9 Toys That Prepare Children for a Life of Menial Labor
If you want to know how bad the economy is, look no further than your nearest toy store. Where kids used to dream of becoming astronauts or war heroes, the toy industry is now working hard to massively lower their expectations for the future.
These very real toys seem to exist only to let your kid know they're going to be wrist deep in shit for a long, long time, so get used to it now when it's colorful and made of plastic.
McDonald's Drive-Thru Food Cart
A whole lot of you reading this worked at a McDonald's at some point in your life, and most of you likely consider that the lowest point of your existence. There are guys who have shrugged off long prison sentences who shudder when they remember their long shifts at the Mickey D's french fry station. So of course they made a toy to simulate the experience.
Yes, before you can say, "I asked for no pickles" your child will be engrossed in the exciting world of moving slowly and doing things incorrectly. Seriously, what's the idea here? To convince a generation that this job is an awesome, wondrous way to spend your formative years? Nice try there, McDonald's, but you already play a crucial role in our workforce: scaring teenagers into getting a degree.
GED application
Tube of Clearasil
Permanent spray-on stale grease odor
Scan-It Operation Checkpoint Toy X-Ray
The fantastic thing about this airport security screener toy is the way in which it carefully combines the tendency to suspect everyone around you of being evil with the passive quality of sitting on your ass and watching a screen. It's what has made the show 24 so popular.
The most enduring lesson provided by this patriotic toy is that everyone is a suspect and we need to keep our country safe. Or maybe the lesson is just that a life spent looking at X-rays of other people's Bermuda shorts and travel-sized dildos is not a life wasted.
Body search wand
Rubber gloves
"These Colors Don't Run" temporary tattoos
Bruder Mercedes-Benz Garbage Truck
This toy Mercedes-Benz garbage truck is a fun mixture of childish fantasy and merciless reality. On one hand it makes it realistic for every child to believe they will grow up and ride around town in a Mercedes. On the other, it eschews plush leather interiors and supermodel passengers in favor of diesel power, the putrid stench of other people's refuse and a life riddled with maggots and biohazards.
The real value of this toy is the fact that it shirks all childlike, cartoonish qualities in favor of stark realism. There isn't any cute face on this truck. It doesn't make fun driving noises or play music. It just loads garbage.
Because that's life, little Timmy. It's full of rancid diapers, used condoms and rotting meat scraps that just pile up and up, leaving a film on you that feels like it's still there no matter how much you scrub.
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Work gloves
Antibacterial soap
Fly swatter
Just Like Home My Cleaning Trolley with Vacuum (a.k.a. Janitor Cart)
Remember in middle school, when gym class was spent watching the dodge ball teams pick all the cool kids ahead of you? And then they skipped you again and picked the nerd kids? And they even took the kid who had fits and shat himself, while you continued to stand there, alone, in silence?
In those dark days the one thing you could rely on to boost your spirits was the janitor. At least you didn't wear a grease stained shirt with your name on it. At least you didn't smell like gritty pink hand soap and mop up the bodily fluids of children all day. At least you didn't get called into the gym every 14 minutes because another little pisser got a basketball stuck in the rafters.
Some kids will never be so lucky. This "cleaning trolley" is clearly a toy janitor cart that tells your child right from their toddler days that they should seriously lower their expectations.
As a subtle bit of foreshadowing, the Toys "R" Us website even misspells the word vacuum in the name of the toy, as if to say, "Hey, you don't really need to worry about spelling--or math or science for that matter. The only real value you have in a classroom is when a kid pukes and you and your bucket of sawdust come to save the day."
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Gigantic metal ring w/ 45 keys
Whiskey hidden in a Fresca can
An empty lunch table on which to sit alone weeping
Breyer Stable Cleaning Set
Spending your life engulfed in giant horse turds is a lowly existence--and it would likely take years to come to terms with the fact that your life had somehow lead you to that as a means of subsistence. So naturally the idea behind this stable cleaning playset is to get your little ones acquainted with handling dung from the time they develop the necessary fine motor skills.
To really see the extent of this toy's dysfunction, you have to take a look at how Breyer describes it on their own website:
Boxed set includes broom, shovel, pitchfork, muck bucket, and wheelbarrow. Also includes imitation manure
That's right. Imitation manure. Fake pieces of horse shit for your child's carefree playing enjoyment. There's something to be said for the emotional turmoil of a parents who hates their child enough to want them to play with crap but loves their carpet so much the don't want it stained.
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Denim overalls outfit (no undershirt)
Dueling Banjos instructional VCR tape
An attractive cousin
Child Taxi Toy Pedal Car
Yes, with the Child Taxi Toy Pedal Car children of all races and backgrounds can loudly and clearly receive the message that they are destined for a life among the batshit crazy, gibberish-spewing, stank-omitting fringe group known as cab drivers.
Why indulge your child with fantasies of owning a fancy sports car? Remind him that he'll never be in that income bracket, and that fortunately there are relatively few prerequisites to getting yourself behind the wheel of a rickety old taxi cab: Do you lack basic human decency and a respect for laws of the road? Great, you're the ideal candidate. Smell like cigarettes and fermented upholstery sweat? When can you start? Do women usually ask you not to take them to an abandoned lot and murder them? You'll do nicely.
Thanks to you, little Johnny can learn his place ferrying people more important than himself about town even before he learns to tie his shoes or how to spell peon.
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Soiled shirt
Car radio playing only Turkish music
Driver's ID badge w/ terrifying picture
Mailbox & Mail Set
Good toys offer a world of possibilities and encourage the user to engage their sense of imagination. This is a fucking mailbox. It offers three slots in which to place fake pieces of mail over and over and over and over and over.
After they've done that, they can open one of the two doors in the mailbox, both of which lead to the same place, and discover that all of their time and sweat spent sorting was all a big fat waste since all of the mail just dropped into the same big bucket anyway.
Other than being useful as a handy tool to diagnose an OCD mail sorting disorder in your child, every other kid on Earth should soon be bored and frustrated enough to begin feeling that urge to kill everyone around them--just like a real postal worker!
Tums
Band-Aids (for paper cuts)
Bulletproof vest
Light & Sound Gas Station
Right off the bat this gas station attendant toy creates a fantasy world wherein children play the part of a person who is all but useless, whose very existence in the modern world can be attributed to nothing more than a different person being lazy as fuck.
After all, the odds are the kid has never seen a full-service gas station outside of TV shows set in the 60s, and if they have any self-esteem at all they should be perplexed as to why they are dressing up in a ridiculous one-piece jumpsuit and performing duties a monkey is sufficiently gifted to handle.
Aside from working the pump, the fact that they have to swipe the customer's credit card and check their tire pressure for them should lead quickly to the child asking, "Why the hell can't this driver just get off their lazy ass and do these things themself?" At this point the child's mother can dutifully inform them that it's because "the driver went to college and you didn't."
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Kitty litter for spill clean-up
Assorted greasy rags
List of creative ways to make small talk about the weather
i-Tattoo Electronic Tattoo Pen
This toy tattoo gun vibrates and draws tattoos on his customers with hopefully temporary ink. Hope he knows how to draw barbed wire!
With this toy you can hedge your bets completely, by teaching your child skills he'll be able to use both in and out of prison.
Accessories That Should Be Sold Separately:Set of a dozen unsettling piercings
Head-shaving kit
My first meth lab
Don't get too excited about your other childhood dream jobs either; check out 5 Jobs You Wanted as a Kid (And Why They Suck). Or find out about some more toys that will demoralize (or devour) your child, in The 13 Most Unintentionally Disturbing Children's Toys.
And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks to save you from the shittiness of your current job.
