Cal Jacobson’s Blog

Tonight the Jacobson family hit the jackpot in the latest round of the Chinese Slipshod Toy Quality Lottery. AquaDots have apparently has been recalled. The problem?

If swallowed, the seemingly harmless pellets metabolize into a date-rape drug known as Liquid Ecstacy.

The toy itself is pretty clever: take a bunch of colored beads, place them into entertaining shapes on a special tray, spray them with water and voila! They stick together as sort of a 21st-century doily. My kids made a couple of stick figures and a darling yellow and black kitty, as seen to the right.

A yellow and black kitty ready to take the young’ns on a wild ride of self-discovery and trippitude, that is!

After hearing about the recall on the radio tonight on the drive home, I burst into my house and snatched the evil thing away from my helpless offspring. Well, not quite: they were busy playing with Play-Doh and didn’t notice. Still, crisis narrowly averted, I say!

Fear not, parental units…according to this New York Times article, the bead manufacturer has promised to “add a safe but foul-tasting ingredient to future beads to discourage children from eating them.” Yeah, that’ll work…since the kids who were affected by the drug ate them not because of their bright, candy-like colors but obviously from their sublime flavor.

And does anybody want to take bets as to how long it will be before we hear of some paint-huffing asshats buying two dozen of these kits from Wal-Mart? I mean, the meth-heads have already made the purchase of over-the-counter medicines a pain in the butt (in my area, at least), so is this scenario that outrageous:

Cashier: I’m sorry sir, you’ve got too many toy items.

Parent: Excuse me?

Cashier: You have three Chinese-manufactured toy items in your cart; by law I’m only allowed to sell you two at a time.

Parent: Uh…ok. I guess I won’t take the G.I. Joe action figure.

Cashier: All righty. Can I see some I.D., please? (In walkie-talkie): Can I get manager approval on lane 8?

At least the stuff China is producing right now is only toxic. Wait until they start shipping toys that somehow, inexplicably, explode when they get too hot. Or too cold. Or on Tuesday. Gosh, the American public might even demand somebody to be accountable for that sort of thing. Maybe even decide to stop buying products from a Communist country with an abysmal human-rights record, few environmental controls whatsoever, and more oversight as to what their citizens see on the Internet than the products they sell to the rest of the world.

Yeah, crazy talk. I must be getting a contact high from the yellow and black kitty.

Those were the words that came from my six-year-old after we finished watching Meet the Robinsons tonight.

After my wife and I finished laughing, I had to break the news to him that he wouldn’t get the chance.  My better half then asked me when she would be adopted, and I told her that it would happen shortly after I was adopted.

“I’ll get adopted by somebody rich, like Bill Gates,” I said, and then tried to reassure her with “oh don’t worry, I’ll take you with me.”

She wasn’t buying it.  Come on, Mr. Gates — dad – you’ve got room in your house for a few more, right?

(Note to self: if my wife gets adopted by Bill Gates, that makes her my sister.  Not good: I need to think these things through a bit more.)

I was a bit surprised to find that I enjoyed the movie — other than Pixar’s stuff I’ve found most Disney movies to be God-awful, saccharine ordeals.  Maybe because Pixar alum John Lasseter had a hand in things, they avoided churning out the same “coming of age” pablum which had become Disney’s staple for the last couple of decades.

Seriously, Bambi II?   Cinderella III?  You’d think that if some company had the resources and budget to crank out a quality production, it would be The Mouse.

Maybe a potential strike in Hollywood might not be so bad.  I bet the handful of talented writers could probably get picked up by sympathetic sponsors outside of California.  Maybe even Bill Gates would adopt a couple.