It’s not really the holiday season until you’ve waited in an interminable line in adverse weather conditions to spend money on a toy that has been hyped within an inch of its life. Here are the Top Five Most Dangerously Popular Holiday Toys of the last two decades. ]]>

It’s not really the holiday season until you’ve waited in an interminable line in adverse weather conditions to spend money on a toy that has been hyped within an inch of its life. To get your festive fix of fisticuffs, we present to you the Top Five Most Dangerously Popular Holiday Toys of the last two decades.

1. The Toy: Cabbage Patch Kids

The Year: 1983
The Chaos: My very own parents can attest to the fact that these (admit it) sorta-ugly dolls were THE must have Christmas item for much of the early 80s, thanks, in part, to a few big celebrities who were apparent fans of the little dimpled tykes, including Burt Reynolds (His wife, Loni Anderson, was a toy collector. We assume he bought them for her. That has to be it, right?) I had two. My first adopted daughter’s name was Jemima. I don’t remember the name of the second, but I do recall that her new special feature was that you could “curl” her hair by winding it around your finger. Basically this meant that instead of normal yarn-like hair, she had strands that felt like oily, waxy Twizzlers and were probably made from something we’d rather not think about. As for the frenzy surrounding these dolls, we’ll let the You Tube footage speak for itself:

2. The Toy: Tickle Me Elmo

The Year: 1996
The Chaos: Nearly 300 people had amassed outside a Wal-Mart in Frederickton, New Brunswick in the five hours before it opened. The moment the doors were unlocked, the Muppet-seeking mob pushed their way through the entrance, evidently not caring who they had to step over on their way to the shelves of creepy, giggling, red rascals. One defenseless employee had to be hospitalized. (This was eerily similar to the tragic death of a Long Island Wal-Mart employee last month.) Down in Texas, two Wal-Mart employees were lucky enough to escape the Elmo rush unharmed, but they weren’t able to escape The Man: they got fired for hiding Elmo dolls from customers so they could claim them for themselves.

The new Elmo on the block, “Elmo Live,” doesn’t just giggle; he sits, stands, dances, sings, tells jokes and crosses one leg over the other. It’s terrifying and just a little bit awesome. See for yourself:

3. The Toy: Furby

The Year: 1998
The Chaos: Despite the fact that nobody was really sure what a “Furby” really was, the floppy-eared, big-eyed gremlin-esque toy with a capacity to remember a vocabulary of over 100 English words (along with some words spoken in “furbish”) was so coveted in 1998 that people waited in line for hours just to buy Furbies that they could scalp to shoppers who were still waiting in line. The eternal law of supply and demand was put to the test as the media featured stories about this innovative “intuitive” tech-y toy months before it was actually scheduled to hit the shelves. By the time it did, the demand was already out of control stores were forced to turn away customers away with vague projections about when they’d get a few more Furbies in stock. Several customers at a Wal-Mart in Tewksbury, MA, wouldn’t take “No Furbies” for an answer and threatened violence against the store management if their desire for Furby wasn’t quenched. They still left empty handed, but at least they weren’t in handcuffs. The Furbster is still around today, and there is actually a Bejeweled Furby that has been appraised at a worth of $100k. There are only five in existence, but somehow we suspect (or hope) the supply might be more than the demand this time around. Ready to lose several nights of sleep? Here’s a You Tube video highlighting Furby’s more… uh… demonic characteristics:

