#19 Proactive: The Business Meeting Boardgame

Created by a committee of real business managers–but not yet signed off by any of them–Proactive comes complete with six or seven card decks of still undetermined significance, a board that may or may not be round, three dice a spinner or a “to be announced,” several revision notes that contradict previous revision notes but in no way refer to the original notes, a collection of inter-office emails revealing prior knowledge of the highly toxic coating used on the tokens, cards, board, box and price tag, several billion dollars of “play money” used to bail itself out and a growing fear that the board game misled consumers about its actual “family fun” value.

Update: The Toys and Playthings Commission has revealed that rumors claiming Proactive takes 19 hours to play and requires no less than 27-40 participants have eroded almost all consumer confidence in the game.

Update #2: The makers of Proactive has been forced to liquidate all assets after disclosing that most of the boxes on toy shelves were in fact empty or simply filled with Kerplunk marbles.

Update #3: Despite an outcry from shareholders, the remaining Proactive sets have been purchased by Monopoly for 12 cents each.

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#18 The Dr. Seuss Compendium of Unpublished Books

And you thought you knew all the good doctor’s works!

This new compendium of unpublished or unceremoniously discarded stories features such deeply buried treasures as “To Think that I Saw It with the Aid of Pharmaceuticals,” “Yertle the Turtle and Other Tales of Yiddish Marine Life,” “Oh, the Places Your Social Betters Will Go,” “One Drink Two Drink Three Drink Floor,” “Horton Hears the Who at Wembley,” “Hop on Pop: A CPR Guide for Toddlers,” “Mr. Brown Can Moo So Keep Away from Him,” “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose: A Tragic Tale of Arterial Blockage” and, of course, “How the Grinch Stole Purim.”

Also featured are several novellas Dr. Seuss penned under the name “Theo. LeSig,” including “Whorehouse Cell Block No. 36DD: Big, Bad and Busty,” “I Shot Him Just to Watch Him Get Shot,” “Burning Rubber: Hot Rodder Sex Stories” and “Hussy Harlot: Under-the-Covers Agent.”

#17 2001: A Space Odyssey Lego Set

Tired of assembling the Imperial Landing Craft from Return of the Jedi, Dumbledore’s office from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Robert Preston from The Last Starfighter or any of a myriad of pre-designed Lego movie tie-in models that ask nothing of your mental faculties and leave you only with something recognizable but ultimately unrewarding to put on your shelf?

Then prepare to have your mind–and a good seven months–blown with the 2001: A Space Odyssey Lego Set. Your very conception of what a “fun toy” should be is challenged the moment you open the box only to find three seemingly unrelated sections, each equipped with a black monolith, their own maddeningly abstruse pieces and the use of sound in lieu of easy-to-follow instructions or even just one green platform on which to ground your creation. Then it’s off to engage in several, several hours of amusement as you use little prehistoric ape-men to reenact the first discovery of tools and homicide, construct wondrous spaceplanes and space orbital stations from an apparently refinanced Pan-Am while disassembling a talking computer that serves as the set’s one pop culture touchstone or just throw the whole imprecise, infuriating set against the wall as you struggle with the parallels of a floating fetus “starchild” to the nurturing amenities of a Louis XVI-era bedroom, the progression and regression of man and the birth and death of suns and ourselves only ultimately to realize that you simply could not give less of a crap.

In the end you’ll have an astounding model that isn’t so much enjoyable as critically-lauded, providing years of reverence and reflection while never once engaging you or your guests except when someone asks, “So…is it all just one big joke?”

#16 Girls Gone Wild Christmas Carol

Ebenezer Scrooge is a despicable old miser with a heart as warm as a dying ember and a life as cold as the thin gruel he dines on nightly. That is until one Christmas Eve, when he’s visited by wave after wave of nubile college girls just dying to flash their funbags for our camera and your holiday cheer!

Watch Ebenezer’s unexpected guests jingle their bells and check out the boughs on Holly as these fun-loving freshman (high school or college) doff their tees and drink until their hearts are pumping Cuervo Gold. This is your chance to re-experience a holiday favorite or just spot your half-unconscious daughter shove her tongue down another girl’s throat as they gyrate topless to Timbaland in the men’s room.

Plus, if you order now we’ll send you Girls Gone Wild Meet Oliver Twist, in which a poor orphan is forced to eke out a pitiful existence as a street urchin…until he’s picked up by a Range Rover packed with 15 of the most stacked sophomores ever to appear outside a Russ Meyer film.

#15 Yu-Gi-Wha?! Trading Cards

Who shall become Number One High Dark Master Magician ? Will it be Excelsior Emerito, son of Lord Rannifan of the dreaded Blue-Eyed Synchro Dragon Consortium? Or will you be able to smite your enemies and control Ghangshire with your Continuous Use Dijon Packs?

Remember to win you must conserve your Tanker-Ko fusion forces, energize with Zan-Zan Juicy Pellets and never let your Krashow fall into Shorbin or Jannisando will be your demise. Collect Granifax, short play Vladmies and Refengo the Horthblues to wrevizon flagthy quothoon kpytnmis. Ythunlox blethmanit!

