This week’s blog post is by The Paternity Test co-host Matt Boresi, who lives in the Edgewater Glen neighborhood of Chicago with his wife (“Professor Foster”) and their 6-year-old daughter Viva, who harbors none of her father’s aversion to potty humor.
It’s snowing after Tax Day. White Castle is selling a meatless burger that squeaks when you eat it. Pleated pants are back. Clearly hell is full and every shambling nightmare is free to roam the earth.
Nowhere is the complete destruction of order and goodness more apparent than in the toy aisle, where it seems that half of the family board games now involve excrement and flatulence. Potty talk and bathroom humor, once the realm of naughty children and clandestine jokes when parents were absent, are now big business. Quality family time, a term once reserved for polite games of Scrabble and expressions of parental disappointment over report cards, now involves chortling over ersatz egesta and simulated rectal effluvium.
Who is to blame? Probably Pumbaa the Warthog and the Japanese. Talk of toilet affairs was forbidden in all-ages scenarios prior to 1994’s “The Lion King.” In that film however, one scene and lyric implied that Pumbaa was gassy, and it let rip an assault of similar jokes in subsequent media, including and especially in the ever-regrettable Shrek series. Fast forward to today’s Despicable Me 3 Fart Blaster, Poop Emoji Dolls, and Poopeez plastic fecal figurines. Around the same time, Tarō Gomi’s book “Everyone Poops” achieved trans-Pacific success in its first ever English translation. Soon, our trademark American shame and anxiety over our bodies and their functions was replaced with Trolls shooting glitter out of their rectums in their eponymous film.
So what are these bawdy games stinking up the toy section? Let’s take a look.
Poop – the Game (Breaking Games)
The tagline for this game is, “If you like Uno, you’ll love Poop.” That is a preposterous non-sequitur akin to “If you enjoy Candyland, you’ll lose your mind for vomit.”
… still less full of it than “Trump – the Game,” I suppose.
Don’t Step In It (Hasbro)
This game involves molding clay poop, blindfolding players, then letting them walk around trying not to step on the faux ordure. If that’s your idea of a good time, just take off your shoes and try to make it across any lawn in Chicagoland as the Canadian Geese return from warmer climates. You’ll save twenty bucks and won’t mash play-doh into your carpet.
Poopyhead Card Game (Identity Games)
In this game, you strap plastic evacuation to your head in the presence of your family, because your dignity and authority is itself a joke, and your family is merely using you for your income. If you ever stop coming home from work they will have thrown all your favorite t-shirts into a bonfire by the first weekend you’re missing.
Doggie Doo – the Famous Dog Poop Game (Goliath Games)
This game has a big plastic dog and it defecates. Everyone loses.
Toilet Trouble (Hasbro)
Thankfully, this game does not involve fecal matter. It does involve you holding your face over a simulated toilet, though, which occasionally squirts “toilet water” into your eyes and mouth. In real life this would cause you to contract dysentery but I guess in a game it’s funny because the dysentery is all in your mind.
Gas Out (Mattel)
This game is like hot potato if the potato was a green cloud that expelled a malodorous funk. Somehow, SOMEHOW they did not decide to call this game “Pass the Gas.” They should be desperately ashamed for not calling it that. Think, people.
Pull My Finger – The Farting Monkey Game (Jakks Pacific)
Just when you thought the gas was passed, I’ve gone and saved the best for last. “Pull My Finger – The Farting Monkey Game” is everything you could hope for in a farting monkey game. There is a monkey, he has a finger, you pull the finger, his buttocks swell up, and eventually he discharges a fetid plume. Death is nothingness and heaven is an old wives tale.
This is where we are now as a society: SEVEN different, readily available, family-oriented games about bowel movements. Also, Sesame Street is on HBO. You chose to bring a child into this world, and now you must deal with its realities.
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