Toy Show Toy-In … It’s The 10 Most Disappointing Toys Of All Toyme!
The Late Late Toy Show is on tonight. It is a truth I wish people would pay heed to that Christmas ads, trees, ditties and shopping trips are only acceptable after its broadcast; the Toy Show is the event of the year and I’m fucked if I’m having it any other way. It’s the only time whereupon your uttering, “I miss Gay Bryne” does not deserve a bollocking from your Irish friends (and a slow, horrified edging backwards from the furriners in your life). Look at this, for fuck’s sake!
How could you not want a bit of that?
Tonight is new host Ryan Tubridy’s first hop at this most glorious of traditional shindigs, and I have to say that I have no doubt he’ll take to it like a duck-faced coathanger to a life of culture and entitlement. In other words, I may not like Tubbers much, but he’s a professional and he’s going to ace this gig. Former host Pat Kenny looked like an undercover hedge when he tried to “do” the Toy Show; considering that Murphy’s Law is the Toy Show’s 1st commandment, the likes of Pat The Plank was always going to suffer like a tin bowl of porridge in a microwave. And let’s be honest; the Toy Show hasn’t been great in recent years. It’s up to Ry-Tub to bring it back, and in nothing less than a blaze of glory, too.
When I was a smallie, my favourite thing about the Toy Show was the Billie Barry Kids, a group of stage-school flamboyants whom I would no doubt drown in a bucket if I was subjected to them as an adult. The turning point for me – by which I mean from when I found the Toy Show awesome to finding it stuck to my metaphorical shoe like common cat vomit – coincided with the point they stopped using the Billie Barry Kids and started using the Billie Barry Babies, who were all insufferably cute and sang Barney songs and sounded like newborn kittens falling into nests of newborn alligators. And of course, there was Pat Kenny, and … yeah, mostly it was Pat Kenny. The Toy Show, which you are entitled to enjoy right into your dotage (and something I’d give my left lung to attend), started to disappoint me. I think I even missed it last year. But then, just because it’s supposed to be fun, doesn’t mean it’s not capable of disappointment. So without further ado, here’s …
Sweary’s Top 10 Most Disappointing Toys Ever!
10: Playsets of Any Fucking Description Apart From Maybe Sindy’s Dream Room Which Was Awesome.
You think you’re getting a world as big as your imagination, which has its own gravitational pull and room for a winged ninja unicorn. Instead you get a bi-folding piece of plastic an inch deep with two floors and no stairs, and it won’t stand upright on your bedroom floor carpet, and your action figure gets stuck in the ultra-secret trapdoor, and the “accessories” are only painted on.
9. Make-Up Just Like Mam’s.
Except it’s not just like Mam’s. It’s either actual moulded plastic, or it melts your eyelids you when you try to Alexis-Carrington-yourself up a bit. Either way it’s not very glamorous. I blame Catholic Ireland and its prejudice against hussies.
8: Tamagotchis.
The virtual pet that purported to be easier to look after than a real pet, with less dire consequences in the event of a childish lapse in concentration. In reality it shat all over its screen if you left it alone for the odd real-life toilet break. If you dared fall asleep, it died. A generation developed OCD and twitches in unusual places.
7: Furbys
I rather agonised about whether or not it was wise to include an evocative picture here, you know. Furbys are just that fucking annoying. So here’s a dead one instead. The gibbering, ever-conscious, creepy little cuntball.
6: Paper Dolls.
I got a lot of paper dolls as a child, because I liked fashion and was too poor to afford any. Fashion made out of paper isn’t all that clever, though. No matter how careful you were, you’d slice through the bendy bits that were all that stood between your doll’s garden party glamour and her arrest for indecent exposure. Also, the shoes kept flipping up like a hoop skirt. Sure Pritt was your only man, and that defeated the purpose entirely.
5: Sea Monkeys
Disgusting. Jesus, keeping brine shrimp on your dressing table and pretending they were elements of a sophisticated mini-society? They floated, for fuck’s sake! That’s all they did! Plus, they looked like something out of The Thing, except Things that were content to just float passively … oh, Jesus, they were just SHIT.
4: Barbie’s Pony …
Coz it was no fucking horse, let me tell you. Not to be an equine Nazi, but Barbie is at least seven feet tall, comparatively speaking. She should be atop nothing smaller than a Brontosaurus. Her legs, therefore, didn’t fit in the ugly would-be stirrups and she kept sliding off to one side like the town of Fermoy. Also, why was it that so many of Barbie’s geegees had one leg constantly raised in a state of extreme imbalance, like Megan Fox in that movie? These are noble beasts, you bitch!
3: Plastic Slinkies.
Like metal slinkies, but actually stocked in rural Irish shops. Unlike metal slinkies, because they stopped on the second step of the stairs, got wound up in your da’s runners, and warped like a fucking Star Trek getaway within ten minutes of your bringing them home. On top of that, they always developed weird little black dirt spots. Perhaps because THEY WERE POXY.