Also Included: A 750-page parental manual with extensive glossary, exhaustively detailed flowcharts for each card, simulations of your children playing Yu-Gi-Wha?! and an emergency phone number to help people communicate with their children about the game.

#14 Ennuija Board

What does the future hold in store for you? How could it possibly matter? When did these kinds of questions ever hold any significance for you? Why even bother reading the rest of this paragraph?

Introducing Ennuija Board, the exciting “talking board” for those who, quite honestly, have heard enough and can’t imagine that anyone or anything will ever have something interesting to say again.

First, gather around a few of your closest friends you never really had anything in common with and who you can’t possibly feel further apart from even as you literally sit right next to them. Second, place your hand on the moving indicator because that’s what is expected of you and not because you expect even the slightest hint of fun or fortune in return. Then third, ask yourself why you bothered to play in the first place. Seriously, what could be more tedious than a parlor game? The endless, enervating chit-chat that goes with it? The dead-eye stares of people mere fate has dictated are your companions? The distant sounds of the grandfather clock in the hall, each chime a death knell for another minute forever lost and forgotten?

Perfect for mandated get-togethers, evenings, mornings or noons that just won’t seem to end or as yet another thing to do while you contemplate why there will never, ever be anything interesting, inspiring or important for you to do, Ennuija Board won’t so much make your day as mark it on a calendar already teeming with X’s but incapable of answering “Why?”

#13 First-Timer’s Rubik’s Cube

Relive that magical, now almost mythical night you finally became a man and solved your very first real puzzle with First-Timer’s Rubik’s Cube.

 

The anticipation and anxiety begin in your dorm room, older brother’s car or parents’ beach house as the far more experienced First-Timer’s Rubik’s Cube calmly suggests you “Relax,” “Put on some music,” “Maybe have another beer” or “Stop waving that thing around.”

 

Then once the mood is right or at least all your friends have gotten the hint and left, First-Timer’s Rubik’s Cube gently guides you through the mystifying process with such helpful advice as “The right…move to the right…no, the other right…SLOW DOWN! What is this?! A race?!…Oh Christ, don’t apologize! Just try and concentrate on the…No…No…NO!…WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR HANDS?!?…Okay, how about we start with just one finger…”

 

Whether you ultimately complete the puzzle to your emotional and physical satisfaction or wind up several hours later with nothing but a cramped hand, self-loathing and the crippling fear that you’re never, ever going to get it right, First-Timer’s Rubik’s Cube is sure to be the one toy you’ll always remember, whether in your dreams or in your nightmares.

#12 The Berenstain Bears Go Primal Treasury

That upstanding ursine family from childhood throws off the shackles of civilization and finally embraces its grizzly and grisly instincts in this new collection of bedtime reading musts.

Stories include The Berenstain Bears Rub Themselves against Trees, The Berenstain Bears Wander Aimlessly for Several Days in Search of Suitable Sex Partners and this year’s Caldecott Winner, The Berenstain Bears Eviscerate a Couple of Campers and Their Dog.

#11 CNN Crib Crawl

Sure, mobiles over the baby’s crib are nice but why waste your wee one’s formative years teaching them basic shapes and colors when they can learn that 200,000 Chechnyan rebels have amassed on the outskirts of Moscow?

Just install the news crawl along the inside perimeter of the child’s crib. Then marvel as your infant’s eyes grow wide and their mouth goes agape while he or she is fed such up-to-the minute global political and economic reports as India resuming nuclear arm testing, the colossal fallout from the subprime crisis, the emergence of Islamic militancy in Cambodia and the rumored cancellation of The Backyardigans.

Let’s face it, your newborn spends most of his or her day in a fetal position. Why not give them a good reason to stay that way?

#10 Passive-Aggressive Simon

Introducing a party game that finally captures all the mirth and merriment of chronic resentment, indirect stubbornness, unexplained sullenness and even disavowed resistance!

 

Simply turn Passive-Aggressive Simon on and wait. And wait. And wait. The game can go for hours without uttering a sound or emitting a single flash, all the while expressing a willful misunderstanding of what it is you want it to do or claiming forgetfulness of its own instructions.

 

But avert your eyes for just one second–just one!–and out comes a quick but ambiguous series of blips and lights . Did it go blue-red-green? Did it indirectly blame you for why it took so long to start? Was that sequence of lights sincere or sarcastic? Is it trying to incite anger and disappointment by purposely failing at its own assigned task? Does it think it’s unfairly being held to too high of a standard by being used as a party game? And why did it leave a note about which colors it flashed instead of just telling you face-to-face?

 

Yes, with Passive-Aggressive Simon you’ll enjoy everything from trying to play a game with a game that fears competition and confrontation to trying to have a relaxing night with a toy that seemingly wants to foster chaos and inefficiency to trying to get through just one round with a gadget that doesn’t get why you’re suddenly so angry and severely critical even as it resists every attempt you make at having just one moment without it muttering yet another negative response or prematurely admitting defeat by turning itself off.