Having a Ball!

Sometimes the best products fail because of a poorly executed advertising campaign.  Such is the case with Japan Trend Shop's newest pet product: The Oppo Food Ball for Dogs. 

Here's how it is advertised;

The Oppo Food Ball for Dogs is designed to help your pooch get more out of a meal. It will move around as your pet munches away on the food inside, helping the contents gather at the bottom and making it easier for the animal to get to that last nourishing lick. After all, there's nothing more upsetting than a frustrated canine! 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Oppo Food Ball for Dogs essentially turns a dog's meal time into a game of bobbing for apples.

They need a new marketing strategy.  Their advertising is completely off target.   Being the marketing genius that I am, I've decided to share some ideas with them.

It is the holiday season, after all.

Concept #1:  Does your dog inhale his food?  Does he have
indigestion from eating too fast?  Break bad habits with the Oppo Food Ball for Dogs.  Make dinnertime last hours instead of seconds.  Guaranteed to increase his mealtime by 800%.

Concept #2: Are you tired of taking your dog for endless walks?  Let him exercise himself with the new Oppo Food Ball for Dogs.  Sit back and relax while Rover works out as he eats.

Concept #3: Has your dog been naughty?  Show him who’s boss with the Oppo Food Ball for Dogs.  Make him earn every kernel of food he eats.

OMG!  I just had a scathingly brilliant idea.  

The Nerdling Food Ball for Teenagers.

Nerdling Sea Monkeys

I'm not sure what went wrong.

It certainly wasn't for lack of enthusiasm.  

OK,  I'll admit it.  I occasionally rush into projects when I get excited.  And I was REALLY excited about raising a family of Sea Monkeys.

But I promise you.  I did not rush this time.  

I even recruited my friend George to be my lab assistant.  He brought over all the necessary equipment.  And we followed the directions to a tee. 
 
Step #1 involved adding powder from Envelope #1 to the water.  

Then we had to wait for 24 long hours for Step 2, which involved adding the freeze dried Sea Monkeys contained in Envelope #2 to the water.

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

But the Sea Monkeys never hatched.  A bunch of stinkin' duds.

So Kevin remains an only child.  

You know what's even more disappointing?  I will never be able to publish a sea monkey poem on www.seamonkeyworship.com

And join the likes of Alexis: 

   

and Leesa:

But wait!  If my poem was exceptionally good maybe I could fool the sea monkey worship people!   

(They don't have to know my Sea Monkeys died in utero.)

I decided to give it a whirl. 

Nerdling Sea Monkeys

Sea Monkeys swimming
Around in their aqua world
Studying chi square and
Multicollinearity

Submitted by Lou Clyde

I'm so proud.  It brought tears to my eyes.

Admittedly, it would be a wee bit humiliating if I were discovered to be a fraud: a fake Sea Monkey mom.  But I decided to throw caution to the wind and submit my poem to the seamonkey worship people anyhow.

And I got this message: The e-mail message could not be delivered because the user's mailfolder is full.

An ordinary poet might be discouraged.  But not me! 

There's always The New Yorker.

Satisfying Barbie

Barbie was so mad at me.  She didn't like her hair cut.  She's one of "those" people who believes that a good cut actually makes your hair look longer.

Hello....Barbie!  I cut your hair.  That makes it shorter.  Not longer.

She was driving me absolutely nuts.  Pouting all the time.  Apparently, she wanted to look like her friend Totally Hair Barbie.  

I told her, "I'm a hairstylist.  Not a magician."  

And at the risk of offending poor Barbie, how could I possibly be expected to create a Totally Hair Barbie hairstyle on a...well ...  Let's call a spade a spade.  A Somewhat Hair Barbie.

With that said, customer satisfaction is priority for me.  There had to be some way to make my client happy.

Then I had a scathingly brilliant idea. I would make Barbie hair extensions.  

I studied the picture of Totally Hair Barbie.  Her hair reminded me of something.  OMG!  I realized it was a cross between Kevin's new rope toy and a drapery tassel. 

Unfortunately, Kevin was not the least bit interested in sharing his rope toy with Barbie so I went to Plan B.  

I painstakingly attached the drapery tassel extensions to Barbie's hair and I thought she looked beautiful.

  

"It's not long enough!" Barbie whined.

Lucky for her I had a Plan C.

