Knock, Knock: We're From Defective Yeti, And We're Here To Help

When I came back from Home Depot, this message from The Squirrelly's Dad was affixed to my front door with a large serrated-edge hunting knife:

Hi. This is Matthew Baldwin of defective yeti, come to clear the air about a recent Daddy Types entry.

Last week, in the virtual pages of this website, some comments I made about the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Learning Home were cited, to which Greg added "[this toy] sounds so annoying I'm glad we can't even hope to fit it into our suddenly-too-small New York apartment." I feel, however, that my words were taken out of context -- the
context being, in this case, my blog, where the content is essentially
a miasma of falsehoods and hyperbole gummed together by a series of
misused commas.

For example, about a year ago I said my wife and I "had a baby," when, in fact, we had merely won a goldfish at a street fair.

No -- hah, hah! -- the baby thing was actually true, which is why I am now the proud owner of a large, plastic, $60 electronic talking housefront. But I may have overstated the obnoxo-quotient of said toy for comic effect.

Yes, it's annoying, but describing a battery-powered infant toy as annoying is as redundant as describing a venereal disease as undesirable. The trick to buying infant toys is much the same as the trick to selecting a Democratic candidate for president: you aim to pick the least annoying of those available (and hopefully with more success). By that standard, the Laugh & Learn Whatchimawhosit is actually one of the better purchases we've made. Our twerp loves pushing buttons and opening / closing things, and this enormous hunk of molded polymers affords him plenty of opportunity to do both. Plus, there's a wide enough variety of noises and sounds to keep us from wishing we'd reminded childless.

As long as I'm handing out recommendations, here are our other favorite items:

• Ocean Wonders Aquarium: Hands-down the greatest gadget we bought, even though the slightly creepy songs it plays sound like the musical accompaniment to a "Order of Dagon" chant out of H. P. Lovecraft.
• LeapStart Learning Table: This is stationed in the center of the playroom, and our son gravitates towards it whenever he passes.
• Bright Lights Phone: Okay, honestly, this thing is unnecessarily loud. But! But is has so many buttons and so many songs that, if we hand it to the kid as we lay him on his changing table, it will keep him occupied for the duration of our toil.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, we have the Hug & Learn Baby Tad, a toy so annoying that you could easily imagine The Joker using it to drive a captive Commissioner Gordon insane. Every time I hear it cry "I love you!" I have fantasies about putting it in the kitchen sink and immersing it in sulfuric acid. And do you remember that short story The Monkey's Paw, about the guy who gets three wishes, but unspeakable horror results when he doesn't use them wisely? I think of that story every time I visit the Amazon.com homepage and see that the Hug & Learn Baby Tad is the "most wished for item."

In summary: Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Learning Home = good; Hug & Learn Baby Tad = like getting stranded on a desert island with Bill O'Reilly.

Before someone else does, Daddy Types also points out that it crassly added its Amazon Associates ID to each item mentioned in Matthew's correction/smackdown. This way, whether from my humiliation, or from your ignorantly self-inflicted Tad-buying pain, I will earn a dollar.

Previously: Celebrity Baby Embraces Giant, Super-annoying Toy!