Archive | October, 2013

The Treasure Chest of Terrible Toys: Smoking Popeye

19 Oct

October 20, 2013

treasure chest logo

There’s one toy I’ve always wanted to induct into the Treasure Chest of Terrible Toys. On the face of it, it sounds great: it combines one of my favorite comic strip characters (you know, the guy with the spinach and the anger management problem) with classic tin toys. But somehow it got all screwed up along the way and what should have been awesome became awful. Problem is, it turns out that my ne’er-do-well brother Allan Keyes already beat me to it. So without further ado, Smoking Popeye.

from November 12, 2012

SMOKIN!

Mr. B has been on his on-again, off-again bad toy kick. Which got me thinking about the BEST toy.  No, not Lincoln Logs. Not an Erector Set. Play D’Oh? NO! The best toy evah is…….

SMOKING POPEYE:                       

Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds! A Popeye that…..smokes. Fun for the family! But it really was a gentler time, when kids could actually have a toy like this. You could NEVER get this toy to market today. And it signals a sea change in the country, because there was a time when 9 out of 10 doctors endorsed smoking, and it was considered very glamorous thing to do: 

Mr. BTR has no clue who this actress is.

Hubba hubba!

But while us humans are slowly moving beyond smoking, there’s still one segment of the planet that is embracing smoking with a passion:

FUN WITH TEH INTERNETS! TODAY’S SEARCH: SMOKING ANIMALS

1)

More fun that a barrel full of smoking monkeys! Monkeys are the most intelligent animal in the kingdom aside from us, so it figures that they’ve been smoking for quite a while now. There’s also unconfirmed reports that rhesus monkeys have started playing Barry White music before they…..uh, get busy with their monkey significant others.  Smart indeed.

2) 

Now this is a very civilized goat. You can’t see it behind the fence, but he’s wearing a natty jacket with patches on the sleeves. Unfortunately, he’s smoking rum and maple blend (UGH)

3) 

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Isn’t that just the kewtest widdle thing! If that little one needed a light from me, I’d flick my bic! We all know how much Mr. B WUVS kittehs!!!!

Speaking  of cute cats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kYNId_Kvbo (The White Shadow one is my favorite!)

4)

This is NOT Pierre D. Duck, the World’s Greatest Duck, who is very anti-smoking and will quack at you if you smoke. You can find the link to his Facebook page in the sidebar.

The AFLAC duck celebrates after closing on the Glengarry leads…..

5)

Now that’s one bitch that knows how to party! (See what I did there?)

6)

Um…..what? This one doesn’t make any sense, but it’s so wonderful that I don’t care! This gives me hope that I can fulfill my dream of one day seeing a dolphin take a bong hit. For now, the closest I can come to that magical day is this:

 

Imponderable #113: Sydney Australia

18 Oct

October 18, 2013

Why did the chicken cross the road?” finally has an answer.
Because he was blind.”
And then he fell in a pool and drowned. But it was OK! Really, it all worked out fine. Read on!

chk1

Aww, poor Chooky Wooky. He must be the luckiest chicken alive. And what do you think of Chooky Wooky as a name? That’s either Chewbacca’s son in the next Star Wars movie or it is what I’m going to name my kid. I hope she likes it!

Anyway, I think this story is great. Heartwarming, really, very touching. Autistic girl, favorite pet, blind animal, rescue, and reunited. It has it all! (OK, it doesn’t have explosions, karate, or gratuitous and big-breasted female nudity but hey, it has a blind chicken, and that has to count for something.)

1801759c

This is the real-life Chooky Wooky and his new girlfriend

It took three hours of mouth-to-mouth, girl-on-chicken action to bring that fowl back to the land of the living. Good thing chickens don’t have souls or he’d be back as a zombie!

I have to wonder. Where would you draw the line? Would you perform CPR on a beloved snake? A weasel? A musk ox? Even a family’s beloved pet chicken is borderline, I’d think, given salmonella and all that. I guess it all depends on how you feel about chickens. For this I defer to George Costanza:

GEORGE: Do you think chickens have individual personalities?
KRAMER: (shivering) I don’t know.
GEORGE: If you had like five chickens could you tell them apart by just the way they acted? Or would they all just be walking around? Bak, bak, baak, bak? Cause if they have individual personalities I’m not sure we should be eaten `em.

Would you spend three hours performing CPR on a blind chicken?
The question is Imponderable.

But I would not.

Don’t you think that “Blind Chicken” would have made a great name for an old Southern blues man? Clarence “Blind Chicken” Perkins, for example. On the other hand, it also sounds like one of the Hekawi Indians on F Troop.