Barbie loves her new extensions.  And guess what!!  I have a new client!

Totally Hair Barbie wants a perm and some color.

The Box

My heart started racing when my secretary handed me the package.  It was, after all, November 13.  Not that far from the holidays.    

Some of our vendors send us candy for the holidays.

Delicious vendor candy.

My mouth began to water.
 
I was in a teleconference when the package arrived.  I decided to open the box right away, since the people I was meeting with could not see me.  And I was hungry.

I stealthily, and rather unsuccessfully, attempted to open the UPS box.  "Yes,"  I said into the speaker phone.  "That was an unexpected insight,"  I added, as I incompetently tugged on the paper tag attempting to open the box.
 

It snapped off. Crap. I grabbed the stubby end of the stubborn strip with my teeth.  "What?"  I said, "Oh, no.  That won't be a problem." 

The problem was opening the damn box.   I began to salivate.  This was getting ridiculous.

What exactly was in the box?  I hoped it wasn't chocolate covered fruit.  I hate chocolate covered fruit.  Fruit ruins chocolate.  It better be caramel.  Or mint.  Or chocolate chocolate.

Or chocolate with nuts.  I hadn't had eaten for 45 minutes and really needed some holiday vendor candy.

Doggone!   The strip broke off in my teeth.  I grabbed my scissors. 

"What?  Oh yeah, I'm still here," I said, while stabbing the box, " I was just....[stab] ..checking... [stab] ...the statistical... [stab]... significance.  1.6345.. [stab]..90%.  Good."

I kept struggling.  OMG!  

I felt like I was in a Hitchcock movie.  How did they expect anyone to open these damn boxes?!?!?!   

A person could starve to death.

I was  about ready to eat my hand by the time I got that damn box opened.   I wiped the sweat off my brow as I reached into the UPS box and removed another box- a  white box with four words:  "Want deeper customer relationships?"  
 
"No," I said, panting heavily.  "I.  Want.  Chocolate."

Wait.  There was a photo of an i-Pad on the box.  WTH?  Did they have me confused with the CEO?

I held my breath as I opened the white box.

"Get your hands on a sea of behavioral data and watch customer relationships come alive."

OMG.  I could not believe my eyes.  This was not an i-Pad.  It was far more valuable than a stinkin' i-Pad.

This was a Sea Monkey Aquarium.

Holy stinkin' cow!

I looked left and right.  This was a true moment of truth. What should I do?  Should I contact Corporate Compliance about this gift? 

I know I should turn it in. 

But I always wanted to raise Sea Monkeys.  I hate that Kevin's an only child.

Hey Kevin!

Guess what!

to be continued....

Completing the Collection

It has been over a year since I rolled out my Nerdling line of earrings.  And the buyers at Tiffany’s and Nordstroms have been pestering me to release another design in time for the holiday season.

Apparently they cannot keep the Barbie Toilet Paper Earrings on the shelf.  And the Barbie Amputated Foot Earrings have become a something of a collector’s item on the Hamptons.

I was faced with the same challenge that I’m certain Michaelangelo had when he finished painting the Sistine Chapel.  

How can I possibly outdo myself?

I knew that my next design had to be unique, trendy and sophisticated.  I decided to go to WalMart for ideas.  

As luck would have it,  I happened upon the Lollapalooza Diaper Surprise Doll.  I had heard about this amazing doll but had never seen one in real life.  Sinkin' amazing.  You feed her, push her belly button and magic charms appear in her diaper!

OMG!  I could make the next generation of Nerdling earrings out of the Lollapalooza's magic diaper charms!  

I was getting goose bumps.

But she was $29.99, which was way out of my prototype jewelry budget.   I was about to walk away when I noticed that WalMart sold the Diaper Surprise Diaper Packs separately.  For a fraction of the price.  

When I got home I had second thoughts.  What if word got around that I harvested the diaper charms without a Lollapalooza doll?   I was relatively certain that I could just pour water into the diaper and the magical charms would materialize, but that was cheating.  And it felt wrong.  

Plus, I have a reputation to protect.  

Barbie offered to help, but she put me in an even worse mood.  “Come on, Barbie.  You are way too old for that diaper!” 

Or too young. 

In the end, I decided to pretend that a $29.99 doll was peeing into the diaper.  Through a Go-Girl. 