4. The Toy: Beanie Babies

The Year: 1997
The Chaos: The words “Beanie Baby Black Market” might conjure more than a few chuckles, but such markets were a reality in 1997 when Beanie mania was at the height of its frenzy. Oak Brook, IL-based toy maker Ty, Inc. introduced the original Beanie Babies in 1993. Four years later, they were still introducing new beanie designs that became instant must-haves for the kiddie set, while serious collectors paid thousands to get their hands on the “vintage classic” beanies with ’93 and ’94 birthdays. One Nebraskan toy storeowner reported that grown men were fighting in line waiting to get into her store to buy these $5 trinkets. Stores had to vastly limit the number of Beanies that customers could buy because while they only cost a fiver at the retailer, the underground trading market was being flooded with beanies costing ten times their intended value. In 1999, a St. Louis couple was sentenced to one and half years in prison and a $150,000 fine for smuggling in counterfeit Beanie Babies from Europe with the intent to sell them in the United States. Creator Ty Warner intended to get out of the beanie business altogether after he saw how his simple creation was getting blowing vastly out of proportion with asking amounts in the thousands, but he’s back at it with Beanie Babies 2.0, an updated version of the same old stuffed animal with the added feature of being able to log on to the internet with a special code that allows you to play games and interact with your beanie virtually. (Much like the now hugely popular Webkinz, the first collectible plush to take up the original beanie baby mantle). For more beanie news, we will now direct you to this You Tube clip that actually features Beanie Babies delivering fake news. It’s too precious to be believed.

5. The Toy: Nintendo Wii/Sony PS3

The Year: 2006
The Chaos: It’s unlikely that you’ve forgotten the intensity surrounding Sony and Nintendo’s holiday console system debuts in 2006. The lines. The websites devoted to tracking the latest shipments to your local stores. The urge to rationalize paying three times the retail price just so you would know what it felt like to be one of the proud few who would hold one on Christmas morning. This writer still doesn’t own either, as she somehow believes that it is beyond her reach, like if I was to go right now to the store and try to get a Wii, two years later, they would still tell me to get in line. Nevertheless, some people did manage to score these two state of the art systems in ’06, but in one reported instance, getting one was actually the easy part. One CNN staffer posted a personal account of her brush with violence as she struggled to escape with her newly purchased Wii, stating that as she made her way for the exit, disgruntled line-waiters who just been told there were no more Wii’s to be had started grabbing for her bag and shouting at her. A lone female in a sea of angry gamers, she was escorted to a police car by the store’s security guard and was given safe exit by her armed escort. For a 19-year old in West Bend, WI, just getting in line for a PS3 was a struggle: he injured himself running into a pole as he sprinted to claim one of 10 coveted spots in line outside a Wal-Mart to lay claim to the small shipment of PS3’s that was available. Believe it or not, that was just the tip of the extremely violent iceberg surrounding these super-hyped systems:

We don’t know yet which toy will claim the top spot under the tree this year, but here’s a gallery of the contenders. Our money is on Kota, the dinosaur who munches leaves and whom that small children can sit on and ride. What we wouldn’t give to be six again.

What’s your best (or worst) must-have toy memory?

Jenn Thompson is a freelance writer for publications including Charlotte Magazine, Variety, and Time Out.

See Also…

The Secrets Behind Your Favorite Toys
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4 Toys That Have Gone to War for America
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11 Notable Presidential Pardons
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Is It True That No Two Snowflakes Are Alike?
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12 Things You Might Not Know About A Christmas Story

Ever wondered what a surveyor is actually surveying? An ombudsman? The Surgeon General? Here's the scoop on some of the most vaguely named and/or unknown professions. ]]> “What is it that you do, exactly?”

You asked, we answered. We dug deep to find the dirt on a few of the most vaguely named and/or unknown professions in our American capitalist system.

1. Surveyor

“What could he possibly be looking at? How long does he have to stand there? Are they even writing anything down?”

Be honest, you’ve been DYING to know what those people with the little tripods are staring at on the side of the road. According to landsurveyors.us, those vest-wearing folks are out there to “mark the boundaries of land, create maps and legal descriptions, and plan and organize the development of property.” Inspired by the persisting spirit of Manifest Destiny, these men and women are soldiers for one of our most cherished rights: the right to own property, put a fence around it, and grow hedges to keep out the neighbors.

Those nifty little tripod doohickeys (actually called “transit levels”) are just one tool used in a massive amount of data gathering about any plane of land space. From there, surveyors can determine the best place to mark the corner of a property, re-establish property lines, give advice and council to a building developer, and (perhaps their most important job) interpret the legal speak from a land deed written 65 years ago.

