I guess I haven’t been to a toy store in a while. What happened? Most toys now talk to you, interact, chirp, whistle, and generally surprise you when they are buried under a pile of clothes and start writhing and mewling for help. Take a look at this “beauty”. I think it’s supposed to be a monkey but its soul-absorbing eyes and unnerving human face have shunted this toy into the deep end of the uncanny valley.
Would I be surprised if those eyes were really hidden cameras for pedo-perverts? No. This hairy gelfling looks like it would crawl, unblinking, across your bed at night and start clawing at your eyes.
Now I applaud a movement away from the long-limbed anorexic makeup satchels that are Barbie dolls, but I think we’ve veered into an equally disturbing territory with this family.
“Dad” looks like he’s hooked on cosmetic surgery and may actually have been “Mom” at one point. I can’t tell if that’s the mother on the left or the older daughter who got her clothes and haircut from the early Nineties. The little sister on the bottom is just completely stoned out–no idea who she is or what she’s doing. She chews on wooden spoons a lot. Then we’ve got the baby, who looks as if it was just caught fishing poop out of the cat’s litter box. Either that or it’s mortified by its weird family.
Faced with this choices, Child Harbat spent her money on a Hello Kitty water dispenser. Whee! The fun of dispensing water from a plastic Korean cat!
Writer, architect, father, husband.