Axes & Alleys » Fifty Things

Fifty Toys That Never Quite Took Off

Jeremy Rosen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 05:36:39 +0000

The one piece erector set
Lesbian Barbie™
Difficult Bake Oven
Coolidge Logs
The 100% Negative Magic 8 Ball
Ralph Nader’s Jungle Fort Playset
Edible mini-Slinkies
GI Joe™ KP Duty Playset
Matchbox’s Cars of the Soviet Bloc Deluxe Set
Wretch-a-Sketch
The Doll Hovel
Lawn Daggers
The Flaming Kite
Bucket o’ Twigs
Slug Mansion
Smurf® Collective Farm Playset
Transformers® Plywoodobots
Garfield Calculus Activity Book
My Little Serpent
Fully Satisfied Hippos
Pre-Socratic Philosophers dress up set
The Mud Tub
Assorted Lugnuts in a Can
Severed Rabbit Head
Jr. Accountant Spread Sheet of Fun
Nonexistor!® The Incorporeal Action Figure
Mr. Taro-Root Head
Bag of Fire
Napoli & Sons Slaughterhouse: The Role Playing Game
Human Antenna Suit
Locktite™ Legos™
Vivisection Dance Party
Bob Dole Virtual Reality Goggles
Hobby Porcupine
The Electric Hoop
Lead Duck
Rubik’s Point
Viscera in a Jar
Fisher-Price Anal Beads
Kiddie Chain Gang
Toddler-Time Whetstone
Plasticized Eyeball Marbles
checker
Ampu Tee Ball
Cocaine Mule (Water-soluble Lubricant Included)
Reality Television Slut Kit
Tiny Torturer
Aerosmith: The Experience
The Kid in the Iron Mask
Vlad Tepes Chamber of Hamster Horrors

50 Ways to Better-Market Cereal

Delores Grunion — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 13:51:41 +0000

1. Include a coupon for 50% off next gallon of milk.
2. Corner the Mediterranean demographic by including dried chunks of goat marrow in the recipe.
3. Encase cereal in bio-engineered melon. Sell with “bowl included.”
4. Include sugar-water packet with pin set to prick on a timer counting down three months inside box with light-sensitive exterior which changes over time so that the expired product can then be sold as an alcoholic beverage called “Liquor Charms.”
5. Continue the practice of not combining the thought of cereal with the thought of menstruation.
6. Free glow-in-the-dark combination cock-ring/secret decoder ring in every box.
7. Fill package with CO2 for that fun “dizziness” effect.
8. Package the cereal in a container which by its very nature not only prevents resealing, but encourages the spilling of valuable cereal product all over the floor.
9. “Not Manufactured in Newfoundland & Labrador” stamped on each box.
10. “Authentic $20 Bill Included!”
11. Put nude women on the box.
12. “Free laser with purchase.”
13. “Now without phlegm.”
14. Include a ticket for free robot sex.
15. Small RFID transmitters which broadcast the amount of cereal in the box wirelessly to your home computer via RSS feed.
16. Ads which proclaim “Eating this cereal is comparable to anal sex.”
17. Embark on a global campaign for Asian Bjrnto, the cereal with prawns.
18. Tell people they can only eat your cereal if they are awesome.
19. Don’t create commercials that are black and white homage to film noir and late Sixties French cinema.
20. Label your cereal as “Inspired by the television series Firefly.”
21. Create cereal boxes that double as rape whistles.
22. Point out how much less fiber your cereal contains. You don’t want to be on the toilet all day because of some Crusty Crunchy Roos.
23. Include a touch-sensitive keypad on the back so consumers can take notes during breakfast.
24. Have your cereal endorsed by The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.
25. Take Cancer-Os™ off the shelf once and for all.
26. Replace deadly razor blade chips with colourful marshmallows.
27. Put chapters from Great Expectations on each box, so you have something to read at breakfast besides boring nutritional information.
28. Endorsements from RadioShack CEO Julian Day.
29. Create new promotion “Buy twelve boxes and we won’t kill your mother.”
30. Replace the standard six sided rectangle box with an eye pleasing dodecahedron.
31. Mention, via advertising, that the cereal meets the rhyming description of “nutritious and delicious.”
32. Print Bible verses on the box.
33. State on the record that the rival, store-brand knock-off cereal supports communism.
34. Increase the levels of highly addictive nicotine in your corn puffs, flakes or whatnot.
35. Announce that you will reduce prices by 3%, then wow the public by actually reducing prices by an astonishing 3.0125%.
36. Get the stamp of approval from the Union of Ultra-Reformed Rabbis.
37. Tell children that if they don’t eat your cereal their parents will stop loving them and sell them to Gypsies. Particularly cruel Gypsies.
38. Make it fully compatible with the CerealCaddy5000™.
39. Use science to create an alternate universe where your cereal is more valuable than gold.
40. Make the average breakfast cereal thirty percent more flammable.
41. Have an octopus in every box who can dispense the cereal without the need for complicated pouring.
42. Attach a plug to the box for some reason.
43. Get all four members of KISS to put blood in each batch.
44. Convince retail merchants to give you an end cap display.
45. Replace the traditional toy prize with a coupon good for one free informative lecture from Richard Dawkins.
46. Create Latin packaging to corner the ecclesiastical market.
47. Put a cartoon dinosaur on the packaging. Hey, it can’t hurt, right?
48. Tell women that eating puffed corn will somehow reduce the pain and discomfort of the menses.
49. Put nanites in every box that, once consumed, travel to the consumer’s brain and take over higher functions, turning the person into a cereal buying robot.
50. Stop advertising the cereal as “the Nazi way to start your day.”