Despite the many hours of painstaking measurements that a surveyor might take on a piece of land, surveyors apparently like to think of their job as “much an art as it is a science.” Which is a poetic way of telling you up front that no two land surveys are likely to be identical, and that the way we draw boundaries and maps remains fluid and changing over time. That means as long as the way we look at land is always changing, there will always be work for the guys in the vests with the little tripod thingies. Well played, surveyors. Well played.

2. Orderly

First things first, let’s get this straight—there is absolutely nothing orderly about cleaning out bed pans for the invalid, infirm and elderly. It should most definitely be called something more like, “unavoidably messy” or at the very least, “somewhat tricky”. Nevertheless, Orderly is the title that has been applied to the multi-functional hospital employees who, for a lack of a better explanatory phrase, do all the dirty work. Orderlies can be called upon to do just about anything in a hospital room, except administer any kind of medicine. They lift, carry, clean, restrain, record vitals, give sponge baths, and encourage/assist patients to ingest questionably edible hospital cuisine. You know the guy who rolls patients to the door of the hospital in a wheel chair even if they were admitted for measles? That’s an orderly. They do it all!

The common myth is that “orderly” is another word for male nurse, but there is nothing exclusionary about the gender of this chosen profession. The reason that it tends to be dude-heavy is just simple physics: lifting heavy, incapacitated patients in and out of bed is not a job for the petite. Strong ladies with developed upper bodies: feel free to apply!

3. Surgeon General

We felt kind of stupid for having to put this one on the list, but seriously, what does this person do other than come up with tiny little warnings? Do you actually have to be a surgeon to claim this title?

Most of what I know about the Surgeon General comes from an episode of The West Wing. Once I decided to research beyond our nifty West Wing DVD box set, I discovered that the Surgeon General is responsible for articulating and orchestrating federal health initiatives on issues like worldwide disease, illegal drug use and safe sex practices. They also educate the public on a variety of pressing health concerns. (For example, how to eat your food in a pyramid-like fashion, how many minutes a day you need to move your lazy butt so as to avoid getting diabetes, and, of course, how smoking is nuts.) And no, they don’t actually have to be a surgeon.

So where does the “general” part come in? The Surgeon General holds the rank of a three-star Admiral while in office, authorizing him or her to command the 6,000 Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service who are on call 24 hours a day, waiting to jump into action in the event of a national health crisis (mad cows, flu-ridden birds, salmonella salad dressing on spinach, etc.). So when our worst nightmares come true and someone drops a vial of the plague in Times Square, it’s the calming voice of the Surgeon General that we will be turning to for advice, counsel and directions to the closest quarantine facility.

4. Best Boy

In an industry lousy with panty-less starlets, Christmas-tree-tackling alcoholics, and sex tapes that get released “accidentally on purpose,” we wouldn’t be surprised if movie studios handed out a job title just for showing up on time and being on your best behavior. However, the true origin of “Best Boy” comes from the days of merry Olde England, when a master artist would take on apprentices, who would learn his craft. The best boy in that case was the Master’s oldest, most trusted apprentice, who would keep the other yahoos in line.

Most movie sets will actually have two best boys—one who serves as the first assistant to the Gaffer (chief electrician) and one who answers directly to the Key Grip. Which of course, begs the question, “What the heck is a grip?” Grips are the guys (or gals) who literally hold and/or move things around on set. They might grasp a boom mic, set up lighting equipment for the gaffer and his electricians, or haul materials around for the set builders to use to create another scene. There is a small sub-set of grips who specialize in the set up and use of dolly tracks—smooth moving tracks upon which they set a special camera apparatus—which are used to get those fluid, moving shots where the camera has to follow the action (called “tracking shots”). The one person that is in charge of the subset of dolly setter-uppers is of course, the Head Dolly. (Yeah, we had hoped that one would have a cooler story behind it too.)

5. Baby Wrangler

This is our new favorite movie credit job title. “Baby Wrangler” is the cutesy name given to credit the Registered Nurse who is required by law to be on set if there are any babies in the production. If you want, feel free to join us as we instead choose to visualize someone guarding an entire pen full of babies and then, when called upon, searches her herd for the one who isn’t pooping or crying and hands them off to be in the next shot.

