The Robopanda is a robotic toy that responds to you in different ways depending on where and how you touch its body. It can move its arms, legs, and eyebrows but the really creepy part is that it talks to you in ways that make it seem a little too prescient. We had it in the car with us these last few days and it kept asking, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" (It's difficult to yell at a Robopanda that if they "don't stop asking we'll just turn around and go home!")
But I'm not here today to talk about the tragic breakdown of a society represented by parents who buy their 8-year old son a toy that pays more attention to its surroundings than the 8-year old boy they bought it for. I'm here to talk about national security. (Stay with me on this...)
As a nation, we are clearly concerned about the threat that the Chinese pose to us and we have many analysts, technicians, and military strategists studying their economic systems, military buildup, growing army, burgeoning navy, and long-range missile capability. I say we need to look elsewhere for the real threat...PRODUCT PACKAGING.
You see, the Robopanda comes encased in a cocoon of insanity that requires all the skill of a surgical bomb squad team to assess, disect, and safely detatch it from its harnessed package. First, you have to slice through about $9 worth of reinforced tape wrapped more tightly than some of the dresses worn at the Oscars. That is the equivalent of merely opening the panel on the bomb just to see what you are dealing with. Next, you have to find and untwist the approximately 14 metallic wires that are based on designs meant to restrain psychotic killers in electric chairs. But these are no ordinary twisties...you twist and twist and twist until you finally realize you are tightening, not loosening it. So you start twisting the other way only to find out you are still tightening it further. As your heart rate doubles and you examine the FREAKIN' wire more closely, you realize they are designed in such a way that you have to twist it in one direction until half of it untwists and then you have to twist in the other direction to untwist it the other half of the way. How diabolical!
After leaning over this thing for 30 minutes like a doctor delivering a premature baby by Cesarian section, and dislodging about a dozen of these ties, my back gave out and sent me to the floor (true). Kerrie tried to assist me but I cried out to her to "save the patient!" She didn't believe me about the double-agented spy twisties until she experienced it herself and even after dislodging the balance of them she still could not believe their usage.
Once the ties are all released, this is the equivalent of "seeing the head", so you grab and pull but it won't budge. You look for some kind of umbilical cord that it could be tangled within but you find none. You continue to inspect it to find the next booby trap and see that the toy is stuck in a plastic mold that must somehow be dislodged. You then find that the plastic molds have flaps that are fitted through slots that are taped down in the back with what must have been the other roll of tape from a twin pack. You have to find all the tabs, slice through the tape, then manipulate the plastic molds from around the body of the panda. It's like delivering a baby by removing the surrounding mother!
At one point Daniel cried out that something was wrapped around its neck, to which I frustratingly replied, "Those are my HANDS!"
Eventually we freed the stupid thing (and I say that as affectionately as I can) from the iron maiden to which Daniel then took upon the task of "training" and playing with it.
Have you noticed the packaging of our consumer products (all made in China) have become more and more complicated to unravel and the things inside them have become more and more difficult to dislodge? It occurred to me that the Chinese are trying to slowly debilitate us all, until one unsuspecting Christmas morning when every American father is contorted on the floor with back pain and every American mother is tangled in packaging tape, only then will the Chinese come whistling into our towns and defeat us, while our children mindlessly follow the instructions of an army of Robopandas.
In the meantime, as a consolation for the Robopanda's complicated birth, tomorrow I will get my revenge. I've scheduled a bris.
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