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SOON SANTA WILL be dashing through the snow, his one-horse open sleigh filled with presents to bring children hours of delight and pleasure.
But please Santa, before you deliver those beloved toys, spare a thought for the older residents of the house – because sometimes even the most harmless-looking ‘dream toy’ can become the stuff of parental nightmares.
Here are 14 children’s toys that make life a living hell for parents…
1. Anything with glitter on it
I once heard glitter described as ‘the herpes of craft supplies’ and it’s a phrase that has stuck with me. Just like glitter will. Forever.
2. Playdough
Yes kids love it but it is pure evil. I don’t generally like to think in absolutes but I’m standing firm on this one. It gets ground into carpets, clothes, upholstery, the soles of shoes and is a horror to remove.
Plus, it dries out too fast and it doesn’t even stick very well. Your child will also inevitably poke bits of it into crevices and/or meld all the colours together and then badger you to attempt to separate them all.
3. Glitter playdough
*weeps*
4. Wooden jigsaw puzzles that make sounds
Nothing is more terrifying than entering a dark room at night and wondering where the hell the noise of a donkey braying is coming from.
By the way, even when you make sure the last piece of that braying donkey puzzle is correctly fitted, even when you put the puzzle away in your garage, you will STILL hear it. Forever more. Long after your child has left home.
5. Anything made of tiny plastic bricks
These kinds of toys inevitably require high levels of parental involvement. Especially when they have broken into a million pieces, the instructions have been lost (along with several key parts), and your child is howling for you to fix it.
Oh, and those bricks make for the greatest pain known to man when stood on.
6. Toys with American accents
Or, specifically, toys that shouldn’t have an American accent (I’m looking at you Thomas ABC Train because on Sodor Island they bloomin’ well say Zed not Zee).
7. Toys with distinctly unsettling topics of conversation
‘That talking doll creeps me out!’ confessed one mum I know before launching into a truly terrifying impersonation. ‘You’re sooooo cute… Can I have some caaandy? Give me a hug! I loooove you!’ She grimly added that the doll was ‘lucky she was still intact.’
8. Toys that have no off switch
That sodding laughing monkey whose ear-piercing cackle lasts an eternity – and anything, ANYTHING, that responds to being tickled.
9. Electronic ‘learning’ toys
I know people who can still, wide-eyed and haunted, recite the Little Singing Alfie song even though their children are now approaching secondary school.
In my experience many electronic learning toys seem to suffer some sort of collective educational Tourette’s, bellowing out ‘One, two, three, circle, triangle, square’ when no-one is even near them.
10. Toys that are hard to wash
How does one wash a talking Teletubby? Our toddler threw his (admittedly stinky) red one in his bath some time ago, completely wrecking the speech mechanics. Ever since then I have had to be The Voice Of Po.
Po gets thrust at me when I wake up, when I’m driving, when I’m trying to extract Lego from my feet, all the while with my son commanding ‘Make Po talk.’ It’s not fun for me. And Po still smells.
11. Oversized toys
There will be someone this Christmas who thinks that bigger means better. They’ll opt to show their affection by gifting little Timmy or Aoife a massive kitchen/ride-on tractor/soft-toy gorilla.
That’s great until you realise you’re going to have to get rid of the dinner table because the gorilla now takes up 60 per cent of your living space.
12. Toys that can’t be put away
Ah the dilemma of race car sets and similar track-oriented toys. Once built you’re faced with two grim options: 1) live with it forever 2) facing a tantrum when dismantling it and then entering a never-ending circle of rebuilding/dismantling hell.
Even small toys can fall into this storage nightmare bracket. Have you ever tried to put Jenga back in the box? If so, you’ll know my pain.
13. Any toy that makes fart noises
Specifically, the fart-blasting gun inspired by that animated children’s movie I shan’t name. The website may claim there are “enough varied fart sounds to keep this from getting annoying,” but I know many parents who would beg to differ.
14. Joke books
Ironically nothing will make you want to cry more than listening to a young child endlessly recite ‘hilarious’ one liners (that they will then want you to explain).
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Maybe they can now appeal to the british and irish states to release all files pertaining to the Dublin, cavan and monaghan bombings.
Maybe they can appeal to the sas to tell the truth about the murder of two irish children in a graveyard in tyrone.
Maybe they can appeal to the brits to tell the truth about collusion with loyalists.
Maybe they can appeal for an international inquiry into the british state murder of pat finucane and others.
i’m sick of this one sided bullshi t.
Who are the “they” to which you refer
Nesbit and neeson
What about whataboutery?
