Speaking Volumes

Video Girl Barbie. Here she is, in all her glory:

     

A Barbie with a video camera in her back, complete with pink USB port to upload half hour long video clips of your Barbie play time. Now, those of you who follow our blog may remember I wrote about Babs a few weeks ago after reading the new book by Tanya Lee Stone, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie. At that time Su told me about the Growing-Up Skipper Doll who basically went through puberty if you lifted her arms up. Nice one Mattel. Anyways, once again Su was first to tell me about the Video Girl Barbie (Su is an excellent source of weird news!), and how the FBI has issued a warning to law enforcement to keep an eye out for this toy to be somehow used by pedophiles. This crazy Barbie and the upcoming holidays got me thinking about the worst toy ideas of all time. Here is just a small list of toys NOT to buy your favorite kids this Christmas:

Poop Patrol Barbie - Complete with poop that doubles as dog food.
        

Pole Dance Doll - Self explanatory.

  

Fun Slides Carpet Skates - You know how fun it is to glide around in socks on your hardwood floors! Now you can slide at full speed anywhere in the house. This is not dangerous.

  

Girls Only Cleaning Trolley - Sorry boys!

  

Kaba Kick - Russian Roulette for kids! No, really that's exactly what it is.

    

Hugo - Man of a Thousand Faces. Apparently this was a popular toy in the 70's, personally I can barely imagine anything more terrifying.

       

Michael Jackson Doll - more like Barbie than Ken.

  

Some additional crappy toys I remember being popular in my youth include Skip -it, slap bracelets, and wide variety of baby dolls that went to the bathroom.
 
And that’s not all folks - there’s much, much more! When I googled ‘worst toys ever’ I got a lot of results that were hilarious/shocking/crazy that I won’t repost here, but I do encourage adults to run the same search if they so desire.
 
Even though this post is getting insanely long, I have to mention the real life Video Girl Barbie – an NYU professor who got a camera surgically installed in the back of his head. It will be taking a picture every minute for the next year as part of a performance art project. Read the whole story here.

In conclusion, avoid the embarrassment of accidentally purchasing one of the worst toys ever for the children in your life by buying them BOOKS this year!