6. Ombudsman

This has to be one of the more ominous sounding job titles out there – possibly because it starts with the same two letters as “ominous,” but also because if you need an ombudsman, it probably means some dank, smelly excrement has hit the fan. Whenever you’ve got a potentially explosive and litigious conflict between two entities, these guys are called in to be the middlemen, the mediators, and the last stop on the train to Lawsuit City. They attempt to resolve conflicts between private citizens and the government, disgruntled students and their university, or between an employee and his or her soul-sucking employer. Fired unfairly? Expelled without due process? Denied federal benefits? Tell it to the ombudsman.

Many news organizations (mental_floss excluded) appoint ombudsmen to handle reader complaints. We’ll put this on a list, along with “airline counter employee” and “DMV clerk,” of Jobs for Masochists Only.

7. City Controller

Okay, at first glance, this seems like one of the more awesome jobs in existence. The title conjures images of a guy in front of a huge computer screen that takes up an entire wall, manipulating traffic lights, launching helicopters, and barking orders at his meek mayor and subservient councilmen, all while looking down on the city he controls from the top of its highest sky scraper—and (it should go without saying) cackling maniacally. In actuality, the person with this title is probably sitting in front of a desk covered in balance sheets, ripping handfuls of hair out of his or her head while looking over the budget and expenses from every single city department, agency, board, commission, and elected office. Yup—a city controller is an accountant.

As it turns out, there is more than one glorified term to describe a number cruncher. Perhaps you’ve heard of a comptroller? Guess what: same thing as a controller – just with one über-annoying letter change. Ditto for the title of Bursar, except they manage the money owed by piss-poor college students (or their parents) for tuition, housing and other miscellaneous and expensive fees associated with higher education.

8. Riverkeeper

If a riverbed dries up, does it make a sound? Yes—the sound of a sobbing Riverkeeper who then tries to refill the river with a million tiny tears. Okay, we’re being a tad dramatic, but the job of Riverkeeper (along with coastal keepers, inlet keepers, creek keepers, stream keepers, and lake keepers) is to monitor the status of his assigned body of H2O, keeping careful watch over pollution, water levels, and erosion. Riverkeepers also have to stay on top of water usage habits and commercial and residential development in any area that feeds off of the river’s water supply.

If a land developer or business is abusing their water source or polluting, riverkeepers get to play the role of whistleblower. In other words, if Captain Planet and his pre-teen Planeteers were around today, this would have been the primo dream job for the kid who represented “Water.” Meanwhile the kid who was assigned to “Fire” is still waiting around for Smokey the Bear to step down and retire.

Jenn Thompson is a freelance writer for publications including Charlotte Magazine, Variety, and Time Out.

Wedding season is upon us. So let's reflect on the rich history of marriage celebrations and revel in the realization that weddings are, at their core, incredibly bizarre. ]]> If the throngs of crazed customers clutching registry printouts at Crate & Barrel are any indication, wedding season is once again upon us. Before you head off to the next joyous union on your jam-packed calendar, let’s take a moment to reflect on the rich history of marriage celebrations and revel in the realization that weddings are, at their core, incredibly bizarre.

The White Wedding Dress
Technically, today’s wedding gowns aren’t white. They are “Candlelight,” “Warm Ivory,” “Ecru” or “Frost.” But there was a time when a bride’s wedding attire was simply the best thing in her closet (talk about “off the rack”), and could be any color, even black. To convince her groom that she came from a wealthy family, brides would also pile on layers of fur, silk and velvet, as apparently grooms didn’t care if his wife-to-be reeked of sweaty B.O. as long as she was loaded. It was dear ol’ Queen Victoria (whose reign lasted from 1837-1901) who made white fashionable. She wore a pale gown trimmed in orange blossoms for her 1840 wedding to her first cousin, Prince Albert. Hordes of royal-crazed plebeians immediately began to copy her, which is an astonishing feat considering that People Magazine wasn’t around to publish the Super Exclusive Wedding Photos, or instruct readers on how to Steal Vicki’s Hot Wedding Style.

