Day: November 27, 2008

A Thanksgiving Moment

Updated 11/29/08 (added Erector Sets)

First off, I would like to extend my best wishes for everyone on this Thanksgiving Day (for those US based readers out there).  May your travels be safe and uneventful.  I did notice where the flight reservations are way down this year.  I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that oil price per barrel is down yet some airlines are still trying to charge extra for baggage.  Last I recall, that was added to OFFSET the cost of jet fuel.  Funny how things go up instantly and tend to just drift down.

But today is about being thankful for things.  I decided that a recent discussion I had with a friend is a perfect topic for today.   So my thanks today goes to:  Not being killed by my childhood toys.  For some reason this topic came up one day and since my friend is roughly the same age, we were able to relate to the dangers we experienced as kids.  I say experienced because it really only comes into full perspective in retrospective or immediately after a significant injury.  I honestly think the danger is what made the toy so much fun.  I was looking through the Black Friday ads and was taking note of the new generation of toys out there.  My assessment is today’s kids must be extremely bored.  Everything has rounded edges, battery compartments attached by 10 or more screws, foam tipped and restricted power.  The liberals and soccer moms must be successful in their attempts to raise a pansy generation with unusually strong thumbs.  So here is a short list of the toys my friend and I decided were the most fun… translated, probably the most dangerous.

  • Jarts:  Sharpened steel tips with aerodynamic plastic wings to increase the accuracy and penetration depth.  These were at every single family outing I was ever at.  Kids of all ages whipping down to ground circles at the other end of the yard.  Which also happened to be where your teammates were standing making the whole event that much more entertaining.  Today they have stupid sand filled blunt ended enlarged badmiton shuttlecocks.  Total number of injuries experienced or witnessed in my childhood – ZERO
  • Water Pressure Rockets: These were just plain awesome. The task was to fill up a plastic rocket with water and then attach them to the end of a pump.  The attachment process was quite low tech with simply a piece of plastic that slid along the shaft and locked the end of the rocket onto a opening with a rubber seal.  This created an “L” shape with the long end having a plunger to pump air into the rocket creating as much pressure as you could muster.  I am sure it had some stupid line in the directions stating only x number of pumps.  Kudos to the toy engineers that could create a seal on the rocket capable of holding 10x pumps.  So now you basically have a pressurized rocket grenade.  The dangerous portion came with the fact you had to then pull back on the sliding piece of plastic to release the rocket.  However, a 10x load creates quite a lock so you had to really bear down and pull on the sleeve to release it.  For visuals, remember what you did the last time you had to open a stuck pickle jar.  My bet is you bent down a little bit and put the char at an angle to get the proper leverage.  Imagine now doing that with the water rocket.  How I never managed to blast one into my face is a miracle in itself.  Contrast that with the fact I absolutely loved that toy.  I think today’s version has a remote foot pedal pressurize and release system and I’m sure it is encased in a Nerf football.  Childhood injuries: only a pinched finger trying to pull that sleeve back.
  • Skateboards (with clay wheels): I have to needle my middle brother for this toy since he is the one who purchased it for me.  I am pretty sure he didn’t check with my parents beforehand and I am pretty sure he gave it to me when he was in college – I would have been 9 or so years younger.  I can’t remember a gift since then that surprised me more – not only was it the coolest gift I could have received at that time, but clearly he took a big risk with our parents.  For the most part it was pure joy as the wind whipped through my hair as I sailed down the hills balanced on a thin strip of wood.
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An Uncomfortable Wait

Yesterday I had the opportunity to read the packaging on numerous brands of condoms.  That’s right, I now know what the various sizes are (marketing genius made sure there were no extra small sizes, but an extra large to capture the bachelor party gag gift revenue), what the various textures are (ultra thin, extra sensitive, ribbed, something labeled twisted pleasure and a concerning offering that apparently pulsates – don’t ask me for details on that, I decided it was best not to know), quantity options, tip construction alternatives and a whole bevy of lube options including grape and strawberry flavor.

But it didn’t end there.  I further enhanced my worldly knowledge by reading all of the personal lubrication gels and a suprisingly large number of pregnancy tests. On the lube front, there was the standard KY options but the most interesting was the His and Hers option which looked like the dual tube packaging for strong epoxies.  Chuckling to myself, I thought that it might be an abstinence conctraceptive based on welding something shut.  I must have read 10 E.P.T boxes trying to figure out the differences.  Admittedly, I couldn’t figure it out beyond possibly the wait cycles or method of displaying the results.  I wondered if the talking greeting card technology had made its way into this market giving us a recorded message based on the results displayed on the stick.  In fact, think of the whole opportunity for Hallmark –

  • “Congratulations, you’re a winner”
  • “You’re gonna need some new clothes”
  • “Another bullet dodged”
  • “Your Mom’s heart attack has been avoided”
  • For him: “Hurray for new boobies”
  • For him: “Sorry, quality control has experienced a failure”

Okay, cutting myself off because that was waaaay to much fun.  I will take any submissions from my readers.  If this idea takes hold, I want it to be known I thought of it first and I want royalties.

Any chance the question popped into your head as to why I was relishing in this particular aisle?  Your assumptions are most likely wrong.   The reality of it is I was waiting to get my prescription filled at the Walmart out on Allen Rd. in Peoria.  I hit a prompt care to get relief from a sinus infection and decided to pop over to Walmart Pharmacy (they wave the co-pay winning the choice over the closer CV).  The benches they have for people to wait are located straight out and perpendicular to the pharmacy counter.  This also places it directly in line with the store shelves which had the contents I discussed above.  I get bored very easy so tend to take in everything I can find and product packaging is a ripe distraction.  So, sorry to burst the image bubble, but I was just sitting in the aisle reading the shelves from about 5 feet away.  Have I mentioned lately how must I love my new eyes?

What this does mean is a complete lack of privacy for individuals that want to actually purchase these products.  Imagine at least four people (men, women, children) sitting there staring at you while you make your selection.  And if that is not enough, you have all the people standing in line to pay for their prescriptions at the pharmacy desk.  Someone in the store layout either has a sense of humor, insensitive to a generally private matter or possibly this is a very common shop lifted item that they feel needs to have an extra layer of free security protection (sometimes I crack myself up).   I actually don’t have an answer for which option really applies in this case.  I am not sure I want to discourage the use of contraceptives since the local state portion of my daily paper seems to indicate the abstinence approach to reducing unwed pregnancies is not that effective.  But I have to vote against the layout guy not knowing what he was doing since he had a logical order to the shelves – condoms, lubes and then the EPTs seems like a pretty smart grouping.

Yes, an individual did come to the aisle to make a purchase.  He was probably in his late 30s or early 40s and was very interested in the top shelves that held the lubes and the EPTs.  In contrast to what my comfort level if it was me, he was pretty much oblivious to me watching him the entire 15 minutes he spent there.  I couldn’t tell exactly what product he was analyzing because his back was to me, but he was very thorough in his assessment.   He even opened the box and began reading the detailed instructions.  Eventually, he repackaged the box and proceed to make the purchase at the pharmacy counter.  I still couldn’t see what he had, but based on the shelf gap, I’m guessing lube.  Nothing like an informed consumer.

Hopefully I did not offend anyone with today’s post.  I blog it as I see it and I didn’t want to waste a solid 30 minuts of field work and some definite business opportunities await.  Hmmm, clarification, business opportunities in the EPT market, not to imply any reference to my previous post on the Vegas women.