2: Mr. Frosty
How I wanted a Mr. Frosty! How I longed for my very own slushee-making production facility from where I could experiment with Wonka-type flavours with the inhibitions of a figure-skating Heathcliff. When I eventually got my hands on one, the resulting concoctions tasted like a windscreen. I’m being kind.
And, the most disappointing toy of all?
1: Robin Williams’ “Toys”.
I mean what the fuck was that all about? The fuck. What. The Fuck. What? WHAT?
Do plaster your own opinions liberally below. I demand a themed day in preparation for The Toy Show. That, and two bottles of cheap Shiraz and some Cuisine De France mince pies.
“The gibbering, ever-conscious, creepy little cuntball”
really was expecting a picture of Adam Sandler there……
Dude, The Wedding Singer? Plus Airheads with Brendan Fraser and the genius that is Steve Buscemi.
Sandler gets a free ride.
Furbies. Those pack-hunting, carnivorous fanged killing machines. I once witnessed a pride of Furbies descend upon an injured Gizmo (from Gremlins) and strip it to the bone in less than a minute. Nature’s best evolved predator by a country mile.
Ahhh for the love of god. Was it not my own action figure getting stuck in the ultra-secret trapdoor that saw me walking up the aisle back in the day?
A curse upon the alluring musk of my own teenage playtime with the original forbidden Furby of herself.
Jesus, Flann. We know who Gizmo is.
Jesus, James. This post isn’t a life metaphor!
I was dragged up half way up a bloody mountain in South Tipperary. Fuckin miles from the nearest kid. What the fuck did I get, board games and roller skates. And while I do not have the hurt you expressed in #10, it still amazes me that the nuncles-n-nants handed me Chess. And what’s worse I learned to play the thing from a book. I think the first time I played it for real was on a train between Calais and Paris with an ex-RN from Mauritius. Ah well, but anyway the point. The toy show was little more that a tease.
We know who Gizmo is
Fair point. But I couldn’t remember if Gizmo was his name, or the name of the species. I should know these things, having spent four years as a Gremlinologist in the early 90s. My heart wasn’t in it though. It was just a pay check.
Vince, I remember peeking through the edges of the wrapping paper one year to make out an image of a magnifying glass on the box. I thought I was getting a detective set and I was so, so excited. Turned out to be a game of Cluedo.
I was the only child in the house.
Flann, seeing as it was a pay check, rather than a pay cheque, I take it that your stint was in some American research facility? I suppose it must have been. Gremlinology has never been a popular major here in Europe, not with all the Arts degrees available.
Touché madam, touché…
“Newborn kittens falling into nests of newborn alligators”, now theres a thing…lolzy
How do you get on with your little wan on this subject. I find Lego a life-saver with the god-kids once they are big enough not ta swallow the bits.
Lego is the greatest gift a parent could give a child. That, and a good raincoat.
I got a Mr Frosty too! What a let down!! Devastated so I was!
I have to say the worse toy I EVER received was…mmm….ah…..um…..none! I was severely underprivileged when it came to toys so I loved everyone I got! I never got the Mr. Frostie or whatever you call him though.
Hola Sweary!
When I was being 10 my father bought me a vacuum penis enlarger, which I do not see on your list. Let me tell you now, what a waste of money THAT was!
And is not like I ever got to use my penis!
Besos
Manuel
Kaz, come on! There had to have been a really shitty toy in your life somewhere! Remember those £1 hollow plastic Barbies that wore plastic boob-tube dresses, kept getting inverted nipples, and only had hair threaded into the middle seam of their collapsable heads? I had tons of them because I never had a real Barbie. God, they SUCKED.
Also, you had a video recorder in your room that didn’t work and was only for decorative purposes. THAT was shit, no?
Manuel, I’m sure it had other uses. Surely it came in handy when hoovering HobNob crumbs from the flabs of your belly?
Efa, I’m glad someone agrees. Mr. Frostys are horrendous.
ok not a toy but did anyone see The Late Late toy show last night? jaysus what a pile of shite. my god it was painful to watch. He didnt pay attention to anything the poor kids where saying and just focused on trying (i say trying but failing) to be funny. He really is the biggest nobjockey Ive seen in a long time….. Hes taking the national institution (the toy show) and truly fucked it to the gutter.
I do think he was overly-excited, made quite a few smarmy comments that were out of place, and it did feel like a speed-Toyshow, they flew through the various toys so fast. But Tubs calmed down in the second half, and I think he was a million times better than uncomfortable Pat and his awkward attempts at recapturing lost youth off the backs of cynical ten-year-olds. That was what the Toy Show had to claw its way back from. I think Tubs is a big step in the right direction, to be honest.
I think there was far too much pressure to get through all the toys they’d obviously promised toy companies they would hawk. I felt at the end we didn’t get any really great feedback on the most exciting toys this Christmas. I hope they rectify that next year, because it’s really taking away the most precious things about the Toy Show – the reactions from the children who’ve been chosen to play with the toys.
Mighty audience prizes, though!
Tubs is it. What-ya planning.