They’re appealing for the locations of the bodies not the names of their murderers. That’s typical sf/IRA Provo rhetoric, grow up and stop playing the beal bocht we the Irish are always the victim line. Many an evil murdering bazturd was born in our country and they did terrible harm to their fellow countrymen. Let the families have their kin back so the may grieve properly.
ieoinu..
I seek justice for murdered irish men women and children and you attack me personally….what a troll.
Two of our fellow countrymen look for the return of the bodies of our fellow countrymen murdered by our fellow countrymen and you start whinging with the usual ‘what about them, look what they did, blah blah blah’ Then you go on to attack me and call me a troll. How predictable, typical bullish cowardly spiel biased to the point of tedium from a feckless idiot. Troll my hole, you sir are the troll.
fine/mi5 should be helping with the Dublin and monaghan bombings because fine gael/mi5 helped to bomb Dublin and monaghan.
you queen licking troll
The best insult I’ve ever seen on this site. Queen licking troll!
Ooh Baby would you also seek answers on the Enniskillen bombing or the Kingsmills massacre, nobody done time for them two incidents either and they resulted in 21 innocent people dead at the hands of the PIRA.
I suppose troll-licking Queen may have been offensive on a whole new level.
Thompson,
the irish government didn’t bomb Enniskillen nor were they present at the kingsmill massacre.
I never said the Irish govt were involved. I asked if you want to see the perpetrators of those incidents jailed. Yes or no?
This is not about right or wrong
Neither is it about which side was worse
Or who did what to whom
This is about giving families a body to bury in a marked plot like a Christian rather than never knowing what bog or wood or field their loved one is lying in, unknown, uncared for, in unmarked graves.
Well said, best comment of all
These unfortunate people were murdered by armed thugs.
Who?
The kids murdered by the sas?
The men/women/children murdered by the fine gael/brit army?
Dublin and monaghan people murdered by fine gael/mi5
Pauric, the defender of state terrorism, where is your Unionist friend David Thompson, did I miss him here somewhere spitting out his sectarian bigotry?
David Thompson hasnt went away ye know ;-)
Why is this story in the international section?
The journal has foreign stories in the irish section but irish stories in the international.
good, after my protest they decided to move it.
I see they put it back in the international section.
Typical brit media
and it’s back in the irish section………………
Are you sure you’re not just hallucinating?
Why not just turn off your phone/computer and go for a nice relaxing walk to clear your head and calm your little self down?
I think that all the red thumbs are proof positive that the journal is being used and abused by free staters to push a british agenda.
I ask for justice for irish people who were murdered at the hands of the british and I get garda red thumbs.
So Typical.
… I don’t even
i wish someone with a bit more tact would articulate some of the points hidden in your moronic diatribes. You probably are addicted to internet conspiracies too. You do yourself more harm than good. Then again, you might be about 14 years of age.
incase u dont know 99.99% of people in the free state as u call it dont care about the North or its pathethic problems.
Martin, I don’t suppose that you have verifiable figures and research to back that statement up.
Havana cavanagh. Why do you people resort to insult every time someone offers a different opinion to you? Please explain! I’m 39 by the way.
nessbitt and neeson
I think Liam Neesen is a brilliant actor, but i don’t know why he thinks he can get the killers of these poor men to tell because he and Nessbitt asked, interesting…..
nesbitt and neeson allowed themselves to be used, or worse still,
they wanted to be used.
Ooh baby you may be correct but do you agree that it would be a positive event if these bodies were found.
The IRAs only cause in this day & age is a big ego at the end of a gun.Freedom fighters?…..ya rite whatever
Jimmy and Liam where have you been hiding for over the past thirty years or so when Britain were found guilty of Human Rights Violations, when nationalists communities were held hostage within nationalists areas, by fascists and supremacists from within your communities.i.e. Orange Order?
All I want to say is Truth & Reconciliation commission …we need it now for all victims.. This will put an end to the free state partitionist rubbish from Blueshirts/ Fine Gael, where are the guns buried/ Fianna Fáil & Official IRA/ Labour!
Why would these two men have any more influence over information pertaining to missing persons than any of the families, or any other ordinary person? For god sake. Stories like this annoy me. Talk about desperate to plug their tv/movie work.
Janet in fairness neither of these two men need to promote themselves, they are trying in their own way to help grieving families, that’s all I see here.
are there any people in southern Ireland who have an once of pity. most of the disappeared where vunerable souls who could not fight back. and the sods that kidnapped and murdered them wore hoods and carried guns .would u call these men heores????
The Film Actors Guild has spoken
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