Fifty New Animals that God Should Create

Delores Grunion — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:11:41 +0000

1. Flying crabs.
2. Sheep with non-itchy wool.
3. Talking meercats, since meercats always look like they’re about to say something interesting.
4. Dogs that stay puppies forever.
5. Tigons and Ligers that can actually reproduce.
6. Rubber-toothed sharks for surfer safety.
7. Chihuahuas that don’t shake so damn much.
8. Butterflies with patriotic flag designs on their wings.
9. Moths that can tell the difference between a light bulb and the Moon.
10. Cuddly snakes.
11. Cats that can do like at least one trick or something.
12. Bishop birds, for the cardinals to oversee.
13. A birddog that doesn’t just find dead birds but is actually like a flying dog with a beak.
14. Bioluminescent elephants.
15. Land whales.
16. Turtles with hinges, so you could open up the shell and see how they work.
17. Gigapedes.
18. Abyssal fish that aren’t quite so nightmarish.
19. Dolphins who don’t give a damn about lost mariners.
20. Something that’s full of tasty lobster meat but doesn’t look so much like a giant sci-fi alien bug.
21. Hippos that don’t kill quite so many people.
22. Parrots that can say interesting things rather than just continually demanding crackers.
23. Squirrels that hand out small containers of relish.
24. Something, anything that actually wears underpants.
25. Rabbits than can play Parcheesi well.
26. Spaceborne orangutans with giant foil wings which produce nutritious energy through simian-compatible chlorophyll.
27. A carnivorous chinchilla which is just as cute as a regular chinchilla, but over 700 times as deadly.
28. Small lizards with built-in rocket/jetpacks.
29. Humans with spines fully-adapted to upright walking.
30. Deer whose eyes shine blinding light at over 100,000 lumens.
31. A species of clam which exhibits astounding sexual differences between its 13 different genders.
32. A wolverine shaped like a VHS tape which feeds on human hands.
33. The sinless manatee.
34. Hyperlinked marmosets.
35. Bees that buzz a major third apart.
36. Penguins in primary colours.
37. Bed bugs that form beds.
38. Hook-length worms that don’t produce mucous.
39. Shrimp which eat plastic bags.
40. Moles what build their hills out of bottle caps.
41. Proper human shemales.
42. Scallops exactly one millimeter thick.
43. Manta rays which grow human skin.
44. Lemon-flavoured bison.
45. Stick insects that die and dry out to create brushes.
46. Giraffes divisible by i.
47. Diatoms which die and leave skeletons usable as nuts for bolts.
48. Purple pigs.
49. Multi-cellular amoeba.
50. Pigeons that double as radio transmitters.