Giving Away the Bride
Remember that “Women’s Studies” class you considered taking in college? Allow us to summarize what you would have learned: All of our society’s gender issues stem from the fact that fathers once used their daughters as currency to a) pay off a debt to a wealthier land owner, b) symbolize a sacrificial, monetary peace offering to an opposing tribe or c) buy their way into a higher social strata. So next time you tear up watching a beaming father walk his little girl down the aisle, remember that it’s just a tiny, barbaric little hold over from the days when daughters were nothing but dollar signs to daddy dearest. And that veil she’s wearing? Yeah, that was so the groom wouldn’t know if he was stuck with an uggo until it was time to kiss the bride and too late to back out on the transaction. (There is also some superstitious B.S. about warding off evil spirits, but we think you’ll agree that hiding a busted grill from the husband-to-be is a more practical purpose.)

The Wedding Party

Talk about your runaway brides—the original duty of a “Best Man” was to serve as armed backup for the groom in case he had to resort to kidnapping his intended bride away from disapproving parents. The “best” part of that title refers to his skill with a sword, should the need arise. (You wouldn’t want to take the “just okay” member of your weapon-wielding posse with you to steal yourself a wife, would you?)

The best man stands guard next to the groom right up through the exchange of vows (and later, outside the newlyweds’ bedroom door), just in case anyone should attack or if a non-acquiescent bride should try to make a run for it. It’s said that feisty groups like the Huns, Goths and Visigoths took so many brides by force that they kept a cache of weapons stored beneath the floorboards of churches for convenience. Modern-day best men are more likely to store an emergency six-pack at the ceremony for convenience, but the title remains an apt one.

Ladies—believe it or not, the concept of the bridesmaid’s gown was not invented to inflict painful dowdiness upon the bride’s friends and female relatives thus making the bride look hotter by comparison. Historically, that dress you’ll never wear again was actually selected with the purpose of tricking the eye of evil spirits and jealous ex-lovers (spicy!). Brides’ faithful attendants were instructed to wear a dress similar to that of the bride so that during their group stroll to the church it would be hard for any ill-willed spirits or former boy-toys to spot the bride and curse/kidnap/throw rocks at her. (Ditto for the boys in matching penguin suits, saving the groom from a similar fate.) Memo to the Maid of Honor: if you think organizing a themed shower complete with quiche, cupcakes and creative uses of toilet paper as a game is a tough gig, imagine this: MoH’s of old used to be responsible for making nearly all of the wedding decorations and putting them up herself.

Garter and Bouquet Toss

This pair of rituals has long been the scourge of the modern wedding guest. What could possibly be more humiliating than being forced out to the center of a parquet dance floor while a wedding DJ advertises your lack of a boyfriend and then being expected to further demonstrate your desperation by diving for flying flowers? Wait…. Yup, we can top that. How about grasping in the air for a lacy piece of undergarment that until moments ago resided uncomfortably close to the crotch of your buddy’s wife? At any other point in time, that would make you a total perv, so why is it acceptable at a wedding? Well, hold on to your scruples boys and girls, because the history behind these customs is downright dirty.

It used to be that after the bride and groom said, “I do,” they were to go immediately into a nearby room and “close the deal” and consummate the marriage. Obviously, to really make it official, there would need to be witnesses, which basically led to hordes of wedding guests crowding around the bed, pushing and shoving to get a good view and hopefully to get their hands on a lucky piece of the bride’s dress as it was ripped from her body. Sometimes the greedy guests helped get the process going by grabbing at the bride’s dress as she walked by, hoping for a few threads of good fortune. In time, it seems, people realized that this was all a bit, well… creepy, and it was decided that for modesty’s sake the bride could toss her bouquet as a diversion as she made her getaway and the groom could simply remove an item of the bride’s undergarments and then toss it back outside to the waiting throngs to prove that he was about to, uh, get ‘er done.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue (and a Sixpence in My Shoe?)