Admittedly, it was the most fun I’d had in weeks.  That is, until I realized that the charms were made of plastic.  

Pink plastic.  

Earrings made of pink plastic were certainly not worthy of my Nerdling earring collection.  

I decided to go back to the drawing board.  Don't worry...I have another idea.

Pooping Peanuts

I wish my dog pooped jewels.  But he doesn't.  He poops poop.  Plain old poop.

Avery's dog poops jewels.  Red jewels.  Probably rubies.
 
Avery is part of the Moxie Girlz  Poopsy Pet collection.    According to the Moxie girlz website, "the pets are cute- and just like magic, they have silly poop!"

Kevin's poop is not at all silly.

As a side note, while researching the Moxie Girlz Poopsy Pets, I googled  “I poop jewels” and was disturbed delighted to discover a whole new world of jewelry made of, you guessed it, poop.

Apparently moose poop makes very attractive earrings.  As does bird poop.  And quail droppings.
 
BTW, these earrings better be produced by some crazy-ass engineering geniuses, because the ear lobe is not that far from the nose.  And I don’t know about you, but I would not want the eau-de-moose poop wafting around my face all day.  

Even if they are swank as shit.

Back to those Moxie dolls.  They don’t just poop jewels.
This animal collection is truly extraordinary.  It contains a caboodle of crap.  There’s an elephant that poops peanuts, a panda that poops bamboo shoots, a tiger that poops striped eggs, and a unicorn that poops rainbows.

Yes.  You heard right.  A unicorn that poops rainbows.

It’s almost too good to believe!

I decided to take a trip to amazon.com to  see what the reviewers had to say.

I was not disappointed.  They appear to love it! 

"This educational toy is great for teaching kids about pooping. Personally, I poop rainbow drops that feel like velvet and smell like orange sherbet, unless I eat chili, then its more like rose petal potpourri. If its just gas, then a rainbow beams out and swirls the room, wrapping itself around anyone in the room with a loving embrace."

"My life was incomplete without a rainbow-pooping unicorn amongst the many unique toys decorating my professional office. This newest conversation piece is, without question, the crème de la crème of the lot"

"Lots of poopin' fun! The only way they can top this rainbow-pooping unicorn is if they make a pet cat that poops out dead mice. Now THAT would be epic."
 
Seriously?  A cat pooping out dead mice?  

I couldn't agree less.  A cat pooping out dead mice would do absolutely nothing for me. 

Now a Pomeranian pooping tampons?

  
That, my dear readers,  would be legendary.

The Evasive Pop Tart

It was almost impossible to believe.

I’ve never seen a Pop Tart go to such extremes to avoid being consumed. 

I didn’t hear the toaster pop up, but it had.  And my Pop Tart was missing.   I looked around.  Who could have possibly pilfered my Pop Tart?   Dave?  Nah.  Maybe if it was a Cheeseburger Pop Tart.  But it was Brown Sugar & Cinnamon. 

It wasn’t Linda.  She was still in bed (since it was before noon). 

Kevin was the next logical suspect, but he’s too short to reach the counter. 

Where did it go?  I looked inside the toaster.

A-HA!

It was literally hiding at the bottom of the toaster.  It had folded itself in half and was attempting to slink its way out the bottom.  Like Flat Stanley.

Pathetic.

“Exactly where do you think you’re going, Pop Tart?” I asked the fleeing felon as I grabbed a fork.

WAIT!!!  Did I really want to risk my life for a Pop Tart? 

No, I did not.  So I unplugged the toaster.

By the time I returned to the chase, only the tail end of the Pop Tart was in sight.  I attempted to grab him with a fork.  A fight ensued and he fought for his stinkin’ life.  

Make that his sweet smelling life.  I removed my weapon and came out with HALF of a Pop Tart.

I looked inside the toaster.  Where the heck was the rest of him? 

I opened the secret escape hatch on the bottom.  Empty.

OMG. This was no ordinary Pop Tart.  It was Harry Houdini himself hiding in a Brown Sugar & Cinnamon pastry.

I thought seriously about pushing down the toaster button, which would essentially send him..or half of him... to a fiery death in toaster hell.  

But that's just not me.  I'm merciful.  Benevolent.  Nice.

Besides.  

I don't like my pop Tarts too crispy.