*Shudder*I saw an ad for the Tickle Me Elmo TMX today. (The "X" is for "EXTREME")
Only I read it: "Tickle me Emo".
A quick search revealed that I'm not the first one to make this particular brilliant humourous connection. It's not a very funny link, but then again, it's Emo. If you're not sure what Emo is, I think this sums it up best.
I'm still in awe of the sheer evil that is the Tyco marketing department when it comes to this product. It's basically the same toy that goes through a preset number of motions when you tickle it.
The difference being that instead of just putting in the same kind of motor that makes a cellphone vibrate to simulate the tickling, they added some structure to the insides so that it could slap its leg while laughing, fall to the floor laughing, kick its heels against the ground while laughing, flip over onto its face laughing, pound its fist on the ground because it's laughing so hard, and then eventually pull itself up to a standing position, wheezing and begging you to stop.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, you be the judge.
Elmo was the last nail in the Sesame Street coffin for me. I wish I could blame it on Jim Henson's death, but Elmo's been around on and off since the 70's. I can blame it on Kevin Clash who has been the current voice of Elmo since 1984.
That's a damn long time to be speaking in a grating high-pitched third-person saccharine whine.
I can't believe that Jim Henson thought this was a good idea. It places my fanatical and childlike belief in his infallibility into question.
See, when the creator dies, you can at least blame the committee or department that takes over. You know where I'm going with this if you've looked at the science fiction industry since Gene Roddenberry died. Once his creative department finished going through his desk, we got Sexually Ambiguous Alien Space Friends. Once they finished going through his wastepaper basket, we got Hercules In Space and then they decided to throw continuity straight to heck and we got a healthy dose of Quantum Trek. There must have been a gravy stain on the part of the napkin where Gene had written "no time travel wars".
Yeah. Oh Boy. After that series did you notice we didn't have anything new happening? It's because they've run out of places to look for Gene's napkin scribbles for not-quite-fleshed-out concepts.
Thank goodness for series like the new Battlestar Galactica. They've got a good thing going, and it's not science-fiction so much as gritty military-sociopolitical drama. With Robots. In Space.
No comments:
Post a Comment