, the only bubble that would be doing any scrubbing that afternoon was the big empty one between my ears. Swindled!
Although I still remain vastly disenchanted with our current selection of underachieving cleaning supplies to this day, perhaps the biggest scam job of my childhood was the infamous novelty known as the Sea Monkeys. Those wily and playful creatures from my comic book advertisements. I remember those cheerful characters being portrayed as happily swimming around a sea castle, lounging with pals, or simply just enjoying one of their swanky Sea Monkey disco parties. How awesome were these aquatic little freeloaders? I could sit and watch their busy little lives for hours!
For what seemed like an eternity, I begged and pleaded my parents to order these playful little critters for me. Finally defeated by my daily incessant barrage, they reluctantly caved. Within the suggested six to eight weeks shipping and handling time, they finally arrived. I filled the container with water and added the eggs. Impatient by nature, the anticipation of their arrival was really more than I could bear. I don’t think that I slept for days. Finally, they hatched…and mass confusion immediately set in.
They didn’t smile. They didn’t lounge around with their buddies. They didn’t even throw upscale cocktail parties. They swam…and then they died. Hmm, I don’t remember that in the ad. Worse yet, these Sea Monkeys weren’t even fun-loving monkeys from the sea at all. They were nothing more than brine shrimp. Fish food. I basically purchased chum and waited two months for it to be delivered. Bamboozled!
I could go on for hours. My comic books were filled with them. The build-it-yourself hovercraft plans. The Spiderman webslinger that you attached to your wrist and shot “webs” at your enemies. Those X-ray glasses. The pocket binoculars that enabled you to see 20 miles away. Instructionals to hypnotize your friends.
However, I’d be remiss to leave out a personal favorite of mine though. Yes… ”The insult that made a man out of ‘Mac’”. Achieving that “Atlas body” (and revenge) in just 7 days, after getting sand kicked in your face by the bully at the beach.
And my wife wonders why I’m such a hardened cynic…
Much to my kids’ dismay, we never did order those personal ice cream makers. Deep down, they probably figured that it was easier to let it go than to endure another one of their father’s wildly disconnected rants. For my youngest, however, it was more likely that she just didn’t want any more boxes delivered to the house with demonic children inside.
“They’re here!”
Exorcisms sold separately.
