Trying to link up all my various social networking tools is making me feel my age.  I have become the guy who wishes for the simpler days when a BBS was considered cutting-edge.  It’s hard to keep up sometimes, but every so often I achieve a small victory that makes me feel as though there is still hope for me.

If this works, the post I am writing will hop across my various online identities, to be seen by as many people as I can manage.  If it fails, I am going to eat a cookie and go to sleep.  Honestly though, I’ll do that if it works too.

I had some time to kill while my car was being worked on, so I walked down the road a piece to wander the local “video game bicycle clothing board game action figure Barbie Lego electronics movie diaper” store [hereafter referred to as “toy store”] and see what is being offered to the young’uns these days.  Because I don’t want to point fingers, we will call this toy store “Things U Buy.”  There, now nobody has any clue which chain of stores we are talking about.

As I wandered through the aisles I found myself marveling at how nonsensical some of the items seemed to be.  Within two minutes I began snapping pictures of the items that stuck out to me the most.  Some struck me as poorly thought out.  Some struck me as shamelessly greedy (like, more shamelesslyer than normal for toy companies.)  Some just struck me as unnecessary, or even inappropriate.  Now, I wish to share them with you.  It all started in the board game section, where you can find games adapted from the most unexpected of sources.

Or perhaps some nearly-understandable adaptations that almost certainly fail to live up to their original incarnations.  Like the merger of a popular game, a popular sci-fi franchise, and a…..maybe kinda popular party game?

But that pales in comparison to this “real life” version of a game based on brutal violence against fresh produce.  I assure you, this is a real thing.

As I moved on to the section geared to young boys, I was faced with dozens of weapons designed to hurl soft projectiles at other young boys who all wish they could look as cool and intimidating as the boys on the packaging.  Near these items we find the modern equivalent of what was known as SpyTech when I was a kid.  Plastic items intended to make children feel like James Bond, without the copious amounts of poon that being James Bond entails.  In addition to “spy” gear, we also get junior versions of special forces equipment.  Stealth combat daggers, utility belts, and this;

Pro Tip:  When you write COVERT on your covert mission gear, you are no longer covert.

Pro Tip 2:  When you replace your black armored suit with shiny, shiny gold armor, you are also no longer covert.

Now, without fail, anytime I browse current toy selections, I am reminded that I am getting older.  Sometimes this feeling comes from seeing how modern and sleek so many of the toys look nowadays.  But other times, it is due to seeing how many toys from my childhood are returning to shelves, riding on the nostalgia wave.  They are even joining forces with other toys, old and new, to make crazy toy bastards.  Here I found a combination that simultaneously screamed to me “why didn’t I think of this sooner?” and “WTF?”

Many of you may have already taken note of the strange softening of certain entertainment characters, in order to make even the most intense and dark pop culture fixtures safe enough for children.  This is arguably most evident in the form of an adorable incarnation of the murder-blood-berserker-rage-slaughter-kill machine known as Wolverine.

You might say that this particular toy line makes sense, as it makes young adult characters accesible to smaller children.  Perhaps your logic is sound.  But no logic will make the following item acceptable.  Why?  Because SUPERMAN CAN FLY FASTER THAN A MOTORCYCLE CAN DRIVE!

And if that wasn’t enough preposterousness from the Man of Steel marketing machine, just take a look at the toy that clearly was inspired by the deleted scene showing us Superman with huge mutated hands borrowing a rejected Iron Man suit to swing a ridiculous axe at Made-Up Robot Monster.

Okay, sarcasm aside…….these guys are pretty damn adorable.

This guy, however is not.  Honestly, would you want this staring at you while you sleep?

This next item is a different flavor of inappropriate.  Robot killing machines on an utterly relentless mission to terminate [kill] every human on earth is now, apparently, wholesome fun for all the kiddies.

And last, but certainly not least, we have a “toy” that is clearly inspired by what may be the most questionable source for children’s merchandise.  The rapper who gave us the lyrics:

Baby let me rope you up
Tie you down
Do it right
No matter how hard you buck
Gonna get wild all night

If anyone is confused, he’s totally talking about fucking.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…