A common theme that you’ve no doubt noticed throughout this post: humans used to be a superstitious bunch. This rhyming phrase neatly lists a number of English customs dating back to the Victorian age which, when worn in combination, should bring the bride oodles of fabulous good luck. The something old was meant to tie the bride to her family and her past, while the something new represented her new life as the property of a new family. The item borrowed was supposed to be taken from someone who was already a successfully married wife, so as to pass on a bit of her good fortune to the new bride. The color blue (Virgin Mary-approved!) stood for all sorts of super fun things like faithfulness, loyalty, and purity. The sixpence, of course, was meant to bring the bride and her new groom actual, cold, hard fortune. Just in case that wasn’t enough, brides of yore also carried bunches of herbs (which most brides now replace with expensive, out-of-season peonies) to ward off evil spirits.

The Wedding Cake
We have to believe that there was a time, somewhere in history, when the whole, “Will they/won’t they smash cake in each other’s faces!” scenario was actually clever and original (even if we couldn’t find any evidence of it). What we did find was the granddaddy predecessor to cake-face-smashing: the breaking of baked goods over the bride’s head. Customarily, the groom would gnaw off a bite of barley bread and then the remainder of the loaf was held above the newlywed bride’s head and then broken, showering her with crumbs and a soul-crushing message of her husband’s male dominance. Guests would then scramble to pick up any wayward crumbs off the floor as they were said to bring good…wait for it… luck!

This tradition evolved as cake emerged as the preferred confection for wedding celebrations. Fortunately for the bride, a whole cake doesn’t break in two quite as dramatically as a loaf of bread and so it was sliced on a table instead. Rather than scrounge for lucky crumbs on the floor, guests would stand in line while the bride passed tiny, fortune-blessed morsels of cake through her own wedding ring into the hands of the waiting masses. This act also fell by the wayside, as we can only assume the bride determined that it was a lousy waste of her time. Thus began the tradition of giving out whole slices of cake to each guest, not to be eaten, but to be placed under their pillow at night for (yup, here it is again) good luck and, for the ladies, sweet dreams of their future husbands. [Image courtesy of alt text.]

Refusing to Throw Away the Leftovers
This leads to another sweet, delicious, buttercream-iced mystery to be solved: Why do couples eat freezer-burned wedding cake on their one-year anniversary? To answer this, we must look to the lyrics of a schoolyard classic: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage! It used to be assumed that when there was a wedding, a christening would follow shortly. So, rather than bake two cakes for the occasions, they’d just bake one big one and save a part of it to be eaten at a later date when the squealing bundle of joy arrived. Eventually folks warmed to the idea of giving the poor kid his own, newly baked cake, but the custom of saving a portion of the wedding cake far longer than it should be saved and then eating it and deluding oneself to believe that it actually tastes good is one that persists to this day.

Throwing Rice
Pelting newlyweds with uncooked starchy vegetables is a time-honored tradition meant to shower the new couple with prosperity, fertility and, of course, good fortune. Oats, grains and dried corn were also used before rice rose to the top as the preferred symbolic sprinkle. Rice lost its popularity when it became widely rumored that if birds ate the rice, it would expand in their stomach and kill them. This is decidedly untrue, as is evidenced by the fact that birds eat dried rice and corn and other dehydrated vegetables and grains from fields all the time and we have yet to see any mention of a national, exploding-bird epidemic running on the CNN news ticker.

Rice can be a hazard to guests, who can lose their footing on rice covered pavement and take a nasty spill. Turns out, even rice alternatives have their drawbacks. Two Texas women were badly injured at a wedding in May 2008 while trying to light celebratory sparklers to send off the bride and groom. The group of sparklers ignited all at once and exploded, burning one woman’s face and both of their arms. One guest at a Russian wedding in Chechnya last March decided to buck tradition altogether and threw an armed hand grenade into the unsuspecting crowd, injuring a dozen people. Our advice? Stick with rose petals. They are soft, non-hazardous, non-lethal and biodegradable.

Jenn Thompson is a freelance writer for publications including Charlotte Magazine, Weddings Unveiled, and The Atlantan. For the next few days, she’ll be sharing her wedding knowledge with us. Tomorrow: strange wedding laws still on the books.

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